What is Referral traffic and why is it important?

Understanding where your potential consumers are coming from is a key aspect of optimization. If you have ever studied digital marketing, I am sure you’ve heard the words “organic,” “direct,” and “referral” in relation to the traffic on your website. Search engine optimization (SEO), paid media placements,  pay per click advertisements (PPC), blogging, social media, and more, helps increase the amount of traffic to a website (Kiel, 2019).

Web Analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, divides the traffic from these sources and categorizes them into organic, direct, or referral traffic. Organic traffic is traffic that comes directly from search engines, while a direct traffic visitor arrives directly without coming from anywhere else on the web. Forms of direct traffic include clicking on a bookmark, or links from documents that don’t include tracking variables, such as PDFs or Word documents (Alexander, 2016).
Although all traffic is important, one often overlooked traffic category to have the greatest impact on performance is referral traffic.

What is referral traffic and why is it important?

“Visitors that come to your website from sites other than the major search engines are considered referral traffic“ (Kiel, 2018). Essentially, a user landings on your website after following a link from another website. The link the user clicked on to get to your page is called a “backlink.” Sometimes called "inbound links" or "incoming links," backlinks are very valuable for search engine marketing purposes because they represent a "vote of confidence" from one site to another in the eyes of the search engines (Moz, n.d.). This vote of confidence tells search engines that the content on your site is worth linking to and ultimately helps increase your sites ranking position (increasing visibility).

Pre-qualified and Trusting

Inbound marketers consider referral traffic significantly important because it sends potentially qualified visitors to your website from other websites that have the same target audience, “pre-qualifying” them before they visit your site. These potential consumers already have an intent in mind, and checking the referral sources can help marketers better identify the interests of consumers and help optimize the content being linked to and convert those visitors into customers.

Not to mention, these visitors coming from similar sites trust the referral’s recommendations already, giving you a vote of confidence (to not only search engines) but to the visitor, as well. Although it is not exactly the same as a customer referring to another customer, this “vote of confidence” may make a difference in the final decision of a customer’s journey.

Increasing Referral Traffic

Increasing referral traffic is not easy since it is usually completely out of your control, but below are three initiatives that you can work on to increase your chances of being linked to:

• Create original and engaging content
• At the end of the day, websites may link to you because you are providing useful content that they otherwise may not have been able to provide. Creating content is not only helpful in link-building and increasing referral traffic but according to Ballantine, a marketing agency, “as more and more consumers engage with your content, this helps you increase your search engine rankings, which eventually leads to greater visibility online and more chances to engage new consumers.”
• Publish your website to online directories
• Online directories are tricky but can work in your favor if you choose wisely. U.S. News and World Report, for example, is a type of online directory that has a high authoritative ranking on search engines, and a link back from U.S. News can direct traffic to your business with consumers that are already in the market for what you may be offering.
• Publish on guest blog posts
• Guest blog posts create multiple opportunities for a link back to your website. Blog posts typically feature external links, author bios, and call-to-actions. If you can get a post featured on a well-known industry website that holds more authority than you, you can benefit from the referral traffic and possible increased authority.

Resources.

Alexander, B. (2018, April 25). Know The Source: Direct, Referral & Organic Website Traffic. Retrieved from https://engeniusweb.com/articles/know-the-source-direct-referral-organic-website-traffic/

Kiel, M. (2018). How To Increase Referral Traffic And Get More Leads. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-increase-referral-traffic-and-get-more-leads

Moz. (2019, January 22). Backlinks | Learn SEO. Retrieved from https://moz.com/learn/seo/backlinks

Taylor, D. (n.d.). What Is Referral Traffic? Retrieved from https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-is-referral-traffic

Ballantine. (2017, December 05). 4 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Engaging Content Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.ballantine.com/4-reasons-brand-needs-engaging-content-marketing/

Patel, N. (2019, February 15). How to Increase Your Referral Traffic by 77% in 90 Days. Retrieved from https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-increase-referral-traffic-to-your-site-by-77-in-90-days/