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Citation Flow

Definition

Citation Flow, also known as CF, is a metric created by the Majestic SEO tool, which evaluates the popularity of a link, without taking into account its quality. If many links point to your site, then it will have a very good Citation Flow. However, this does not guarantee its reliability.

If a site with a high Citation Flow points to your site, then this will automatically increase your own Citation Flow. On the other hand, if a site with a low Citation Flow points to your site, it will have a negative impact on yours.

The number of backlinks a site has is one of the three main criteria for Google’s ranking. This is why it is important for your site to have a high Citation Flow to ensure a good position in the SERP.

This indicator is particularly aimed at SEO professionals, media analysts and website owners. It is a criterion that is also used to assess the market value of a site.

Analyse du citation flow

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Use of Citation Flow in SEO

The Citation Flow has an important role to play in your SEO strategy. It allows you to work on different aspects of your strategy:

  • Define the quality sites you should target for exchanges
  • Know the quality of your link profile and clean it up if there is a lot of spam
  • Analyse the relevance of your links and anchors to minimise Google Penguin penalties
  • Know the popularity of your site
  • Buy expired domains
  • Analyse the strategy of your competitors

How to improve the Citation Flow of my site

To have a high Citation Flow, you need to have many backlinks pointing to your site. So, you should try to get as many links pointing to your site as possible in your netlinking strategy.

Here are some SEO tips to get backlinks to your site:

  • Registering your site in directories
  • Offer to write articles for blogs in exchange for a backlink on their site
  • Buying links from sites: you can find offers on platforms like Ereferer or Rocketlinks
  • Posting messages on forums and placing a backlink there: be careful to remain natural so as not to be penalised by Google
  • Create a blog
  • Comment on a blog and insert a link to your site in your comment: make sure that the blog offers dofollow links, and do not abuse this technique
  • Offer an infographic to your partners

It is also important to keep in mind that the quality of these links is important in your backlinks strategy, otherwise your Trust Flow will be lowered, and therefore your credibility in the eyes of users and Google. To do this, make sure that the sites on which you place your links deal with a theme close to yours, that they are of good quality, that your anchors are not too optimised, and that your links are in dofollow and not in nofollow.

How does the Citation Flow interact with the Trust Flow?

The Trust Flow, on the other hand, evaluates the quality of the backlinks pointing to your site.

The Citation Flow and the Trust Flow replace Google’s PageRank in the evaluation of web pages. Majestic gathers these two data in the form of a graph, with the Citation Flow on the x-axis and the Trust Flow on the y-axis. The aim is to have as many links as possible above the median to ensure a good trust rating.

To analyse the quality of your site’s netlinking, it is essential to take into account the Citation Flow and the Trust Flow. Ideally, the Citation Flow should be high and close to the Trust Flow. The greater the difference between the two, the more spammy your page will be considered.

The most popular definitions

backlink
backlink dofollow
backlink nofollow
Sponsored article
Anchor link
citation flow
Link exchange
Link juice
Toxic link
Netlinking
Keyword occurrence

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