link-dest or cp -al?

[Max Kipness]

I'm looking at updating some of my rsync scripts. For some time I've used
the following inside a perl script to create my 30 day versions of backups:

cp -al /backup/Current /backup/$yesterday_date

rsync /source/ /Current/ --stats --recursive --archive --times
--modify-window=1 --delete --ignore-errors
--files-from=/var/www/html/backup/list.txt
--exclude-from=/scripts/file-exclude --log-format=%f %l %b

I've looked at the rsync man page for a description and can't seem to figure
out how the link-dest option might work with the scheme I'm using. Or is
there really any reason to use link-dest instead?

Any help on this would be much appreciated. 

I'd like to continue just using rsync, as I'm sure there will be some that
will respond to use rsnapshot. But doesn't rsnapshot basically do the same
thing anyway?

Thanks,
Max