Referral Traffic – How To Drive More Traffic To Your Website

Referral traffic comes from backlinks, or links to your website from other websites. When you get the right links, they can be continual traffic sources back to your website. Some backlinks can even generate more links on their own. This happens when someone shares your blog post to Facebook, and then his or her followers share it with their social circles afterward. Backlinks also come from forum links, ebooks, webinars, email, and so on.

Benefits of Referral Traffic

Here are just a few of the benefits of referral traffic:

• Improve SEO as backlinks are part of Google’s ranking algorithm
• Boosting brand recognition, reputation, and exposure
• Developing networking opportunities and generating future leads
• Help you tap into a new, diverse audience base you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to

Referral Traffic Strategies

Comment on Relevant Blogs

Blog commenting can be a huge source of referral traffic. Most sites ask you to fill out form fields prior to writing a comment. One of those fields is for placing a link to your website. Meaningful comments – and this is key – will intrigue readers to click the links and drive traffic.

Keep in mind that this tactic has been heavily exploited by spammers. That’s why you need to be sure to follow these ideas for commenting on relevant blogs:

• Make an observation and reference a related post on your own blog, so you can link to the post within your comment.
• Ask thoughtful questions about the post or give your professional opinion.
• Create a list of the top 10 blogs in your niche, and comment on their posts regularly.
• Sign up for a Disqus account so you can easily comment on websites that use the Disqus commenting platform

Get Social Media Buttons

According to a 2015 Search Engine Journal post, social media accounts for almost 30% of all referral traffic.

Let’s face it – social media is here to stay for now. If you want to boost your traffic, make your content easier to share. Share buttons are a must-have for making sharing more accessible. If you don’t have these on your website, talk to your website guru now.

Guest Blog

Guest Blogs are usually published with an author bio that includes your name and a link back to your site. Depending on the site’s rules, you might also be able to link back to something actionable – like a top blog post or ebook you’ve created.

If you’re a massage therapist looking for blogs in your niche that accept guest posts, try a Google Search for something like “massage therapy “become a contributor”” or “massage therapy “write for us””. Quotation marks are for exact search, meaning Google will only return results containing that exact phrase word-for-word.

• “become a contributor”
• “write for us”
• “contribute an article”
• “submit your post”
• “accepting guest posts”
• “guest post guidelines”
• “submission guidelines”

Once you’ve identified guest blog posting opportunities, read the guidelines, and apply to be a guest post contributor. With calls to action, external links, and author bios, guest posting is a good way to gain referral traffic.

Participate in Local Events

It goes without saying that nothing beats an in-person speaking event. By participating in local events, you can also get website referral traffic because you will be publicized on a website and if you’re lucky, local reporters may even cover the event.

Contribute to Q&A Sites

The strategy behind submitting to social question and answer websites is similar to blog commenting. You need to make sure that your contributions are relevant and valuable. One of the best strategies for answering questions is to showcase your expertise on the subject matter and link back to a related post on your blog.

Quora is a good place to start.

Final Thoughts

By adding these referral traffic building tactics to your tool kit, you’re planting seeds that will help your internet marketing garden grow.