Level: Beginner / Intermediate
So you might already know you’re getting X number of visitors from Google organic searches, X number from pay-per-click and X from Yahoo and MSN Live, but how often do you check referrals from other sites? If you don’t use affiliate marketing (meaning you’re devoted to knowing where visitors are coming from) chances are you may not remember to check your website referrers frequently enough.
If you have enough time to read this, you have enough time to check your referring sites. If you are using Google Analytics, you can find a list of Referring Sites under Traffic Sources (see screenshot above).
Ok, now what? Look at the sites that refer the most visitors. In response to the fact I get so much traffic through Twitter I set up a Twitter landing page specifically for people clicking the link in my profile. I’ve tailored it to help to explain who I am and encourage visitors to follow me if they aren’t already. Problogger has a great guide to creating a Twitter landing page.
Also, I noticed that I’m getting traffic from sites that have mentioned my blog in their articles (I’m especially proud to have been mentioned on the Search Engine Strategies blog). Online marketing (especially via social media) is all about give and take – so make sure you use this opportunity to thank your referrers.
It’s a great idea to keep tabs on what links people are using to find your site. Some clients of mine were getting links to an old domain so we were able to correct this. Also, it’s a great opportunity to ask the referrer if you can enhance the link back by using better anchor text or placing the link in a more prominent or relevant context for your website’s theme. You could also get ideas for other websites to approach for links back to your site and thus improve your site’s ‘trust’ ranking in search engines.
February 17th, 2009 on 10:18 PM
Here you have suggested us It’s a great idea to keep tabs on what links people are using to find your site.We are very thankful for suggesting us.
March 10th, 2009 on 12:33 PM
I would say this is rather primitive way of finding out backlink information. There are better tools on the market such as http://www.linkdiagnosis.com which give information such as the value of the link, the pagerank and the anchor text.
If you are just seeking basic traffic information from referral sites then this method would suffice, but as you allude to using the Google Analytics information to enhance your SEO with better anchor text or link positioning from the referrer site, then surely it would make sense to use a better link tool than GA?
Remember that this method will only show links that have been followed by a user and not ALL inbound links.
March 10th, 2009 on 1:03 PM
@SirBigWig: Thanks for your comment – I actually felt the same after I published this and so published both Website Referrals Part 2 and Website Referrals Part 3 afterwards
Feel free to check them out!
March 20th, 2009 on 1:15 PM
http://is.gd/oa8g @JoannaButler: Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?