Transcript
Hi guys. And welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is what is the difference between a link and a referring domain? This video is highly been sought out for, in the sense that I have no idea why I have not made a video about this earlier. I could have sworn I had made a video, but I was looking through my library and I was like, "Wow, I've never made a video about this." So I decided to make one today.
Before we jump in though, I do want to introduce the tea we're having today. It is a Darjeeling black tea and it's from BLK & Bold. Again, this is the company that my housemate bought from that's a charitable company that donates 5% to disadvantaged youth in the country of the US. So this is what we're going to be having today.
We've had this on the show before. I actually tried this for the first time on one of the other episodes. So we're going to have it again. It is a repeat tea and that's usually a good sign for us because that means I liked it enough to bring it back. But let's go ahead and get brewing and let's get talking.
So in SEO, one of the main three pillars of SEO is link-building. And so a lot of people talk heavily about links because they are so important. Now link-building is so important. But what I also want to discuss is referring domains. I have a personal preference for referring domains over links, but I want to clarify what the difference is between the two. And generally, you can decide which one you like better. Links, as a quick reminder, and I'm sure if you're watching this you already know what a link is, but what a link is is a hyperlink from a website that points to another one. There are different variations of links, and there can be external and internal links.
If you link to my website, you as the viewer link to my website, that's to an external link, because you have a website that links to mine. Now if I have a website and I link to another, let's say Zupo SEO Talk & Tea video in one of my blog posts, that's an internal link because I'm linking from one page of my site to another. So there's different variations of links. Now when it comes to link-building, the point is to try to get high value links, but let's say again, you as the viewer, really like these videos. And let's say you link to multiple versions of my videos. So let's say you like 10 of my videos a lot. So you have linked to 10 of my videos. Those would be considered 10 links. Now the difference of where links and referring domains come in is when a referring domain is one domain that references another.
So let me slow that down a bit. Your website has given me 10 links because you've pointed to 10 of my videos. A referring domain, on the other hand, is your website has pointed to mine at least once. So in that sense, in this example I'm giving, if your website gives me 10 links, it can be considered 10 links at one referring domain. Now let me switch it up just a bit to drive this point home. Let's imagine 10 of your friends. So let's say you and nine friends have websites and you all like this exact video a lot. You all decide to link to this video because you all like it. You all have blogs and you just all appreciate it. So in that sense, you have 10 friends with 10 websites pointing one link to this video. That would be considered 10 links and 10 referring domains because you have 10 websites pointing to one link. Referring domains is the measurement of how many domains are pointing at least with one link to you.
Now I have a personal preference to referring domains because through studies by Google or SEO and everything have shown that Google weights referring domains much more because obtaining a referring domain is much more difficult than obtaining a link. It is easier to go to a website that has already linked to you and ask for them to link to other things on your website, because they've already established that trust. Therefore, it is easy to get 100 links from one website, but it is much more difficult to go to 100 different domains and ask them for a link. So therefore, links and referring domains, it is valuable to build links, but you should also weigh that heavily on how many referring domains are you building.
They say that when you build a link on a website, every subsequent link on that site gets weaker and weaker. Is that to say that you shouldn't do it anymore? No, of course not. I hate to use it in these terms but you want to squeeze out as much value as you possibly can. But what I would say is you have two options. If you have the opportunity to get a link on a website and then get the second link on that website, or someone's giving you the opportunity to publish and get a link on another website, the other website will have more value in the sense, if both websites have the same SEO metrics. It can get convoluted because there's different scoring.
If this website's stronger and the [inaudible 00:04:33] website's weaker and so on and so forth, but for the basis of this video, if all things are equal, a link on a domain you already have a link from every subsequent link gets weaker. Every link you build on a new referring domain or on a new website is treated with more value than those links. So therefore in my agency, we focus much more on referring domains than on building backlinks because sometimes backlinks can be deceptive in the sense that you can build 100 backlinks, but those 100 backlinks might hook up on the same website. That is not to say that they're of no value. Again, there is a value. But in our agency, when we have a choice, we go for referring domains over backlinks. So hopefully that will help guide you in what you're doing.
I would tell you 98% of literature out there they talk about backlinks, but I would remind you, even though everyone's talking about backlinks, referring domains usually is just insinuated with it. Make sure you're not over hedged on backlinking and link-building. You're also thinking about referring domains. The problem is no one ever says referring domain building, it's too long of a phrase. But when you're hearing link-building from SEOs, understand that they're also talking about referring domains, not just links. So make sure you understand that as you move forward.
If you guys found this video valuable, please like, and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and pour this black tea out now. And I hope to see you guys again soon on future videos. Thanks everybody. Have a good day.