When people discuss link building the discussion is typically centered on increasing rankings for particular keywords and search phrases. People often forget that links are great for referral traffic as well. Far too many people associate search engine optimization with keyword rankings, but isn’t traffic the goal of SEO? Don’t you want to rank your keywords high in the search results in order to drive targeted traffic to your website?
While some links might be good for a rankings boost, they don’t always produce referral traffic. A smart well thought out SEO strategy needs to contain links that are going to drive back traffic as well. SEO is not an overnight process. It can take a lot of time and effort before a website begins to show in the organic results, so wouldn’t you like to drive some real traffic along the way? Referral traffic has the potential to convert into leads, sales and eventually revenue for your business. This can also help to offset the cost of SEO.
When building links that you want to send referral traffic to you need to make sure the reader knows that more information is available if they follow the link. For example, if we wanted to send you to another post on our blog that explained how to uncover link building opportunities for your website would you click over? That link highlights what you can expect to find by clicking on it and it is relevant to the content in this post.
Here are three link building opportunities that can help to increase your referral traffic volume.
1. Directories
Local business directories are often used just for NAP purposes (name, business address, and phone number) but if you look at some of the more popular ones, aside from the search engine local pages, such as YP.com and superpages.com receive requests from consumers daily looking for businesses just like yours.
Since these directories are used to locate local businesses, your referral traffic is going to be local, but it is a great way to attract visitors to your website that aren’t quite ready to call or visit your location. Make sure to include a link to your website, and it doesn’t always have to be your home page. Send them to a page that provides them information about what your business offers, and also make sure that there are some clearly defined calls-to-action on the page. This will increase the likelihood of them turning into a lead.
It is also a good idea to identify local business directories as well. Most of the directories that are discussed and targeted for local SEO purposes are larger national directories. Look for some local business directories in your areas. They might not be hot targets in terms of traditional link building, but they can push local referral traffic to your website.
2. Reddit
Let’s start off by letting you know that the link you promote this way has to be interesting and something that people will find useful and interesting. Reddit has several targeted groups that allow you to post a link, and users will either vote it up or vote it down.
Your link is simply shown, and if the title is compelling and the users vote it up to the top you can see a huge spike in traffic. The great thing is that this can drive an insane volume of traffic immediately, but the downside is that it isn’t a long term traffic source. Once the link falls from the top the traffic will slow. It is possible that traffic will continue to trickle in, but not in the amount that it can send when it peaks.
3. Guest Blogging
There is so much talk about this topic, but real guest blogging is not dead, and it still provides to be a valuable method of link building and referral traffic. There are a few link opportunities that can bring your website referral traffic from guest blogging.
First, there are opportunities to place contextual links within the content of the post, and secondly, you can typically include a link in your author profile. While the author byline or profile links won’t send a lot of traffic, contextual links within the post can be very rewarding, especially if your post appears on a popular website.
It all starts with quality content. If your guest blog provides value the readers are going to want to know more about you and your business. This can cause them to visit your website, pushing even more traffic your way.
When you are outlining your link building campaign make sure to mix in some links that will help drive some more referral traffic to your website. When you develop a SEO plan you have to have the big picture in mind. Don’t ignore your traffic, because without it your business will not succeed.
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