What’s the difference between a citation and a backlink?

Citations and backlinks are two important factors that help to determine the ranking of a website on search engines. Citations are basically mentions of your website on other websites, (NAP)  while backlinks are links that point from other websites to your website. Both are important for SEO purposes, but both are quite different.

Whether your building a citation or a backlink, you should follow white hat seo methods.

Citations

Citations help search engines to understand what your companies name, address and phone number is.

Backlinks, on the other hand, help search engines determine the popularity of your companies website, and how many quality businesses link to you.  

Getting quality citations and backlinks can be a challenge, that’s because both can take a lot of time to build.  

So what’s the main differences between a citation and a backlink?

There is a lot of confusion out there about the difference between a citation and a backlink with a lot of people who are learning about seo.

Well, let our seo agency explain, a citation is simply an mention of your business on another website, even if there is no link to your site, so that’s say text which mentions your businesses name, address and phone number. A backlink, on the other hand, is a link from another website to yours. So why does this distinction matter?

Local SEO

Well citations are vital for local SEO, to begin with, and your seo agency may build these every month for you. If you want your company to appear in local search results, make sure you have a lot of citations from high-quality websites.

Backlinks, on the other hand, are essential for local and national seo. The more high-quality backlinks you have linking to your website, the higher it may rank in search engine results.

So, to sum it up, a citation is an mention of your business nap details on another website, while a backlink is a link from another website to yours.

Both citations and links are important for different reasons, so make sure you focus on getting both, but all have to be built using white hat seo methods.

The Definition of a Backlink

Backlinks are also referred to as inbound links.

Seo agencies will focus on the number and also the quality of backlinks to a website, or page, as this is an important part of organic seo.

The number of backlinks pointing to a website or page is also a consideration, but the quality of those links is more important than the quantity.