Google Analytics for your Business, Part 3: Referring Sites
In our previous blog we discussed the importance of the Keywords and Search Phrases utilised by users to find your site. Now let’s take a look at how analytics on your Referring Sites can be optimised to nurture this channel of traffic.
For those of you who may not know exactly what a referring site is, it is simply an external website that provides a link to your website. So, keeping an eye on which sites out there are bringing in traffic for you is certainly important.
To find out which sites are bringing you the traffic, click the Traffic Sources tab in the left menu of your Analytics, then click 'Sources' and then 'Referrals'.(see screenshot below) You will then be presented with a list of the top websites that have referred visitors to your website in the selected timeframe.
You may be surprised at what you find. YellowPages is not referring as many visitors as you expected? What is this 'True Local' and why so many referrals from that site? Maybe Facebook is proving to refer you more traffic than you thought?
When reviewing your Referral Traffic, consider these handy tips;
- What are your top referring sites? How are they referring to you? Have they linked to your blog? What kind of website is it? Is this traffic relevant to your services or products? If so, how can you nurture this traffic?
- Are you getting traffic from Facebook or Twitter when you don't even have accounts with either? Then clearly your content is worthy of sharing. Get Social!
- Do you already have a Facebook Business Page or Twitter account? Is your Twitter bringing in more traffic than Facebook, or vice versa? How does this affect your social strategy? Is it still worthwhile having both accounts?
- Are you advertising? Is one advertisment more successful than the other? Why? Is it worth changing the poorly performing ad?
- Are you getting traffic from a website that you have never heard of? Find out what the website is and where the link trail begins. Is this traffic your type of market? What can you do to nurture this traffic?
- Are there other websites similar to your referring sites, which you could approach to increase your inbound links?
It’s important to note that you should rarely eliminate the lesser performing sites from the equation, but ensure you have your priorities right. Invest more time in the sites that are bringing you the traffic you want.
What sites have brought your business website the greatest traffic? Let us know in the comments below. Also, keep an eye out for Part 4 where we’ll look at how you can increase your traffic and visitors through your current and new visitors.
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