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 I am yet again graph layout posting.

If there was some meaningful order to nodes, like eg. time of appearance, then could you add that as an additional constraint on initialization, or use that as a means of computing more local position optimizations... or do iterative optimization so nodes that interact more consistently across the order, rather than only in a small burst in part of the order, are represented as being closer together 
 @ab7cf35b check out my student's paper on a graph layout algorithm that is particularly easily adaptable to add additional constraints. Comes with software. 😉

http://neural-reckoning.org/pub_graph_drawing_wcr.html

That said, having now thought a lot about graph layout and written a few papers on it my main takeaway is that whenever possible one shouldn't show graphs. They're always a mess for anything but the simplest structures (trees or near trees maybe). Instead, use graph structure to inform a different visualisation, or have an interactive graph explorer.