Backlinks and Citations. How Do They Impact SEO?

When customers search for a product or service, they don’t look past the first page of the Google Search Results. People are more likely to place trust in the top listed sites in a search result. One study found that the top three Google Search Results get more than half the volume of organic traffic. As such, ranking higher is of utmost priority for businesses that want to be successful. Backlinks or inbound links significantly affect the site’s ranking on Search Engine Results. Pages with a high number of quality inbound links have a chance of getting listed on the first page of the Google Search Engine Results. Similarly, Citations also benefit your Local SEO efforts; however, Citations can be a little hard to comprehend. Citations help Search Engines understand your business better and the service it offers. One of the most important factors to note while building citations is to provide the full details to the online directories and be consistent with the information across the web.

Difference between Citations and Backlinks:

Backlinks or Inbound links are the do-follow links other websites have made to your site. It drives traffic from the host site to the destination site. You can improve visibility and organic traffic by having more quality backlinks to your website. Link Building through popular strategies such as Email Outreach, Broken Link Building, and Guest Blogging can improve your ranking in Search Engine Results. Citations are web pages or online directories that contain information about your businesses, such as an Address, Contact details, link to a website, reviews, etc. Providing structured citations to online directories such as Google Maps or Facebook enables your site to be recognized as a prominent business. Building citations increases the chances of your website appearing on top of local search engine results. If your business is location-sensitive, Citation Building is a significant strategy to have.

Impact of Citations and Backlinks on SEO:

Backlinks and Citations play a crucial role in determining the ranking of your website on a Search Engine. This, in turn, affects your business’s visibility, organic traffic, and sales. One significant difference between backlinks and citation is that Citations are location sensitive and is synonymous with Local SEO strategies. As both citations and backlinks contain keywords and valuable information, they add value to a user and enhance the traffic and ranking of a website or a blog. By earning backlinks or citations from a highly relevant and trustworthy website, you can direct a part of their traffic to your website. If the audience like your content or products, they might turn into long-term visitors or customers. When a customer search for a hair salon in San Diego, they don’t need to know about the hair salons in other areas. Building citations help Google and other Search Engines appropriately drive the audience who actually needs your service instead of the audience who is not interested.