When you decide to delve into Search Engine Optimization, you begin to come across different concepts whose meaning might elude you. There are so many similar terms in the SEO business that sometimes it is difficult to understand how exactly they differ from one another.
Is there any difference between backlinks and inbound links?
Are featured snippets and rich snippets the same?
Do direct traffic and organic traffic come from the same source?
Are backlinks and referring domains identical?
If you are just learning the science of SEO, these and similar questions might be knocking around in your head. We will help you understand some of the above mentioned concepts. In what follows, we will explain how you can distinguish between backlinks and referring domains. But first a brief definition of each term is in order.
What Is a Backlink?
Backlinks are hyperlinks pointing from one website to another. It is possible to have multiple backlinks from a website or web page.
What Is a Domain?
A domain is an organization’s unique descriptor listed within a URL. Take the URL http://www.masterclass.com, for instance. In this URL, masterclass is the domain name.
What Is a Referring Domain?
Referring domains are websites from which the web page or target website has one or more backlinks.
Let us consider an example. Suppose a certain web page has a backlink from Men’s Health magazine. This means that the web page has one referring domain. Now let us suppose that this web page has a backlink from Men’s Health and GQ. Then, it has two referring domains: menshealth and gq.
Now, suppose the same web page has two or even three backlinks from Men’s Health. Does this mean that it has several referring domains? The answer is “No,” because all these backlinks come from the same domain belonging to Men’s Health magazine: http://menshealth.com. No matter how many backlinks come from Men’s Health to the web page, it will have one referring domain: menshealth. But it will have many backlinks coming from this domain.
Why Do You Need to Know the Difference?
When you analyze your backlink profile, you will see how many backlinks and referring domains are connected to your website. The question is what conclusions you can draw from all these backlinks and referring domains associated with your website?
What is important is to pay attention to the ratio of referring domains to backlinks. If you have hundreds of backlinks but all of them come from five or six referring domains, this is a warning sign that your backlink profile is weak. Google, too, would probably regard your website as suspicious. If all backlinks leading to your website come from only several domains, the search engine would classify your backlinks as dubious. This will negatively affect your position on Google’s pages: you will be pushed lower in its ranking.
When a website has numerous backlinks coming from a small number of referring domains, Google thinks that its owners have paid for back linking services. Paid linking schemes are considered illegal. Google disarms blog networks providing backlinks for money by de-indexing them. If your website is connected to some de-indexed network, your ranking will tumble. To avoid this unfortunate state of affairs, steer clear of paid blog networks.