Starting to calculate Link Credit price using Majestic SEO data

Today we are happy to announce that we are finally starting to calculate the price of placing a link on a given page using partly Majestic SEO data. You have already been able to see Majestic Flow Metric for several months and now we are ready to start using it for calculating link prices. We will be rolling this out over the next 10 weeks in order to not create too high fluctuations on member accounts.

Because Google’s PageRank is no longer being updated regularly, keeping calculations based on this metric is not a viable option in the long run. To solve this problem we investigated using MozRank as a replacement, but switched to MajesticSEO metrics as they have more data Available to determine link quality.

MajesticSEO metrics

MajesticSEO have developed a formula for calculating Link quality using the metrics Trust Flow and Citation Flow. This is how they work:

• Trust flow refers to how close the links are to trustworthy, authoritative sources.
• Citation flow refers to how influential the link is, i.e how many people link to it.

If a link has a high citation value and a low trust value this usually indicates that the site has gained those links from “spammy” areas of the web as they are not close to authoritative sources. On the flip side of this, if a site has a high amount of Trust Flow and low Citation Flow, this means that the links pointing to that site are from very trustworthy sources, i.e. a trustworthy site that you want a link from. Every link to a site has a trust flow value and a citation flow value of between 0 and 100. The higher the number, the better the link scores in each metric.

10 week rollout

Starting tomorrow (July 29th) we will be calculating 10% of the price of a backlink using Majestic data. Every two weeks after that we will increase the amount that we use Majestic data to price a backlink by 10% until we reach 50% in 10 weeks. This means that from tomorrow we will be placing links on pages that have PageRank 0 but Majestic Flow Metric of 1 or above.

• July 29th: 10%
• August 12th: 20%
• August 26th: 30%
• September 9th: 40%
• September 23rd: 50%

On September 23rd the price of a backlink will be based on 50% PageRank and 50% Majestic SEO data.

The formula

Warning, this next section is only for those users who must understand absolutely everything or those who just love mathematical formulas. Consider yourself warned.

Because the MajesticSEO metrics go from 1 to 100, we divide them by 10 to get 0.1 – 10 in order to better mimic the old PageRank formula. We then add the Trust flow and Citation flow scores together and divide by 2 to obtain an average of 50% from each metric. Then we add them to the same logarithmic scale as our current PageRank formula.

• MajesticBase = (Citation Flow + Trust Flow)/20
• PageRankBase = PageRank
• Base (July 29th): (0.1 * MajesticBase) + (0.9 * PageRankBase)
• Base (September 23rd): (0.5 * MajesticBase) + (0.5 * PageRankBase)
• Price for link = 2 ^ Base-1

Example calculations (after September 23rd):

• PageRank: 3
• Citation Flow: 25
• Trust Flow: 44

Old price: 2^3-1 = 4 Link Credit

New Price:

2 ^((0.5 *((25+44)/20) ) + (0.5 * 3))-1
=> 2 ^((0.5 * 3.45 ) + (0.5 * 3))-1
=> 2 ^(1.725 + 1.5)-1
=> 2 ^(3.225)-1
=> 2 ^2.225
=> 4.68 Link Credit

The above calculation is for a standard link and will apply only to existing backlinks. As we no longer place standard links and are migrating to in-text links the price will most likely be twice the above calculation.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact us at care@automaticbacklinks.com