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 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, please visit us at Searchoptics.com.