What a referring domain counts
If a single blog links to you from dozens of its articles, that is dozens of backlinks and still one referring domain. Link analysis tools report both figures side by side, and the gap between them is often the more useful signal: a large link count with a small domain count usually means a few sites are linking repeatedly, and usually through a template — a sidebar, a footer, a partners block that appears on every page.
Search engines learned to compress repeated links from one source a long time ago. The first link from a site carries most of the weight it is ever going to carry; each further link from that same domain adds much less. Counting domains rather than links is simply a way of measuring what the search engine is already measuring.
Why referring domains matter
Independent endorsement is what makes a link hard to fake. Anyone can add a link block across their own network of sites. Getting unrelated organisations — a supplier, a university, a news outlet, a trade association — to link on their own initiative is much harder, and that difficulty is precisely why it is worth something.
It is also the fairest way to compare yourself with competitors. Domain counts strip out the noise of sitewide links and show whether the sites outranking you are genuinely better cited or simply better templated.
Where referring domains go wrong
The first mistake is buying by the link. Packages sold as a bundle usually draw from a small pool of sites, so the domain count barely moves while the link count on the report looks impressive.
The second is treating every domain as equal. A link from a regional newspaper and a link from an abandoned blog each add one to the tally. Look at whether the site is genuinely read, whether it is about anything related to what you do, and whether it links to everybody. Watch too for clusters of domains sharing a design, a hosting pattern or an author name: that is one operation with several front doors, not several independent votes.
What to do about it
Take your own count from the Links report in Search Console, then take the same count for the handful of sites ranking above you for the terms you want. The comparison tells you whether links are your constraint at all. Often the real gap is in content or relevance, and buying links would be money spent on the wrong problem.
If links genuinely are the gap, aim each effort at a domain you do not already have. Trade associations, suppliers, chambers of commerce, directories people actually use and organisations you sponsor are all realistic first targets — particularly in Nepal, where the pool of relevant sites in any one sector is small enough to list on a single page. That focus is what separates useful link building from volume buying, and it shows up in your link profile as breadth rather than repetition.