Most digital marketers have one goal in common. This is to increase the amount of traffic to their website. There are various tactics for accomplishing this goal. These include:
- Search engine optimisation (SEO),
- Pay per click advertising (PPC),
- Blogging, and
- Social media marketing,
The challenge is that SEO takes time, PPC is expensive, Google is becoming oversaturated with blog content, and social media has always had a problem proving ROI.
The tactic is often overlooked, which can potentially have the greatest impact is referral traffic. This begs the question: what is referral traffic? How is it possible to generate more leads?
What Is Meant by ‘Referral Traffic’?
The term ‘referral traffic’ is how Google reports visits that came to your site from sources outside of its search engine. When somebody clicks on a hyperlink, to go to a new page on a different website, Google Analytics tracks the click as a referral visit to the second site.
The originating site is called a “referrer”. This is because it refers traffic from one place to the next. Referral traffic is one of three pieces of data which is tracked by Google Analytics. The others are:
- Search traffic: In other words, visits from a search engine, and
- Direct traffic to a domain.
How to Build Referral Traffic
It is possible to build referral traffic in several ways. It can come from a featured product roundup, a guest post, an inclusion from a niche and more. It is possible to acquire backlinks from relevant niche blogs. These can also help increase referral traffic. In addition, advertising is another method for building up referral traffic. You can use Facebook ads, Google ads or a popular ad network to bring in new traffic.
Tips on How to Build Referral Traffic
Reach out to blogs and publications. You can ask to have your products shared in listicles or for a product review. It may be possible to get a backlink to your product page. This can help boost the authority of your site. But even if you don’t, you’ll receive free traffic from their audience to yours. Also, if the publication has a high authority, sometimes other publications re-publish their content giving you even more free content.
Write guest posts. What are the top blogs and publications for your niche? Ask to write a guest blog for them. Often, they won’t let you add a link to your site within the content. You probably won’t even be able to write about your brand. However, you’ll get a link to your site in your author bio.
Always have re-targeting ads running. It is not possible to always predict who will share the product, store link or blog content. With a retargeting ad, you’ll always be monetising your traffic. If your referral traffic source sends qualified traffic, showing your products in a retargeting ad will be relevant to the audience. Since they’ve already visited your store, they’ll likely recognise the brand or products. This will make hem warmer leads. Since browsers don’t always convert on the first visit, the retargeting ad can help land the sale.
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