From the English “referral”, referral traffic is a Google Analytics metric. It is a term used to name visitors who arrive at a website such as an e-commerce blog or virtual store like yours, for example, from a link included in a website or blog of another company, brand, influencer, etc.
In fact, referrals don't refer to audiences coming from paid or organic media. This type of traffic actually refers to the audience that reaches your website from backlinks included on third-party websites.
Referral traffic is important because search engines like Google see backlinks as a vote of confidence in your content. So, the more backlinks, the more likely your content is to rank higher in web search results.
In this way, it is good for those who monitor and drive the creation of backlinks, which result in referral traffic. Well, then, learn in this post how to generate backlinks to your blog posts and especially to the sales pages of your online store!
HOW TO MONITOR REFERRAL TRAFFIC FOR YOUR VIRTUAL STORE
Before you start generating backlinks for your e-commerce site, learn how to monitor referral traffic to your blog or online store. To do this, you must first register your website with Google Analytics and log in to the platform.
Once you have logged into Analytics on your computer, click on the left menu on “Acquisition”. After that, press the “Overview” button.
In the panel that will open, you will see a list of channels that bring content to your store or blog. The table shows the number of visitors in a period. But in addition, it indicates the percentage of visitors that came to your site from various channels.
Let's say, for example, that your online store has received 888 visitors in the last 7 days. Of these, 496 came from Google, 202 from social networks, 59 typed your store name into the browser, and 131 came from backlinks from third-party websites. That is, 14,75% of these visits are referral traffic. Knowing this, you can start creating actions to increase that percentage.
BOOSTING REFERRAL TRAFFIC
To increase the percentage of referral traffic in your online store or e-commerce blog, invest in strategies such as:
- press mailing: make use of services such as Dino, Maxpress and PR Newswire, among others, which can mainly disseminate news and posts from their e-commerce website and blog to thousands of journalists and information vehicles. That way, more writers will be able to republish your news and point links to your store, blog or website.
- Cross Marketing or Co-Marketing: Close partnerships with other companies, so that both can produce complementary content. Thus, you should point links to them, but on the other hand you will also receive valuable backlinks and consequently referral traffic on strategic pages. You guest posts are essential in this regard.
- External links: Pointing links from your e-commerce blog posts to posts from other companies can attract the attention of linked sites. That way, you might be able to get some backlinks in return. Furthermore, according to Moz, the external links also generate authority for your own blog or website.
- Social Media: Sharing content on social networks provides several advantages for your e-commerce, one of them being the ability to generate notoriety. The more inspiring your posts, the greater the distribution and the chance to generate referrals for your e-commerce.
Anyway, generating backlinks and referral traffic is great. But everything is much better if you can do it using a KPI.
USING KPIS TO BOOST
KPI is the acronym for Key Performance Indicator. It is an English term for what we call “goal” or “objective” in Brazil. You can use KPIs to control backlink creation and referral traffic generation.
For example, stipulate a KPI like “raise the number of backlinks by 5% in the month of July”. Or how about “increase the percentage of referral traffic to 18%”. Just below the KPI, describe the actions you will take in the period to achieve the goals.
Increase your goals as you progress. In this way, you will be able to increase your referral traffic in the medium and long term, and in addition, your e-commerce will become much more powerful and findable in search engines like Google.
As soon as you can, click on " Paid Traffic " and discover how to use it to your e-commerce advantage!
