What is Citation Flow?
Citation Flow is a metric created by Majestic that measures the popularity or influence of a web page or URL based on the number of incoming links from other websites.
It is part of Majestic's suite of SEO metrics used to analyze a website's link profile and authority.
It is scored on a scale of 0-100. A higher number signifies more popularity and influence.
The logic is that the more websites link to a URL, the more influential or valuable its content is likely to be.
However, Citation Flow does not consider the quality or trustworthiness of the linking sites themselves. It is purely based on the quantity of links.
How is Citation Flow measured?
Citation Flow is measured by Majestic SEO using their own proprietary algorithm that counts the number of backlinks to a webpage.
The score is based solely on the quantity of backlinks pointing to that page. It does not take into account other factors like the quality, relevance or trustworthiness of the links.
Citation Flow scores range from 0 to 100. A higher number means there are more sites linking back to that webpage.
However, Citation Flow is just one metric among many for evaluating links. It should not be used on its own to judge a website's link profile or authority.
It needs to be considered together with other metrics like Trust Flow, link quality, etc. to get a complete picture of a website's backlink landscape and influence.
Is Citation Flow important?
Citation Flow mainly measures the number of links.
It only shows how popular and influential your website is based on its number of backlinks.
If your Citation Flow score is higher, it means more websites are linking to your content. This suggests you have useful information that others want to link to.
However, Citation Flow only counts the number of links. It does not check if the links are good or bad.
Having a high Citation Flow alone may not get your website better search engine rankings. Search engines also consider the quality of links pointing to your site.
So it is important to focus on getting more backlinks as well as making sure the links come from credible websites. This complete strategy can improve rankings more than just having a high quantity of links.
Difference between Citation Flow and Trust Flow
Citation Flow counts the number of links pointing to a web page. It does not check if those links are good or bad.
Trust Flow looks at whether links are coming from trustworthy websites. It aims to measure the quality of links.
A website can have a high Citation Flow but a low Trust Flow. This means many links but from untrustworthy sites.
Or it could have high Trust Flow but low Citation Flow - few links but all from credible sites.
There is no perfect ratio between the two metrics. It depends on the website and industry. But ideally, the scores are balanced.
The most important goal should be getting a strong and varied set of backlinks from trustworthy websites related to your own.
Conclusion
While Citation Flow measures popularity, Trust Flow evaluates credibility and quality.
Looking at both provides a complete picture of a website's backlinks and authority. More links help, but ensuring that they are of high quality is most important.