Creating the Best Referral Traffic

Profile

The Internet is now ground zero for most marketing activities

and you're at a severe competitive disadvantage without a strong

Internet presence. According to a recent report from Forrester

Research Inc., the Internet will involve 60 percent of all U.S.

retail sales in some way by 2017. You can torque up your

Internet presence through your referral traffic profile to assure a

constant flow of website traffic.

To understand the importance of referral traffic, it may help to

identify all the possible sources of website traffic. Direct traffic

refers to website visitors who type your URL directly into their

browser. Search engine queries from Google, Yahoo and Bing

generate organic traffic, the goal of SEO. Referral traffic arrives

on your website by links from other websites, including social

media, article marketing, link building, directories, local search

and guest posts Other traffic is the catchall, which includes paid

advertising, email and other types of digital promotional

campaigns.

Contrary to the common belief that organic traffic leads the

pack, social media is jostling with organic for top dog position.

According to data from Marketing Land, social referrals nearly

doubled its year-over-year traffic share from 16 percent in

September 2013 to 29 percent in September 2014, while organic

traffic fell by almost a third from 43 percent to 29 percent.

Moreover, recent data from the Shareaholic Social Media

Traffic Report shows the Big 8 social platforms driving 31

percent of total website traffic for December 2014. The Big 8

includes: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit,

Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube. Among the Big 8,

Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla, driving nearly 25 percent of

total website traffic by itself.

These data suggest an opportunity to grow incremental traffic if

less than 30 percent of your traffic comes from social media.

However, despite its emerging prominence in the traffic driver

pecking order, social media platforms can hurt your business.

As rented media you don't own, relying on social media for

traffic is like pimping-out a car you rent from Hertz. You're

vulnerable to the vagaries of social media website owners. This

can visit havoc on your business. Facebook's algorithm switch

to a pay-to-play model in January 2015 clearly hurt many

companies that relied on Facebook's organic distribution of

promotional content, such as Money Saving Mom, which had a

precipitous loss of followers following Facebook's algorithm

switch.

Despite the uncertainties associated with traffic from social

websites, social should remain in your traffic driving campaigns.

Just proceed with extreme caution. Hedge your bets by

diversifying your referral initiatives into other venues, such as

article marketing and guest posts. Google Analytics Advanced

Segments can be quite useful for distinguishing your referral

traffic by different segments – social media, article marketing

and guest posts.

Nonetheless, your own website provides the ultimate protection

in ownership of your content and stable control over your

website traffic. Zen Habits provides a useful analogy: Your

website is your digital home; referral sites are your embassies in

foreign countries. Accordingly, make a practice of posting your

killer content on your own blog. Use digital incentives to

convert social media followers to email subscribers.

Many digital marketers enjoy huge success with microsites,

which have evolved from the image of being low-rent hovels

back in the day to potent weapons in today's digital marketing

wars. Basically, microsites are one or two page sites that are

used for specific promotions or to showcase specific products or

services. A trial lawyer could have several microsites that

promote different legal specialties.

Microsites can also help your SEO efforts. They allow you to

distribute content and key words over several sites, which also

contributes to your branding efforts by extending your authority

across a broad range of products or services.

Search Optics specializes in digital marketing solutions for the

automotive industry. Search Optics' automotive digital

marketing services include custom websites, search engine

optimization, paid search & mobile solutions. With car dealer

SEO services from Search Optics, our professional experts will

help your site rank above your competitors. For more details,

visit Searchoptics.com.