For many of us, our websites act as our storefront for potential customers and those interested in our services/products. Websites can also act as a talking point for people who are getting more and more used to the idea of ​​social marketing. Therefore, it is essential that you know who is talking about your website and where your website is displayed, be it on social media or business directories, blogs or news sites.

Referral traffic is your bread and butter for understanding this. It’s an important element that allows you to find where you are online and what people are saying about you and your business.

How do you find your referral traffic?

You can find your referral traffic in Google Analytics, if you don’t already have your website connected to Google Analytics it is imperative that you do.

1) Log into your Google Analytics account and navigate to the left hand side, here you will find ‘Traffic Sources’ – click on it.

2) You will see it drop down and find the ‘Fonts’ subtab – click on it.

3) At the bottom you will see ‘Referrals’ – Clicking on this will show you where people are coming from to get to your website, it’s as easy as that.

What do I do with this information?

Here’s a story for you:

Our website was receiving a large amount of referral traffic from the popular social site Reddit. I already knew from my years in Social Media Marketing that Reddit means good news or bad news: it’s rarely in the middle and depends entirely on which ‘sub-reddit’ it’s posted on.

I clicked through and found that one of my articles had been posted on the Automotive sub-reddit; Since this is our industry, you can imagine that I was pleasantly surprised. Someone took the time to read my article and enjoyed it so much they thought it was worth sharing – unique content always wins.

I signed up to Reddit under the name of the company and started participating in the discussion about my article, answering questions about where I got my sources and what I thought about it in a more meaningful and in-depth way: people liked the fact that an apparently faceless item. The organization had a committed marketing team that was genuinely interested in their thoughts and feelings.

Before engaging with Reddit users, our referral traffic for this article had 46 unique views. After participating in the discussion, it jumped to just under 600, many of whom moved on to other pages and some even asked us for dates.

This again snowballed in not only potential sales, but also more of our content being shared by the sub-600 who began happily sharing other posts I had written – this was a win-win situation.

Referral traffic is not only great for spotting potential social engagement, but it also allows you to uncover the bad and ugly things being said about your business. As a good example, someone had posted our website on a tacky forum. While it was a genuine discussion about our product, it was not a website that I wanted our brand to be associated with. I doubt spiders and Google like it. anyone.

I contacted the webmaster of the forum and asked him to remove it from his website; they were happy to oblige.

So what do I have to do exactly?

Monitoring your referral traffic ensures that you can wear both the social hat and the SEO hat as well.

If you engage with meaningful comments about your product, service, or blog post, you show the consumer that you’re not just treating people as sales targets.

You can find traffic that can hurt your reputation and stop it – it’s all about brand recognition.

You don’t have to participate in every discussion, sometimes you don’t, but any social platform your website references is an opportunity for you to interact with people in our ever-growing social world.

It adds authority to your posts, shows readers that you are a committed company with a vested interest in opinions and thoughts, not just your salary.

The ultimate gains from doing this are easy to see. It receives more trusted and engaged visitors, gives your business a social voice across platforms like never before, and can spot dangerous areas to reduce the risk of your name being tarnished on a bad website.

Often directors and senior managers are interested in only one metric, Return of investment – now it’s your job to show them the value of return of commitment.