Majestic SEO for a complete backlink analysis

If you are not a beginner in organic search, you already know that the backlink is one of the three pillars of SEO. The more quality links point to your site, the better its chance of ranking well in search-engine results. The online SEO tool Majestic gives you visibility on your backlinks and access to a large amount of information about them. For example, it tells you how many backlinks point to your site, which new links you have gained, the strength of each page based on the number of referring domains, and the anchor text used.

Presentation of the Majestic SEO company

Based in England, Majestic SEO has made a name for itself internationally. Since 2008, its teams have been analyzing and collecting a large share of the internet’s data. In 2014, Majestic SEO moved to a new domain name and became majestic.com. Today the company has built the largest link database in the world. That link map is how it became one of the leaders in the SEO-tools market.

To reach that level of success, Majestic had to develop its own software. Its software robot, MJ12Bot, crawls the web to collect as much information as possible. It scans billions of URLs a day to feed majestic.com’s indexes. That technology is what lets Majestic update its site data every hour. Its servers hold impressive volumes of data and run complex calculations to deliver the indicators every SEO specialist uses: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

Majestic SEO’s registered trademarks

Trust Flow

Trust Flow is calculated from a link database updated every day. The figure represents the trust a page on one site can pass to another site. This trust index ranges from 0 to 100. Trust Flow therefore ranks websites that are worthy of trust and those that can be called “suspect.” For example, lemonde.fr, which has a Trust Flow of 82, is judged a trusted site by Majestic SEO. By contrast, vetementpro.com, which has monthly organic traffic of 26 200, has a TF of only 15.

Citation Flow

Like Trust Flow, Citation Flow is a score between 0 and 100. The figure indicates the value of a link, its popularity. It does not take quality into account, only quantity. A site with many links pointing to it will therefore have a good Citation Flow, but not necessarily a good Trust Flow.

The Majestic flame, or link profile

Citation Flow and Trust Flow go together and form the Flow Metrics algorithm. To illustrate the relationship between these two indexes, Majestic offers a chart that specialists call “the Majestic flame.” It lets you visualize the overall quality of a page. The closer the pink dots get to the diagonal, or move above it, the more trustworthy the links pointing to your site are.

Majestic SEO’s main tools

Site Explorer

Site Explorer is a search bar, similar to Google’s. When you enter a URL as a query, Majestic gives you access to a large number of detailed analyses of the site’s backlinks. Every URL, domain name, or subdomain has its own results page, organized into several sections. Two pie charts at the top of the page let you quickly visualize Trust Flow and Citation Flow. All TFs are also sorted by category, which tells you the theme of each site that linked to the site you are analyzing.

On this first summary page you will also find the link-profile diagram that synthesizes CF and TF. The Backlink History section includes a diagram that shows how the number of external links has evolved over several months. The backlink breakdown section delivers detailed information on the links, such as the total number of inbound links and the number of dofollow and nofollow links. Lower down, a pie chart gives percentages for how your site’s links are distributed. All of the data on the “Summary” page is only a sample, because each section is detailed in its own tab.

Domain comparison

This other feature lets you get the same information as the Site Explorer page, but for several websites at once. You can enter up to five URLs to generate a comparative study. This feature can be used to study competitor sites and quickly see who has the most TF or who has the most external backlinks. Majestic also generates a chart that shows how the backlinks of all analyzed sites have evolved over several months.

Search Explorer

Search Explorer is a search engine that, from a keyword search, ranks pages by influence. The goal of Search Explorer is to show users the pages that have the most authority for a query. Unlike Google searches, Majestic uses its own algorithms and presents itself as a search engine that can “show results in a transparent way.” Unlike Google’s results, Majestic’s can claim they are not polluted by the ads that usually surround organic results. Majestic’s results are also not biased by browser history and cookies. You do not need private browsing to get the same results on Majestic’s search engine.

Why use Majestic SEO?

Analyzing your own site

Majestic SEO was designed to analyze your own site so you can apply an effective organic search strategy. Knowing the nature of your backlinks is the first indispensable step if you hope to improve your site’s visibility. If the user understands all of Majestic’s data correctly, they can take the right actions to:

• Encourage the creation of links that point to their site

• Improve their site’s authority

• Try to appear on the first pages of Google for the keywords they target

• Secure their online presence

• Increase traffic

As an SEO agency, it is a tool our SEO experts use every day on behalf of their clients and to analyze the backlinks competitors have earned.

Analyzing competitors’ backlinks

Nothing stops you from analyzing sites that are not yours as well. Understanding how the backlinks of competitors who rank above you are organized is also one of the preliminary steps of SEO strategies. The “domain comparison” tool crosses the data between several sites for you and can therefore be used for a competitive study. The charts this SEO tool generates show your evolution relative to the competitor sites you chose. These comparisons therefore help you:

• Identify your site’s strengths

• Recognize its weak points and correct them

• Find new link opportunities in your topic

Checking a domain name’s history

When you create a website, it is easier not to start from scratch with a domain name that has never been used. When you buy a domain name, you should look carefully at its history, because you are not only buying a URL. You are buying everything that comes with it: its backlinks, its potential Google penalties, its topic. You should not buy a domain name blindly. A quick look at Majestic SEO before you buy is therefore essential. Check whether the domain name matches your expectations, whether it has a good CF and TF, and whether it has a strong Majestic flame. By going through Majestic, you make sure you are starting from a solid base for your future site.