Welcome to the seventh tutorial in my SEO tutorial series. In the last tutorial, we studied the leading metrics of Moz and we analyzed how important they are, to measure how well you're expected to do in search engines.
But if Moz is leading the industry, it doesn't mean that there is no competitor of Moz. Actually, I consider it's competitor's data more reliable, updated and easy to understand. So, it's time to reveal who is that competitor, right?
Image Credits: Majestic
Majestic is introduced to measure the link's productivity and effectiveness, and to find out if a site or page is trustworthy or spammy. Although people seem to be using Moz metrics, and let's not forget, you shouldn't follow the majority or else your chance of success will decrease.
The Same strategy might not work for everyone and remember what I said in the previous post? Google had to update its algorithm due to the people using the same algorithm for which Google specifically used to look for, but then it became difficult for Google to judge which one is more valuable than the other. Google wants to serve its searchers.
To make it easy for SEO optimizers, Majestic introduced two wonderful metrics:
- Trust Flow
- Citation Flow
Scratching your head? Don't worry, we're going to study together :)
What Is Trust Flow?
Image Credits: HuffingtonPost
Trust flow is a score which predicts how well your site is expected to do based on the "Quality" of links pointing to your site. TF is a score which ranges between 1 to 100. The higher your TF score, the greater are the chances of your success.
The quality of links means if the links pointing to your site are coming from authoritative sites or not. Authoritative sites are well-known. You don't really need to worry. There are thousands of high authority sites and if you get even a single link from them, then the value of your website will increase drastically.
What Is Citation Flow?
Image Credits: CoinsBlog
Citation flow is a score which measures your site effectiveness based on the number of links pointing to your site, no matter if the links are coming from spam sources or quality sources. CF is also a score which ranges between 1 to 100.
There have been debates about its effectiveness that high score is good or low score is good. You will see different people suggesting different things to you, so it depends on your personal experience.
Combination Of Score:
**Image Credits: Ethos3
While its pretty straight forward that high Trust Flow means that your site has greater chance to rank well in search engines, but people confuse Citation Flow with Trust Flow. They think that high Citation Flow is good for them but it is far from reality.
You don't need to care about high or low citation score. You should care more about the ratio of both scores. If it breaks 1:1 ratio, then it's going to be either good or bad.
Good will be in the case where Trust Flow is higher than Citation Flow, and Bad will be in the case where Citation Flow is greater than Trust Flow.
Good means you'll see improvements in rankings. Bad means you'll see the negative impact (or in plain words, you will lose your ranking).
So, the key point is to maintain high TF and low CF or even 1:1 ratio. Do not let CF score beat your TF score.
How TF and CF increases?
If a site with high TF and low CF score links you, then you'll see a similar effect (i.e you'll gain more TF and gain less CF) and vice versa. So, if you're manually building links, then you must focus only on those sites which have higher TF than CF (or at least same score)
Is It Possibly To Increase Score With Blackhat Techniques?
Yes, it's possible. But, if you're planning to cheat with your money site, then be assured that such cheats will not be beneficial at all. In fact, if your site is caught by Google, then most probably your site will be de-indexed for the lifetime and will be banned from Google Search Results. This punishment is terrible means no more chance.
But the good thing is, cheating Majestic is hard while cheating Moz is easy. So, you'll have a hard time even if you decide to cheat the system :)
Why Will Someone Game The System?
Most people game the algorithm because expired sites with good metrics have good demand. They want to increase their site's worth (which worth 12 dollars) but after they increase their metrics through those unnatural means, they will sell the same domain to you for 500 dollars or more! And guess what? Majestic metrics are more valuable than Moz metrics.
Important Info:
In next tutorial, we'll cover some important metrics. It is important to know these metrics before heading to Keyword Difficulty part because when I'll be using those scores, you'll be speechless and scratch your head, means there will be no gain. So, in order to make Keyword Difficulty Analysis part easier, it is necessary to look into them.
You guys made this tutorial series successful and thanks to people like @andrarchy @zurvanic @donkeypong @trafalgar @gavvet @dragonslayer109 @kingscrown and many others who encouraged me to continue this series through their support. I really hope that you'll continue supporting this series. We can make Steemit the greatest place together. :)
Please follow me at @princewahaj for more updates.