How to use proper citations?

One of the defining aspects of a credible piece of content is that it is research-oriented. Taking out time to search for a reference to confirm its accuracy serves as an assurance to the reader that your content is trustworthy. You can add credibility to your content by citing facts, figures, and trends from trusted resources over the internet. 

Citation is essential as it makes your writing more informative as well as valuable for the reader. 

Scalenut helps you find the most credible citations for your keyword. Using high-quality references for your content is a requirement for any well-researched document.

Scalenut’s powerful AI will present you with a list of the most preferred citation sources on the internet. These could include a brand website or even a government website. The detailed step-by-step guide on how to use Scalenut citations and add them to your content to increase its credibility is as follows - 

Step 1 - Log in to your Scalenut account, go to Article Writer under SEO tools and enter your primary keyword and the location of your target audiences.

You can also customize your competition benchmarking approach here based on your content and marketing strategy. This feature empowers you to select between the top 10, 20, or 30 ranking pages to focus on, enabling you to tailor your competitive analysis according to your specific objectives and target market.

Once the SEO report is generated, open the report and click on the ‘Detailed Report’ tab under the Research option.

Step 2 - Once you open the SEO report, click on the ‘Citations’ tab on the top menu of Scalenut’s Article Writer.

Step 3 - Under the ‘Top Cited URLs’ section, a list of all citation websites that are cited the most among the top 30 ranking URLs is listed. Along with that, in the “count” column at the top, one can see the total number of occurrences of these citations in the top 30 competitor pages.

Step 4 - You can expand on any one cited source by simply clicking on the dropdown icon right next to the URL. You will be able to observe four things with reference to the cited URL that includes - 

1. Anchor text - It is the text on which the particular cited URL is interlinked in a ranking page.

2. Citation URL - This is the citation URL or link that is an interlinked page in a ranking URL. You can visit the link by clicking on the small arrow icon next to the cited URL.

3. Source URL - This is the URL of the ranking piece in which the particular citation is used.

4. Source Rank - In this column, our tool lists the rank of the source URL. You can check the source rankings to gauge the credibility of the website.

Step 5 - You can also expand all the citations given by clicking on the ‘Expand All’ button.

Step 6 - Go through all the citations, choose the one that suits your needs the best and add it as a reference in your content brief by simply clicking on the URL. You will find the references on the right sidebar under “References” in the content brief section.

You can also add notes to a particular reference link for the writer or delete it as per your choice by clicking on the icons shown in the image below.

Scalenut integrates the Article Writer and our powerful AI editor to make it easy for you to write content. You can use the research insights you have gained to create content. Click on the ‘Back to Editor’ button to create an engaging and powerful copy of your content.

Please note: In this article, we have considered doing our research based on the top 30 URLs for our primary keyword. You can customize it to the top 10 or top 20 URLs as per your liking. The platform will then generate outputs for the same.