What Is Referral Traffic?
Visitors who come to a website through the links provided on other websites make referral traffic.
The other way around, when a visitor sees a link on a website and clicks on it to land on another website's page, that visitor will the part of referral traffic to the website it landed on.
Referral traffic is not limited to the website's page, it can come from other sources like social media, online directories, blogs, etc.
Knowing about the referral is crucial for website owners and marketing professionals to monitor the source of traffic and make better marketing strategies and better decisions.
Importance of referral traffic
Referral traffic is important because it gives you an idea about the value of the content on one's website and that of external links that direct the traffic to that website.
Moreover, referral traffic helps website owners find ways and opportunities to collaborate with others within the same industry.
This way, understanding and putting efforts into optimising referral traffic can enhance visibility, increase engagements, and help you grow your business better.
Benefits of referral traffic
Here are some benefits of referral traffic:
Increased visibility
Referral traffic can present your website and make it known to those who have not visited it thereby increasing visibility to new and large audiences.
Higher quality traffic
Referral traffic is high-quality traffic that comes from relevant sources and the visitors come to your site because they find your content, products, or services relevant and valuable.
Improved SEO
Referral traffic coming from reputable and authoritative sources can increase the rankings of a website.
It is because search engines consider those websites authoritative and valuable which get backlinks from reputable sources.
Cost-effective marketing
If you optimise referral traffic, your marketing strategy will be cost-effective because it costs less than the investment made for other marketing strategies.
Stronger brand awareness
Referral traffic helps with increasing brand awareness and shows visitors how credible and reputable you are in a particular niche. It establishes you as an authority and helps people know more about your brand.
How to generate more referral traffic?
Here are a few steps to generate more referral traffic in detail:
List your website on online directories
Online directories are the listings of businesses or organizations that give the name, address, and contact information of the business.
Some popular directories are Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages. They help people discover businesses easily that are related to the information they search for.
If you list your business on these directories, your brand can be more visible and bring more referral traffic.
Feature your website on review platforms
Review websites are all about publishing reviews of customers who share their experiences with a business, its products, or services.
If your website is featured on such review websites as TripAdvisor, you can enhance credibility and engagement by reaching a wider audience.
On these websites, if you get more positive reviews, you are highly likely to become a highly recommended website and can attract more referral traffic.
Contribute to guest blog articles
Guest blog articles are pieces of content that are published on other websites that belong to the same industry as yours.
Guest blogging helps share your expertise in your industry and make your brand authoritative.
To get referral traffic, you can use guest blogging and can give links to your website only where it is relevant. Through these links, visitors can come to your website and can generate more referral traffic.
Utilize social media for promotion
Getting referral traffic through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram is the best strategy you can use.
You can reach a wider audience by sharing your content and engaging in discussions in various groups and forums.
This way, people get to know more about your brand and they would like to click on the links you provide through these social media sites.
Engage through blog comments
To increase referral traffic to your website, you can engage in blog commenting and can reach a new and wide audience.
You can do this by writing informational and thoughtful comments that are very relevant to the topic being discussed and your niche.
With the comments, you can add a relevant link to your website thereby making people know more about a topic and increasing referral traffic.
Participate in relevant industry forums
You can find many online forums related to your industry that connect you with other professionals in your industry.
Also, they can help you reach people wanting to know about some credible sources in your industry.
You can share your knowledge and expertise on these forums and can make people come to your website through your profile.
Create and share infographics
Infographics are the graphical representation of data to make the provided information understandable. It is a well-known way to provide information that makes the content easy and appealing.
You can use this way to increase referral traffic to your website by carefully creating industry-relevant infographics and publishing them.
How to track/calculate it?
Here are the steps to view referral traffic sources in Google Analytics:
Make a Google Analytics account and after logging in to it select the website you want to analyse.
Click on "Traffic Sources" which you can find on the left-hand side.
Select "Referrals" which you can find from the drop-down menu.
Here, you can find a graph showing traffic within a period of one month. This graph will help you estimate the size of traffic you get within this period.
Below this graph, you can find a table that has the domain names of the websites that give you backlinks and also the statistics regarding visitor interactions. From here, you can learn about the number of sessions and their duration, pages per session and bounce rate.
To know more about a referral link, simply click on the link and get more detailed information about interactions with your website.
Conclusion
Referral traffic is the traffic that comes from the links to your website present on other sources such as other websites, forums, social media platforms, or online directories.
Understanding referral traffic can help you get more referral traffic alongside analysing the sources from where it is coming and the way visitors interact with your site. This makes you optimise for referral traffic effectively and devise your marketing efforts.