Backlink analysis tools like Majestic SEO are your best shot in link building. It gives access to a detailed backlink analysis and data-driven reports to help make informed decisions concerning your campaign.
When combined with a strong on-page SEO, top-quality content, and excellent technical SEO, link building can drive massive traffic to your site.
This way, you’ll avoid ranking penalties from Google and get a better ranking on organic search results along with massive traffic to your site.
That said, this post will walk you through everything you need to know about the Majestic SEO toolset. Specifically, here’s what you’ll get:
Majestic SEO is a tool that is all about backlinks. Unlike most tools that focus on general SEO services, the Majestic SEO backlink analyzer is a 100% link analysis tool.
While you can use it to analyze your backlink profile, you can also sneak peek at a competitor’s link profile to help you stay ahead of the game.
With that in mind, here’s a guide from how you create an account to how you use Majestic’s features in your campaign.
To create an account, visit www.majestic.com. Registration is simple and free. All you’ll need is your name, email address, and your site’s address. Once you’ve filled in these details, choose your password and click the signup button.
What’s more, you’ll get a free trial to get the look of things in the tool before subscribing to a payment plan.
This way, the Majestic SEO trial allows double-checking and confirming that the tool’s features fit your site perfectly in link building.
Once you’re sure, you’ll have two subscription options (unless you want a full API):
The API plan costs € 379/month, and the higher the subscription cost, the more benefits you get.
With a subscription plan, you’re ready to launch your link-building campaign once you’ve logged in to your Majestic account. Let’s move on to step 2.
The end goal in this step is understanding your site’s backlink profile by understanding the features in this tool. This step is a Majestic SEO review to familiarize yourself with backlink metrics before proceeding to the next stage of link building.
On the home page, look for the search bar and enter your site’s address. Next, hit the search bar icon, and the Majestic SEO will process your site’s backlink profile.
After that, the tool will direct you to the site explorer, where you’ll access lots of backlink data about your site, which can be overwhelming. But not to worry, we’ll break it down in the simplest way possible.
In the site explorer window, you’ll see a row of data icons:
Let’s begin with the first one:
Here, you’ll get a high-level overview of your website’s link profile. The main metrics you’ll see first are:
This is a metric measured out of 100. It represents the quality of backlinks your sites get. Is it from spammy sites or high authority sites? In other words, Trust Flow shows the trustworthiness of your site’s content.
This score ranges between 0 and 100. It reflects the volume of links your site has. As the name “citation” suggests, citation flow shows whether many or few sites link back to you. If the score is high, say 40 and up, tons of sites link to you. In short, citation flow reflects the number of backlinks your site has.
Note: Trust flow and citation flow should go hand in hand. Their range should be narrow, and most importantly, citation flow shouldn’t exceed trust flow. If it does, it means your site’s backlinks originate from more spammy or weak websites with lower domain authority.
On that note, here’s how you measure your site’s domain authority using trust flow and citation flow. If the two scores are high, let’s say, trust flow 50 and citation flow 45, your site has a relatively stronger domain authority. The higher the two figures, the stronger your site’s domain authority.
This is a thorough breakdown of the topics your site covers with scores out of 100. This metric illustrates the topical relevance of your site by showing you the niches of the sites linking to you.
The important thing to note is that topical trust flow IS NOT a content analysis based on your published posts. Instead, the analysis stems from where you get your backlinks.
In this feature, Majestic SEO gives you a backlink analysis on a simple line Graph of Trust Flow against Citation Flow. The analysis here concerns the referring domains (websites linking to you) and the external backlinks (in two different line graphs).
This is a chart of backlinks against dates of several months. The chart is a blueprint of backlinks you’ve been getting for a particular period to help see the period you got more or fewer backlinks.
Note: The above are not the only details you’ll find on the summary page. The summary page is a general analysis of what you’ll find on other Majestic’s features. Let’s go directly to those features to avoid repetition.
The backlink analysis in this feature has been explained above in the “Topical Trust Flow.”
Here, you’ll see a list of all the domains linking to your website. If, for example, the following domains link to your site, you’ll see all of them.
Also, you’ll be able to filter the domain list by Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Top-level Domain, and Topic, depending on your specifications.
This way, it’s easier to identify spammy websites linking to you and disavow them before they don’t stop you from increasing SEO.
This feature in Majestic SEO gives you a breakdown of your backlink profile. It provides deeply analyzed results of the sites linking to you. That’s because you can filter or sort the results 100+ different ways, giving you an in-depth backlink report.
For instance, you can filter the list only to see the backlink with low or high Trust Flow and individually analyze the web pages linking to you.
In return, you get to know the quality of backlinks your site gets. And what’s more, you can download the backlink report as an Excel or CSV spreadsheet.
Note: The Summary page has more information about this feature. Check and find out whether most of your backlinks result from images, text links, redirects, or frames.
At first, you might get confused about what this feature is all about, but you’ll get the point after understanding it better. The Context feature is an in-depth breakdown of each link on the page linking to your site.
If, for example, a domain like myexample.com links to you, the Context feature will take you to the domain’s exact page linking to your site.
There, you’ll see a series of tags showing you the number of external links on that page and whether they are new/old, follow, or no-follow. Also, you’ll see the Trust flow and Citation flow of external links on that page.
Also, you’ll see a Link density chart to help you visualize the position of links on that webpage. This way, navigating to external links on a page becomes super easy.
If you want to know your link-building progress, the New feature can help you with that. The feature shows the recent backlinks your site has built over time with the option to set the date range. Additionally, you’ll access a graph of the new backlinks your site has gained.
Again, you’ll see the source of the new backlinks along with Trust and Citation flow metrics.
Also, you’ll see the Topical Trust Flow metrics of the domains that have recently linked to you. As a result, you’ll know the website niches generating more backlinks plus their quality and quantity.
As the name suggests, this feature analyses the backlinks your site has lost over time. The metrics here are the same as those in the New feature. The only difference is that here you’re analyzing the backlinks you’ve lost.
Note: If you compare the metrics in the New and Lost features, you’ll quickly identify whether other sites find your content relevant. For instance, if your site is steadily getting new backlinks, your content is top-quality, provided that it’s not spammy sites linking to you.
Clicking on this feature on the site explorer page will lead you to the words or texts other sites use to link to you. For each text, the sites are grouped topic wise with each topic having the Topical Trust Flow score, Citation Flow, and Trust Flow.
For example, let’s say your site deals with products related to technology, and your site’s domain is technologywizard.com.
In that case, the Anchor Text feature will show you whether other sites link to you using anchor words like: technologywizard.com, technologywizard, or any other term.
Additionally, you’ll access the number of referring domains (topic-wise and per anchor text). Also, you’ll see the total number of external links per anchor text and find out whether the links are deleted or no-follow.
Here, you compare the pages on your site and find out the number of backlinks each page generates for your site.
The pages are arranged topic-wise and in descending order – from the one with more backlinks to the one with the least. Also, each page has the Topical Trust Flow score.
If you want an accurate list of sites closely related to yours, this feature will serve you well. It shows you sites dealing with the topics you mostly handle.
This way, identifying your competitors is easier than ever. (We’ll talk more about it in the next step)
On this page, you’ll access extra tools to support your link-building campaign. And they are:
It gives you access to the link context of sites. Keyword generators can offer you access to keywords that can provide you with content ideas and advertising words (if you have an ad campaign on your site).
This keyword tool provides metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and keyword usage frequency in a specific website.
As the name suggests, it allows monitoring high-level backlink statistics for a particular domain. In return, you’ll access real-time updates.
Here, you get deep, and personalized backlink reports through filtering and sorting.
This is the last tab on the icon row on the site explorer page, and you can also access it from the Summary tab.
This graph shows the links linking to your site and how they relate to each other. It shows the chain of linkage. Like how are they connected?
Note: Zoom in on the link graph to see the details.
Once you’ve analyzed your site’s backlink profile and can navigate smoothly in the Majestic SEO tool, next analyze your competitor’s backlink profile.
By now, you know your position in link building, and if the results aren’t satisfying, it’s time to take action and boost your campaign for more tangible outcomes.
To do that, you’ll need in-depth knowledge of your competitors. Like what are their trust flow and citation flow? Who is linking to them? What is their domain score? And most importantly, how can you use your competitors’ link profiles to enhance your link-building campaign?
To do that, enter your competitor’s web address on the search bar to get a complete analysis in the Majestic SEO tool.
Check the Trust and Citation Flow metrics to gauge whether their domain authority is higher than yours. If it isn’t, it means your backlink campaign is way stronger (In this step, it’s advisable to find a competitor whose link profile is more substantial than yours).
Next, go to the Backlink tab and check the sites linking to your competitor. This way, you’ll find the target websites and ask the owners to link back to you.
Remember, those linking to your competitors are your prospects, too – they are most likely to link back to you if you give them a reason.
Here are the techniques you can use when targeting a link prospect:
Here, you check your prospect’s site and identify dead links that are pointing back to a topic you’ve covered on your site. After that, inform the site owner about the dead link and request them to replace it with a link to your web page with the same content in the dead link.
Here’s an example of how this technique works. Let’s say your competitor has a resource page like 15 ways to lose weight consistently. In this case, you can cover the same topic but with even deeper content like 25 secrets to lose weight faster and consistently (the quality should be beyond doubt).
After this, you can reach out to those linking to your competitors and tell them you have a more extensive resource page than the one they are linking to. If they find it longer and super useful, you’ll get a backlink from them.
Collaborating with your competitors sometimes can be the best way to improve your link-building campaign.
With guest blogging, you create top-notch content in your niche and request high-authority competitors to host the content on their site (Of course, with your name on it and a link to your site).
When using any SEO tool, it’s normal to have questions about some features you don’t understand.
The good thing is that the Majestic customer care team is ready to help. To ask your question, check the topmost part of Majestic SEO and navigate to the Support icon.
There, you’ll access a drop-down menu. Next, go to Contact Us and click it. The tool will direct you to a page where you’ll fill in your name, email address, type of Query, Subject, and finally, the message.
After that, enter the verification code on the page and click Send Comment. The customer care will get back to you as fast as possible.
A data-driven backlink campaign requires a solid backlink tool like Majestic SEO. It gives you an in-depth backlink analysis that not only helps to analyze your backlink profile.
You can also check your competitors’ link profiles and use them to identify prospects that can be sources of backlinks.
More than that, Majestic SEO offers a free trial before subscription to give you a taste of what you’ll get.
Above all, the tool features excellent customer care support – you’re never alone when you have something to ask.