Improve your SEO with smart linkbuilding and Citation Flow

Niels Hoogeveen 16 Apr 2024

If you have a beautiful website or webshop, you naturally want it to be found by your target audience. By investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can ensure that your website becomes more visible online. But how do you find out how well your domain is structured in terms of SEO? There are various metrics, including the so-called ‘Citation Flow’ (CF). In this article, we explain what this metric entails and why it is of great importance in any link building strategy. Do you want to see your website rise in organic search results? Then this article is relevant for you!

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What is Citation Flow?

Citation Flow is an important metric designed by the company Majestic. It is expressed as a number between 1 and 100 and indicates the value of a website’s URL. This score is based on the number of incoming links, or ‘backlinks,’ that a website receives. Links from websites with a high Citation Flow carry more weight than links from websites with a low Citation Flow. In short, a domain’s Citation Flow indicates its popularity. The higher a website’s Citation Flow, the more incoming links the respective domain receives.

Importance of Citation Flow

But why is it important to score high on Citation Flow? This relates to the Domain Authority (DA) of a website. When many domains place a backlink to a particular website, it signals to the search engine that relevant information is found on this website. This makes the domain in question an authority. The result? Not only does the Citation Flow increase, but also the Domain Authority of the domain, which will lead to higher placement in the organic search results.

What is Trust Flow?

However, the quantity of incoming links is not the only important factor. It is also crucial that these backlinks are reliable. A large number of incoming links is not very valuable if the respective backlinks are not of high quality. This is the case, for example, when these links result from spam. Therefore, Majestic designed a separate metric called ‘Trust Flow’ (TF). Trust Flow allows you to determine the quality of a website’s incoming links. In other words, it measures whether these links themselves have a high Trust Flow. Like Citation Flow, Trust Flow is expressed as a number between 1 and 100: the higher the score, the greater the number of trustworthy backlinks a website has.

Correlation between Citation Flow and Trust Flow

When examining a domain’s backlink profile, it is important to study both Citation Flow and Trust Flow. Only by doing so can you get a clear picture of the quality of the backlink profile. The relationship between these values can be calculated by dividing Trust Flow by Citation Flow. The resulting number is the ratio, also known as the ‘trust ratio,’ between the two metrics and can range between 0 and 1. The closer the score is to 1, the more reliable the domain is. Ideally, the trust ratio should be between 0.5 and 1. This indicates that the incoming links to the website are indeed of good quality.

In summary, not only the quantity of backlinks but also the quality of backlinks is essential in improving a backlink profile. By analyzing the Citation Flow and Trust Flow of a website, you can determine how qualitative and reliable the domain is. Do you want to increase these metrics, boost your website’s SEO, and grow your online visibility? LEQUAL is here to help!