Trust Flow And Citation Flow: Things You Should Know

With the end of Google Page Rank, metrics like citation flow, domain authority and trust flow are becoming prominent Google ranking factors.

By introducing trust and citation flow, the job of website ranking has become much easier for Google. The flow metrics get updated regularly and you can’t deceive them. It helps in exactly determining the trust of the website.

Trust flow

Trust flow is a metric designed to decide how trustworthy the link is which is purely based on the quality of backlink. If there are trustworthy and authoritative backlinks to a website, then it contributes to greater trust flow. The fact here is, the trust flow for every website is lesser than the citation flow.

As we all know, a website can get hundreds of backlinks from various sources which may or may not be trustworthy. Certain low quality backlinks are generated automatically in spite of your precautions. Quality of link is always ranked higher than the quantity of links in SEO. For this reason, trust flow can rarely outdo citation flow. If the trust flow is higher, it clearly means that the website is getting a good amount of quality links and organic traffic.

Citation flow

Citation flow is a metric which purely considers the quantity of links. It is designed to predict how influential a link in a website might be, by considering the links pointing to it. It believes that, if more domains point to a blog post, then it makes it more influential.

All trust flow factors are also the factors for citation flow which means if trust flow increases, citation flow should also increase. However the same doesn’t apply when the citation flow increases. If some sites with high citation flow link to your website, then you get high citation flow boost with lesser inbound links.

Trust flow and citation flow ratio

To determine the overall trust of the website, the ratio between trust flow and citation flow is considered. For instance, if a site has a citation flow of 30 and trust flow of 15 then the ratio is 2:1 or 0.5. The maximum possible ratio is 0.9 with Google being an exception with 98:99 Average trust to citation ratio should be 0.5; the ratio gets higher with the increase in the authority and trustworthy websites. If the trust flow is greater than the citation flow, then it means the website has large amount of quality backlinks.

Points that increase flow metrics

• 1. Quality always wins over quantity, thus the main goal always should be to increase the trust flow.
• 2. One of the best ways to get quality backlinks is by doing guest blogging. However it should be kept to minimum.
• 3. If 100 backlinks are pitted against 1 trustworthy backlink, still the trustworthy backlink has more value.
• 4. Links should be built exclusively from authoritative and trustworthy sites.
• 5. Backlinks from .gov and .edu provides more trust score to your website.
• 6. Internal linking should be done properly. This helps in increasing the citation flow and trust flow.
• 7. No follow links carry citation flow and not trust flow.