Trust Flow & Citation Flow: What is it and how do I increase these SEO values?
Trust flow and citation flow are two important SEO terms that greatly affect the findability of your website. But what exactly do these terms mean? And how do you increase these values? In this article, we explain.
What are Majestic Flow Metrics?
Until recently, Google PageRank was the tool of choice for determining the findability and authority of your Web site within the global Internet landscape. Because PageRank hasn’t had any updates for some time and doesn’t actually provide good insight into the “value” of individual URLs, the tool has slowly been supplanted by Majestic Flow Metrics. You can easily create an account at Majestic and gain insight into your Web site’s trust flow and citation flow.
You can use this tool to assess a website’s link profile. In addition, flow metrics allow you to compare your own link profile with that of partner websites or competitors. Thus, the metrics are extremely useful in finding good websites that you would like to link to.
Citation flow of a website
In practice, the Majestic Flow Metrics consist of two metrics: citation flow and trust flow. Citation flow predicts how influential the URL of a particular Web page is. Citation flow is based on the amount of links pointing to a particular URL.
The greater the number of links, the higher the citation flow of the URL. Incoming links from URLs with higher citation flow also weigh more heavily than incoming links from URLs with low citation flow. Thus, the value says a lot about how well known a particular web page or website is.
The figure looks primarily at the quantity of links. Thus, a page with 100 links receives a higher value than a URL with only 10 links, even though in the second case the links are from much larger and better-known names.
Trust flow of a website
Trust flow is more about quality than quantity. This value is primarily a good measure of the trustworthiness of a URL or Web site. Therefore, the figure is made up based on the amount of reliable inbound links to a URL.
The greater the number of trusted links to the URL, the higher the trust flow will be. After all, a site on which a lot of quality comes in will also pass on quality. The same is true the other way around. Does the number of unreliable links increase? Then the trust flow gets lower.
Unreliable links and websites are also often referred to as spammy neighborhoods. A high trust flow is an indicator of a high-quality backlink profile. This is a strong signal to Google and other search engines that a website harbors strong content and thus deserves a high ranking.
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Correlation between citation flow and trust flow
There is a strong relationship between citation flow and trust flow in most cases. In fact, the two values influence each other mutually. In this context, the so-called trust ratio is a useful figure to identify the link profile of a site or Web page.
Calculate trust ratio
You can calculate the trust ratio by dividing the trust flow by the citation flow. Suppose a site or URL has a citation flow of 80 and a trust flow of 20. Then the trust ratio is 80:20, which is a ratio of 4:1. The trust ratio is then 0.25.
Such a value indicates a website with many inbound links from relatively untrustworthy sources. In other words, a spam suspect website or page. A value between 0.5 and 1 is considered a good trust ratio.
View trust ratio
Majestic allows you to view link profiles of Web sites or URLs in clear graphs. Ideally, the graph is shaped like a nice, full flame. If the citation flow is much higher than the trust flow, you get a concentration of dots at the bottom left of the graph (see image below). So you should not have this.
Take your trust flow values to the next level
Fortunately, there are several ways to significantly boost the trust flow of a website or URL. We list a few for you below.
Find good influencers in your industry
A good first step towards a higher trust flow is to identify key influencers and authorities within your field. On Hulc.co.uk you can easily create a campaign and receive no-obligation proposals from the best influencers in your industry!
A lasting partnership with the influencer will attract the attention of new visitors and benefit the trust flow of your website or page. When selecting influencers, do keep the following points in mind.
- Always ensure that the influencer is actually an authority and is not selling hot air. You can do this by running his website through Majestic and checking if the trust ratio is OK. Also use the topical trust flow to see if the influencer is active within the market niche that your site or web page is targeting.
- Be careful to produce content that has not already been covered extensively and in the same way by the influencer. Uniqueness is an important measure of quality and therefore good for trust flow.
- Majestic’ s backlink checker also allows you to find the most influential sites that link to the influencer of your choice. After all, the Web and the blogging community are mostly communities within which peers mutually influence and inspire each other.
Writing guest blogs on external websites
Writing guest blogs on other sites is another way to increase the value of your trust flow. Do you come across sites or pages in your industry that look promising? Then analyze them using Majestic. That way, you can find out right away whether the sites meet your expectations or, on closer inspection, aren’t as good as you initially thought.
Guest blogs on highly regarded sites improve your branding and bring your website and content to the attention of a new readership.
Link building: quality over quantity
It is advisable to place a strong emphasis on quality rather than quantity when link building. Of course it is nice if your site has a high citation flow. But if you really want to exude authority and trust, it is important that the links you place match the professional image you are aiming for.
So-called no-follow links, for example, do boost your citation flow, but do little to nothing for trust flow. Interestingly enough, links ending in the extensions .gov and .edu generate a lot of trust among visitors. Ideal to boost the trust flow of your website!
Know your industry for better SEO
Focus on sites and influencers within your specific niche. In fact, Majestic also incorporates topic trust scores into SEO scores. The higher your trust is within a particular niche or topic group, the higher you are ranked in the search engines.
Build a good internal link structure
A good internal linking strategy often helps tremendously in improving your citation flow and trust flow. A strong homepage with good flow metrics will also increase traffic to other pages. The same goes for building in backlinks that redirect to your homepage and important internal pages.
Boost your SEO values!
Good metrics are an important prerequisite for a successful and authoritative website. They also make you more findable and thus more interesting for advertisers . In particular, a high trust flow puts your website or URL on the map as an important source of information.
Fortunately, you can do a lot yourself to take this value for your Web site to a high level. Above all, map out a good strategy that combines several elements. By exchanging links with reputable influencers within your field, selectively using guest blogs and producing quality content, your website will gain authority and you will take full advantage of a higher trust flow and trust ratio. It will benefit your website and increase visitor numbers!