Trust flow & Citation flow can be extremely overwhelming for new link builders. And why not? We too had struggled with these metrics at first.
And if you want to know all about these metrics and how they can be used for your website’s SEO then you are at the right place.
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Introduction
PageRank disappeared one day with a Google chrome update which turned off the bar that used to display the PageRank of a webpage. And this got Link Builders into deep trouble. And After all, how were they going to know which pages were worth their time & effort to get links from?.
So as to solve that problem, Majestic developed the flow metrics. And these flow metrics were Trust flow and citation flow.
In a nutshell
Citation flow: A metric that predicts how influential a link in a site might be for your website based on the # of backlinks pointing to the linking webpage.
Trust Flow: A metric that predicts how trustworthy or safe a link is from a webpage. It takes into account the quality of links pointing at the linking web page
What Is Citation Flow?
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As mentioned earlier it predicts how influential a link from a site will be for your website. This metric takes into account the # of backlinks pointing to the linking page irrespective of their quality.
For example, a web page (from which you want a link) might have 500 backlinks. Now, these backlinks might all be of low quality i.e from spam sites & directories. But Majestic won’t say that these links are from low-quality sources & change its Citation flow.
It will still indicate a high Citation Flow of the web page. But we know the links aren’t of good quality.
How To Increase Citation Flow?
As stated earlier Citation Flow is determined by the # of links pointing to your site. That means the more links you build the more Citation flow you get. And this doesn’t mean you go on a link rampage and just build links for the sake of increasing your Citation flow.
What Is Trust Flow?
Trust flow is a metric that predicts how quality or valuable a link is based on the # of quality pages linking to the referring URL.
A site might have a ton of links but its trust flow wouldn’t be influenced by just the # of links. For example, a site has 10,000 links to it but it’s trust flow is just 4. This is because the # of quality links that point to this site might just be 200 and the rest are just spammy & invaluable backlinks.
Trust flow will be generally a lot lower than your citation flow because the # of quality backlinks that you will be acquiring will be quite low compared to the # of links you will be acquiring.
When analyzing links remember that “Trust flow is the indication of how high-quality backlinks a webpage has” and also generally “High trust flow is the by-product of high-quality content”.
How to increase Trust Flow?
As mentioned earlier Trust flow is the byproduct of the # of “quality backlinks” pointing to a site. Simply speaking, it is obvious to increase trust flow you have to increase the rate of quality backlink acquisition.
However, obtaining only quality backlinks is not always possible. Because sometimes you will get low-quality links which you cannot control. In addition, it doesn’t mean you should only chase the “utmost high-quality links”. Your link portfolio should be natural with a mix of all types of links be it high quality, medium, or low-quality links.
Increasing .edu & .gov links to your site will greatly influence your Trust flow scores in a positive way.
Now if you are facing difficulty in distinguishing between high quality & low-quality backlinks, here is a checklist.
Trust flow vs Domain Authority
Domain authority is a Moz trademark metric. Simply speaking, Domain authority tells how authoritative a particular domain is. And like Citation flow, it can also be influenced with # of links to a site.
With all due respect to Moz, we still think Trust Flow is a more accurate & reliable metric to map the trustworthiness of a website. And this because Moz only upped their Link Index recently. Whereas, Majestic has been discovering, crawling & rating Trust flow metrics since the early 2008’s. And we don’t see Moz’s domain authority that accurate & reliable against the Trust Flow.
However, Moz is rapidly upgrading its link & spam index so we expect Moz to complete a full-fledged come back soon. But, if you still want to use Moz’s Domain Authority metric then make sure to use the spam score as an indicator of how spammy a website’s link profile is.
What is Topical Trust flow?
Majestic categorizes websites in different categories like Education, Automotive, etc. After that, it uses this data to map the “Topical trust flow” of a webpage.
This basically answers the question of how many links this website has are from websites/pages in the same niche or category that Majestic allots to them.
Trust flow & Citation Flow Ratio
Now, after all that metric science you might be thinking, “Are my flow metrics right?!” or “Am I going to get punished by Google for not maintaining my Trust: Citation flow ratio?!”. To be honest there isn’t any magical TF: CF ratio.
When Majestic came up with the Trust flow & citation flow metrics it also came up with the concept of TF:CF ratios. And this got a lot of people talking. To address the situation they decided to end the chaos and answer the question, “What’s a good TF:CF ratio?”. Majestic said a ratio of 1:2 is ideal.
That means if a website has 20 TF and 75 CF then it will be considered as a spammy website despite it’s high metrics & a site with 17 TF & 25 CF would be considered more healthy & high quality because of the ratio balance of the TF & CF.
Tip
Don’t get crazy after ratios, try to keep it close as humanly you can. And keep building links, there are some things you can’t control.
How to check my flow metrics?
Checking Flow metrics is easy & free. As these metrics are developed by Majestic, you can just go to their website, enter in a URL & get your flow metrics back. But this can sometimes get frustrating. This is the reason why Majestic also has an extension for chrome & firefox where you can lookup The flow metrics right from the website or URL you are in.
There are limits though when you run out of searches you have to register for a free Majestic account. And this will give you basic access to the flow metrics, the # of referring domains & backlinks, and some other basic link metrics.
There are also third-party apps that use Majestic’s API to pull flow metrics into their software. Some of them are Mangools & Raven SEO tools.
Buying Mangools is a better option than buying Majestic because of the sheer amount of value for money you get when you buy Mangools.
How to include flow metrics in my SEO strategy?
Flow metrics can deeply benefit your SEO strategy. Especially the link-building aspect of your website.
#1 Quality link acquisition
Using the flow metrics you can determine which links are “Quality” & which aren’t. You can then use that data to go for links that might pass the quality they have to you in the form of Link Juice.
#2 Risky link acquisition
With the help of flow metrics, you can avoid getting links from sites that can get you penalized by Google.
High CF but low TF should always ring a bell and you should investigate links like this further.
#3 Toxic link disavow
Flow metrics save a lot of time when disavowing toxic links to your site from Google Search Console. Essentially, Disavowing links means telling Google that don’t count this links & don’t associate my site to them.
#4 Increasing trust of website
Good Trust flow helps people acknowledge your site is actually good & trust-worthy. Also good Trust flow signals google to believe that you are actually a website that people enjoy, trust & love.
#5 Sniper Outreach
Flow metrics can help you reduce your outreach efforts by limiting your outreach targets. This saves you a lot of time as you are not blindly targeting everyone & going for the shotgun method. Instead, you are using the Flow metrics to narrow down link prospects & going for the sniper approach.
#6 Internal flow
Using pages from your website that have a high Trust & citation flow to internally link to other pages is also a very effective & underutilized benefit of the flow metrics.
Wrapping Up
As time passes, Google will move on from just backlinks, Which was the main part of their initial ranking algorithm that was patented. In the future, Google will start to use User Metrics as a more effective way of measuring the “Quality” of ranking pages rather than just a bunch of links.
And optimizing for that will be all the rage. But for the time being, links remain the most important ranking factors (As stated by many case studies). So with that in mind, keep building links & keep growing your traffic.
Adios!
P.S: If you have any questions ask them (here)