Advanced SEO Terms Explained: TF/CF, Spam Score, and Anchor Text Types

1. What Are TF / CF? (Two Important Metrics from Majestic)

TF and CF are two core metrics from the SEO tool Majestic:

• TF (Trust Flow) = level of trust / link quality

• CF (Citation Flow) = link volume / overall link strength

1.1 TF (Trust Flow)

You can think of TF as:

How strongly your site is linked from trusted websites.

In simple terms:

• If many powerful, authoritative, and clean websites link to you, your TF will be higher.

• If most of your links come from spammy, low-quality sites, even if you have a lot of links, your TF usually won’t look great.

What does a high TF suggest?

• On average, your backlinks are of higher quality.

• From Google’s perspective, your site looks more like a site with good “reputation and relationships.”

1.2 CF (Citation Flow)

CF is more about quantity:

How many external links point to your site and how big your overall link profile is.

Key idea:

• More links usually mean higher CF.

• It doesn’t distinguish good from bad very well—if there’s a link, it counts.

1.3 How to Look at TF and CF Together

Here’s a very rough—but widely used—way to interpret them:

1. Both TF and CF are very low

   • The site doesn’t have many links or much influence yet.

   • This is normal for new or small sites.

2. CF is very high, TF is very low

   • Tons of links, but the quality may be poor.

   • This often indicates spammy sources, link farms, or link volume created by sitewide links.

3. TF and CF are both at reasonable levels, and not wildly out of balance

   • Usually means both link quality and quantity are okay.

Bottom line:

• Don’t worship any single number. “High score = good” or “low score = bad” is way too simplistic.

• The real value is in comparison:

  • Site A vs. Site B → which has a healthier link profile?

  • A suspicious domain → TF/CF plus anchor text and history help you decide whether it’s risky.

2. What Is Spam Score? (A Metric for “How Spammy Does This Site Look?”)

Spam Score is a metric from Moz. It estimates how likely a site is to resemble websites that Google tends to treat as spam.

It’s not an official Google score.
Instead, Moz looked at lots of penalized or spammy sites and built a model of “common patterns.”

2.1 What Does a High Spam Score Mean?

It suggests that this site’s:

• Link sources and outbound link patterns

• Site structure and subdomain usage

• Content characteristics

are similar to those of sites that have been treated as spam in the past.

Important:

• A high Spam Score ≠ guaranteed penalty.

• It simply means higher risk, and you should look more carefully.

2.2 How Can You Use Spam Score?

• To filter link sources:

  • Should you work with this website?

  • Is it a good idea to place a link here?

  • If the Spam Score is very high, you should seriously consider whether the link is worth the risk.

• To audit your own site:

  • If your own Spam Score suddenly goes up,

    • Check whether you’ve suddenly gained lots of strange backlinks,

    • Whether you’re linking out to suspicious sites,

    • Or whether your structure and content are starting to look spammy.

3. What Is Anchor Text? What Types Are There?

Anchor text = the clickable text of a link.
It’s the visible part of the link.

Examples:

• Best dentist in Kaohsiung (these words are the anchor text)

• Click here for more

• www.example.com

Search engines use anchor text to understand:

“What is this linked page about?”
“Which keywords is this target page related to?”

So your choice of anchor text directly affects keyword rankings.

3.1 Common Types of Anchor Text

We can roughly divide anchor text into several types:

1. Branded Anchor Text

   • Examples: Codepulse, Your Clinic Name

   • These are brand names, generally very natural and safe. Google likes this type.

2. URL / Naked Anchor Text

   • Examples: https://www.example.com, www.example.com

   • Looks like someone just pasted a URL—also very natural.

3. Generic Anchor Text

   • Examples: Click here, Read more, Learn more

   • No keywords in it, just generic action phrases.

4. Exact Match Keyword Anchor Text

   • Example: you want to rank for “Kaohsiung dentist,” and the anchor text is exactly Kaohsiung dentist.

   • Very powerful for keyword rankings, but using it too often can easily look like over-optimization.

5. Partial Match Anchor Text

   • Examples: trusted dentist in Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung dentist price comparison

   • Contains the keyword, but not an exact match—more natural than pure exact match.

3.2 How to Use Anchor Text in a Safer Way

Here’s one key principle to remember:

In the real world, people don’t all link to you using the exact same keyword.

A healthier anchor text mix often looks like this:

• Branded + URL anchors: the majority (e.g., 50–70% or more).

• Generic anchors: sprinkled naturally.

• Partial match keywords: used in moderate amounts.

• Exact match: used sparingly—too many exact matches is a big red flag.

If you see:

• 80% of a site’s anchors are exact-match keywords like “online betting,” “casino bonus,” etc.,

• Or nearly all links to your site use the same anchor like “best dentist in Kaohsiung,”

then from a search engine’s perspective, it looks very much like intentional manipulation, and risk goes up.

4. How to Combine These Metrics in Real-World SEO?

When you do SEO or review a website, you can think along this workflow:

1. Check overall backlinks

   • Backlinks, Referring Domains, TF/CF

   • Get a rough picture of volume and quality.

2. Look at Spam Score

   • If it’s very high,

     • Combine that with link and content analysis to decide whether you should stay away.

3. Deep-dive into anchor text distribution

   • Are branded and URL anchors common?

   • Is the exact-match percentage too high?

   • Are there lots of weird anchors (adult, gambling, drugs, hacking, etc.)?

4. Make a decision

   • Is this site a good link source or partner?

   • Does your own site need some “link cleanup” or a revised linking strategy?

Conclusion: Metrics Are Just Tools—Thinking Is What Matters

• TF/CF show you the overall quantity and quality of a site’s backlinks.

• Spam Score warns you when a site starts to look like a spammy one.

• Anchor text distribution reveals whether links look naturally earned or clearly manufactured.

What truly matters is not “getting the highest score,” but:

Using these metrics to see whether a site’s growth is natural or manipulative,
and deciding whether you want your own site associated with that pattern.