[Case Study] Why Majestic Topical TF Is Not Important

I come across a lot of clients in my business that are obsessed with Majestic's topical relevance, but just how important is it?

It's not important at all.

The problem is if you look at a lot of the big sites in different niches, you will actually see strong topical relevance. This makes it easy to assume that they are ranking because of relevant links, when they are ranking because of other factors.

Let me say now that relevance IS important. Just not Majestic's topical TF.

If you have a website about engines for example, you might have a link from a travel website. Topical TF to your site will likely be travel related, however, you might have a link from an article such as

"The 7 Best Cars for Touring the African Plains"

and in it

"The reason the ford is such a good choice here is because of its fantastic <link>engine</link>"

and you have a link to your ford engine page.

Do you really think the engineers at Google aren't going to consider this a valuable link?

Knowing this, it also doesn't mean that links from a website with high topical TF in auto/engines is going to be the same as a website with travel topical TF.

I haven't tested it side by side.

If I were to guess I would say links where the entire website has topical TF in your niche will be a little better. Maybe 10%, maybe 30%, but it certainly won't be 10x stronger and it's definitely not essential.

Ie, it's much easier to get 10 strong backlinks from sites in any niche, where the article is relevant to your website than it is to get 10 links on sites where the ENTIRE SITE is relevant to your niche.


Let's take a look at some screenshots from semrush and majestic.

All URLs are blanked out to protect the websites.


Let's look at 2 finance blogs.

The first is

moneyxxxxxxxxxx.com - We will call this site A

and the other is

xxxxxxxxxdebt.com - We will call this site B


Let's look at them on semrush first


Site A
---------
https://cl.ly/48e064fc79b9

Site B
--------
https://cl.ly/81f9468f10f6

Majestic

Site A
---------
https://cl.ly/c822911cfe2e
https://cl.ly/de4df3eeb571

Site B
---------
https://cl.ly/b7b36e505113


Site A is storming the serps with exceptional success.

Site A has TF 23, 6k root domains and only 15% topical TF from personal finance. It has a lot from tech, and a very wide mix from other places.

Site B, has TF of 45, 2.5k root domains and 100% of topical TF from personal finance.

They are both aged, legit blogs with real links.

However, what I will say about site A is, the content is FAR FAR superior. It's well written, comprehensive and longer. That should be no surprise to anyone. Content is definitely not King as the white hat crowd have been saying for years. Content is the Emperor! But by its self. You still won't achieve much without the right links of course, but it is very hard to rank with garbage content.


Have a look at different sites yourself and you'll see there's not a correlation between ranking and topical TF.

Nice work Tom (and Welcome back from holidays ).

Must say that I agree with you 100%. Google weighs up many more factors when deciding the relevance of a link to a website.

I'm tending nowadays to look more closely at a domain's referring domains and organic traffic than Majestic's TTF. Organic traffic is a dead giveaway that Google is giving the domain authority in it's niche. Google is funny sometimes as to where it allocates authority and Site B is a classic example of the metrics saying it should have authority, but G saying otherwise.

Good job.
Majestic TTF is a good indicator only.

Ie, it's much easier to get 10 strong backlinks from sites in any niche, where the article is relevant to your website than it is to get 10 links on sites where the ENTIRE SITE is relevant to your niche.

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IMHO, much easier and more relevant is not the same.

Sorry to be annoying, but it felt like reading a press release to influence buyer's opinions....

I'm a cynical guy

I used to it get idea about a domain only. Its doesnt really matter in rankings. Unless you are selling links to your clients.

I'd just go one step ahead and forget all the matrics, DA, PA, TF, CF, DR
and only focus on the quality and quantity of referring domains and anchor texts.

DevXM said:

Sorry to be annoying, but it felt like reading a press release to influence buyer's opinions....

I'm a cynical guy

Click to expand...

Please read the post again, it's full of value. And OP is definitely trying to influence buyers' opinions for the better.

PixelMathis said:

Please read the post again, it's full of value. And OP is definitely trying to influence buyers' opinions for the better.

Click to expand...

I guess I should be more supportive of people who are making informational threads. I'm sorry OP. Thanks and Keep it up!

Nice share.Thanks

Hetneo said:

Nice work Tom (and Welcome back from holidays ).

Must say that I agree with you 100%. Google weighs up many more factors when deciding the relevance of a link to a website.

I'm tending nowadays to look more closely at a domain's referring domains and organic traffic than Majestic's TTF. Organic traffic is a dead giveaway that Google is giving the domain authority in it's niche. Google is funny sometimes as to where it allocates authority and Site B is a classic example of the metrics saying it should have authority, but G saying otherwise.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Good to be back.

Traffic is a good indicator. If a site has traffic, it's strong, BUT, if a site doesn't have traffic it also doesn't mean it's weak.

It just depends on the content of the site. For example let's say you have a pbn domain that was for some game mod. It could be SUPER strong with some amazing links, but it won't have much traffic. Or maybe you've got a website about rivers and nature related things in California. It won't have much traffic because there's not that many people searching for information on rivers in California, but it could have links from all sorts of strong websites, including .gov/.edu's.

DevXM said:

Sorry to be annoying, but it felt like reading a press release to influence buyer's opinions....

I'm a cynical guy

Click to expand...

Everyone is always trying to influence other people's opinion. If I'm trying to influence your opinion so that you make better moves in SEO and make more money, is that a bad thing?

My motives for creating this aren't that cynical though. I create posts like this when I'm working and I feel inspired to share my thoughts/ideas. It's also useful for when I have potential clients who I'd like to help educate. Rather than have to repeat everything to each individual, I can just share this post.

And also, it's more case study oriented. It's not just my opinion. People are free to look up many sites in semrush/majestic and see for themselves that there's no positive correlation between topical TF and ranking.

javabro said:

I'd just go one step ahead and forget all the matrics, DA, PA, TF, CF, DR
and only focus on the quality and quantity of referring domains and anchor texts.

Click to expand...

So so. DR is actually a good indicator of quality since they made the change.

TF is still solid, however, many people rule out TF 7 to 13 domains just because they are TF 7 to 13.

If a domain has a TF of 0-3 though, you can be pretty sure it's garbage

What you also want to look for in your domains is the number of links with TF. You could have a TF40 domain 3-4 super high TF links and the rest TF 0. I'd rather have a TF 25 with 50 links from pages with TF.

PixelMathis said:

Please read the post again, it's full of value. And OP is definitely trying to influence buyers' opinions for the better.

Click to expand...

Thanks !

Nut-Nights said:

I used to it get idea about a domain only. Its doesnt really matter in rankings. Unless you are selling links to your clients.

Click to expand...

It matters to everyone unless you don't try to get backlinks.

Anyone doing any sort of link building should understand how to choose the best backlinks.

splishsplash said:

If a domain has a TF of 0-3 though, you can be pretty sure it's garbage

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Whatever man, I get your sales threads are based on all those metrics and shit. You gotta defend your thing.

I've seen plenty of good domains with TF 0. And have used it has P(rivate)BNs with successful results.

The links speak louder than any of these metrics. Manually checking referring domains will show you the big picture than all these automated metrics google doesn't give a shit about.

Do you know who is obsessed with these metrics? Domain and PBN sellers.
Are they dumb? NO, it just their selling point.

Okay, I'm outta here.

javabro said:

I'd just go one step ahead and forget all the matrics, DA, PA, TF, CF, DR
and only focus on the quality and quantity of referring domains and anchor texts.

Click to expand...

+1 all these metrics are from random companies that have nothing to do with ranking a site anywhere.
they just created these metrics to show data and get people obsessed by their systems.
seo's use it to bullshit their clients into thinking a domain has more (or no) value.

Nut-Nights said:

I used to it get idea about a domain only. Its doesnt really matter in rankings. Unless you are selling links to your clients.

Click to expand...

javabro said:

Whatever man, I get your sales threads are based on all those metrics and shit. You gotta defend your thing.

I've seen plenty of good domains with TF 0. And have used it has P(rivate)BNs with successful results.

The links speak louder than any of these metrics. Manually checking referring domains will show you the big picture than all these automated metrics google doesn't give a shit about.

Do you know who is obsessed with these metrics? Domain and PBN sellers.
Are they dumb? NO, it just their selling point.

Okay, I'm outta here.

Click to expand...

I'd be more than happy if people wanted to buy links on TF 0 domains!

I've never seen any TF 0 domains with good links.

TF 0 domains have spammy links generally, like comments, forum posts, directory lists, contact us pages and so on.

If you've found TF 0 domains with strong contextual backlinks then that's excellent.

Also, don't get offended. The whole point of the forum is a place where we can exchange ideas and experience.

itz_styx said:

+1 all these metrics are from random companies that have nothing to do with ranking a site anywhere.
they just created these metrics to show data and get people obsessed by their systems.
seo's use it to bullshit their clients into thinking a domain has more (or no) value.

Click to expand...

Wow that's very cynical.

That's not how things operate at all.

Clients spend money on strong links that they know work.

Try this..

See how many TF 0-3 sites you can spot that have a good amount of organic traffic on semrush. I never come across any. Ever site I come across on page 1 in every niche has high TF.

Prove me wrong. I'm not interested in opinion. I like to see experiments, case studies and analysis.

its not cynical its being realistic.
these metrics have no real use. a domain can have a bad TF and still rank #1

[

itz_styx said:

its not cynical its being realistic.
these metrics have no real use. a domain can have a bad TF and still rank #1

Click to expand...

I'd love to see an example for research purposes.

EDIT: I'm going to do another case study looking at a selection of TF 0 to 5 domains where I'll show you the type of backlinks that will show up over and over with domains with such a low TF.

Most of the replies in this thread are completely missing the point of this thread and just denigrating the OP without offering any proof to back up their claims. This thread isn't remotely related to OP's service. And what's wrong with selling a service anyway? OP is a respected seller and a member of BHW.

Different people have different marketing styles and if you feel like you get good results with TF 0 domains, just go for it. @splishsplash obviously offers a service and offering a TF 0 PBN service isn't saleable.

PixelMathis said:

Most of the replies in this thread are completely missing the point of this thread and just denigrating the OP without offering any proof to back up their claims. This thread isn't remotely related to OP's service. And what's wrong with selling a service anyway? OP is a respected seller and a member of BHW.

Different people have different marketing styles and if you feel like you get good results with TF 0 domains, just go for it. @splishsplash obviously offers a service and offering a TF 0 PBN service isn't saleable.

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Yeah. It has nothing to do with my service. It's not even slightly promotion.

This would be promotional:-

"[Case Study] Making $10k per day with Niche PBNs"

splishsplash said:

Yeah. It has nothing to do with my service. It's not even slightly promotion.

This would be promotional:-

"[Case Study] Making $10k per day with Niche PBNs"

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I get it. Even if it were, you have every right to sell your service here and elsewhere on the internet. You are a marketer after all.

PixelMathis said:

I get it. Even if it were, you have every right to sell your service here and elsewhere on the internet. You are a marketer after all.

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I'm still waiting on the previous posters giving me some examples of TF 0 sites that rank or are powerful :-( I genuinely would like to see some examples.

javabro said:

I'd just go one step ahead and forget all the matrics, DA, PA, TF, CF, DR
and only focus on the quality and quantity of referring domains and anchor texts.

Click to expand...

That is exactly what I do as well;-))