Four Important Tips To Optimise Your Referral Traffic

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Making people to flock your site is all about balancing act. It is a lesson in time management and attention to detail.

Search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, blog and paid ads are just the tools to your destination. However, spreading messages by yourself (and your budget as well) on multiple platforms that are not actually converting is a waste of time. You need to know where your best customers are coming from and then spend dollars to get more audiences on these sites where you know you already have fans. Analysing and optimising your referral traffic is how you will make the most out of your marketing strategy and paid ads, build a dedicated fan base and find partners that will help develop your audience.

To make more referral traffic, here are four important tips you can apply to your current campaign:

1. Understand the Different Kinds of Referrers

There are two types of referrals in a referrals report: referring domains and individual referrals. Both of them are important. You will want to analyse both reports to get a comprehensive understanding of your referral sources. Referral reports are the first place to look when you notice unexpected spikes in traffic, as they allows us to quickly identify the source and the context for the spike. With that knowledge in hand, you can optimise traffic and continue to grow that audience.

2. Track Everything

Measuring your referrals isn’t just about setting up campaigns, watching the numbers roll in, then deciding where to spend money to gain a bigger audience. You need to do some work or your data might be vague. Plus, you won’t know where to invest for your next campaign.

There is often a measurement ‘blind spot’ when tracing the saliency of your digital paid media and your website. Whether there’s a lack of measurement planning or the tracking tags are stripped from the assets, there are several causes for cloudy referral information. Not being able to identify which paid digital executions are working hardest from click-to-site conversion (vs. click-thru only) is potential revenue gone astray. Making sure that tracking codes are in place, and are firing under live testing is not a glamorous task, but well worth it.

3. Social Media Optimisation (SEO)

The numbers are out and, unfortunately for most online retailers, social media isn’t a huge driver of sales. However, while social media isn’t likely to convert customers, it still offers great value for brands. Social media is an excellent way to increase quality visits, develop brand affinity and stay top of mind, which can eventually lead to conversion. That might seem like a lot of work and delayed gratification to get that one user to your end goal, but the payoff is well worth it. In the meantime, you can optimise the channels that are most effective.

With social media budgets increasing and more pressure to increase ‘earned’ value, understanding what type of social activity is acting as a traffic source can help you find opportunities for innovation. And through re-allocating small amounts of budget from your least effective source, you can enrich the social content that intentionally delivers quality visits.”

4. Find Partner Opportunities

Tracking your referrals doesn’t just provide insight to your core audience and valuable ad spending channels, it can also help to discover potential partners who are aligned with your mission and overall goals. Over time, as new platforms emerge, your referrals are bound to change. Monitoring these new referrers and amplifying them on your own channels can help your site traffic, brand awareness and conversion rates stay strong. In all, keeping tabs on your referrals, both big and small, will point you in the right direction when it comes to efficient ad spend and time management as you cultivate an engaged digital audience and convert them into customers.