Quick Case Study: How to Increase Trust/Citation Flow for your Website

OK. I generally aim for my Majestic SEO Trust/Citation Flow to be 10. Anything lower than that, and I find I'm running at a huge chance of getting a penalty slammed in my face.

The problem is, for a gigantic chunk of my SEO life, I worked upon the basis of building tiered junky links and things like that. Tier 1 web 2.0's etc, throw backlinks at those. It used to work like a treat. I outsourced it to a provider on here - and again, it worked like a treat. But this particular website got his with a penguin penalty, so I decided it was time for an upgrade. I've been focusing on building high PR links and its been working very nicely.

However - what was interesting, was this website had a trust/citation flow of less than 10 a few days ago. I then built a PR 6 link to it that has a good citation/trust flow (37/38). The result? BOOM! It has jumped up hugely. Now take a look at where it is:



I doubt this will be enough to pull it out of its penalty, but I think that this shows the power of one good high PR link. Here are some stats on the link:

- It is on the homepage
- It is in-contextual
- It is in a article posted to the homepage, so its got multiple copies within the website

Why is this information useful to you?

- Shows how a single high PR link can add a TONNE of authority to an otherwise crappy backlink profile - not exactly revolutionary, but I am generally surprised at how quickly it fixed this.
- If you are selling a domain, and want to make it worth more money, then consider throwing a high PR link at it. I know that I avoid domains that have a poor citation/trust flow (less than 10)

One of my sites has good citation flow, but a trust flow of only 9. Perhaps it's the lack of quality in backlinks?

So the way to increase your citation and trust flow is by buying high PR domains right?

iggypop said:

One of my sites has good citation flow, but a trust flow of only 9. Perhaps it's the lack of quality in backlinks?

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Almost certainly. If you get links from pages with both, then you get the boost too - and you get a HUGE boost.

Nexusx2 said:

So the way to increase your citation and trust flow is by buying high PR domains right?

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Yes - citation flow is easier to improve than trust flow. Keep in mind, this strategy is very expensive, this single domain cost me $1,000+.

Luckily i had access to a PR4 with a Citation/Trust of 38/29. I posted my link on the homepage. I'll update with results if i see any changes.

what was the Trust flow and the citation flow of th pr6 website ?

This is the easiest to build. You just need to get links from pages with high CF/TF. I got a website of mine to 33 CF / 30 TF in like a week building VERY high quality links.

And let me put this very clear, CF / TF have nothing to do with lifting your penalty. Matter of fact I personally own websites with TF/CF of 45+ which are facing severe penalties due to the type of links I used. But it's all good though they served their purpose now they can RIP.

I agree with everything you guys have said here. The question I'm left with is how do you get a contextual PR6 link with good trust flow?

It's certainly not with automated tools, though perhaps a target could be scraped with the right scrapebox footprint. (footprint ideas...?) Cutts seems to poo poo guest blogging, but maybe that's just cuz it still works. Still a PR6 is a score for a guest post. Buying high value links on forums like this is a great short term solution, but it could F you in the end.

If this isn't too guarded a secret, please share. How do I create high PR contextual links with good trust flow?

Well that was a bit disappointing... at least tell us how you got the PR6 link.

GiorgioB said:

Well that was a bit disappointing... at least tell us how you got the PR6 link.

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I agree.

Anyway, congrats!

Told ya Less is more. Quality over quantity.

One occurrence does not a case study make...

But in general I do agree - a couple high trust links help a lot. As far as how to get them, unless you're a real company with a real content marketing strategy (not just an affiliate site or something like that), then the answer is usually just $$$. Buy a couple links in a real solid network or on a real website.

Could a link from something like a Squidoo lens could produce similar results to this?

GiorgioB said:

Well that was a bit disappointing... at least tell us how you got the PR6 link.

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How DID you get the PR6 link?

Hello,

I have got a few questions (to improve Trust Flow):
1. Does high DA blog commenting improve Trust Flow & SEO of the website?
2. Does nofollow blog comments on say DA50+ domains help in any way?
3. If I post articles on high DA common registration websites like hubpages (or many others); improves SEO and Trust Flow or not?


What else can I do if I don't have enough cash to spend on sponsored posts?

Many Thanks,
Jack

Windmill said:

- If you are selling a domain, and want to make it worth more money, then consider throwing a high PR link at it. I know that I avoid domains that have a poor citation/trust flow (less than 10)

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This is a fairly common tactic that people use to try and deceive buyers of domains. Of course, a simple check of the backlink profile generally reveals the deception.

It's a bit of a dubious practice to say the least. I certainly wouldn't recommend someone to do this.

I did one small experiment with TF&CF.
I pointed 15 high TF links (TF15+) to a newly created web 2.0
Right now (after one month) it has TF 25 and CF 27.
The best link has TF 32, so it's very easy to manipulate TF and CF.

Of course, the TF/CF are just numbers but they need to be backed up by good lots of backlinks.

Right now, I'm seeing several deleted domains with TF/CF 15+/20+ with little backlinks. Are these deleted domain still any good despite lacking the numbers of referring domains?

Stizerg said:

I did one small experiment with TF&CF.
I pointed 15 high TF links (TF15+) to a newly created web 2.0
Right now (after one month) it has TF 25 and CF 27.
The best link has TF 32, so it's very easy to manipulate TF and CF.

Click to expand...

To be real honest, from what I have seen Trust Flow and Citation Flow seem to outrank the importance of PR and the amount of backlinks.


Without revealing the niche, I did some research on the competition to my wifes product that she promotes. It seems as though several of her competitors that have less backlinks, and less PR and less of other things according to Market Samurai - Majestic SEO are strong and outrank her on the first page of Google for many of the keywords she used to rank for.




What these competitors do have that she does not have, since she did not know anything about it, is a high trust factor and citation factor. I did more digging and research and found out exactly how they are doing what they are doing.


It seems to be that they are buying aged domains with a high PR, and then on those domains that were aged, no matter the name of the domain, even if it is not related word wise to the niche, they are building a basic one page site, with content that is related to the niche or product that is actually being promoted on their money site.

good case... i will try. thnx