What is the difference between a citation and a backlink? A backlink is very valuable to an online business, as it’s when a trusted website creates a link from their website to another website, that’s a backlink.
Citations are when a directory website lists a name, address and phone number of a business, also called NAP, ( Name, Address, Phone Number ). Sometimes this can contain a backlink.
Backlinks are just links from one website to another website, and come in two types. A dofollow bacjlink and nofollow backlink. The dofollow backlink is much more valuable than the nofollow backlink for a website’s visibility.
A Breakdown Of Citations And Backlinks
Citation differ from backlinks in one major way, they mainly are for informational purposes for the user using the NAP, so it’s crucial to make sure every listing you find for your business is accurate. Now the confusing part is, a citation will sometimes have a backlink, normally the name portion of the NAP, will be a backlink back to the website the citation is for, other times it’s the logo image. This is where people get confused, thinking a citation is just like a backlink, when the part that is often true with a citation backlink is, it’s nofollow. What a nofollow backlink means, is, the website A doesn’t trust website B that much, so website A doesn’t want to give up it’s reputation in the search engine’s eyes for website B. This a NoFollow backlink is not as powerful as a DoFollow backlink.
Backlinks are gold, plain and simple, and while dofollow backlinks are much more valuable than nofollow backlinks. It’s still a numbers game, and the more backlinks you have, dofollow and nofollow the better a website will rank for keywords and thus more web traffic. Now quality also matters, so a lot of low quality backlinks won’t do as well as a few high quality backlinks. So always be careful not to allow for spammy backlinks to clutter your backlink profile. It’s important to conduct a backlink audit every month or so, just to make sure everything is looking good and nothing looks spammy.
It’s important to always have a professional handle backlink audits and any disavowing, since disavowing can easily cost web traffic if not done correctly as well as making sure a professional SEO handles the backlink audit. Since backlinks may look spammy, but need to be looked at closer to determine quality or not, because a backlink can look bad, but still send good signals.
Contact SEOByMichael today for a backlink audit and give your website the organic traffic boost it deserves!
