What Is Citation Flow?
Citation Flow is a trademark score by Majestic that ranges between 0-100. The Citation Flow for a web page measures the popularity of a URL without considering the quality of the backlinks.
Citation Flow is an important off-page search engine optimization (SEO) metric to consider during website SEO analysis because it reflects the total number of backlinks pointing to a particular URL. Web pages that are popular tend to get a higher quantity of incoming links, which increases the Citation Flow score.
However, it’s also important to know that Citation Flow does not measure the quality of inbound links; meaning those links can be good quality or poor quality. The Trust Flow score by Majestic is what measures the quality (or trust) of the backlinks. Therefore, Citation Flow is should be used in conjunction with Trust Flow.
As for what is a good Citation Flow score to aim for, the answer is that it depends on the SEO competition in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Citation Flow scores are best used as a relative measure against the ranking competitors. For example, a Citation Flow of 20 may be good for a local restaurant, but poor for a site trying to rank for a highly competitive keyword like “car insurance”.
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Go to the SEO Glossary to find more terms and definitions that relate to the field of search engine optimization.
The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.
