Blog SEO Part 2: Referral Traffic

This continues the Blog SEO series with a bit about Referral Traffic. This is the type of traffic that originates from other websites, not search engines.

I would argue that this is probably the hardest type of traffic to get. Why? well it’s directly affected by the quality of content on your blog. If you write good, interesting content then people will be inclined to link to you. If you recycle other peoples material then people will probably link to the original source instead.

First of all it’s important to understand why this type of traffic is important.

1. It increases the link popularity of your blog.
2. Helps increase the Page Rank of your blog.
3. It’s a good steady source of traffic, we all know how unreliable search engines can be.
4. It can help you drive targeted visitors to your blog, which in turn can increase the amount of subscribers you have.

So what are the best ways to get this sort of traffic?

1. Writing a Series of posts like this one, keep your readers captivated by continuing on with a series.
2. Try to be original, if you find out about a new product or service try to blog about it first.
3. Write Product Reviews, I quite like this one. Write honest reviews of other peoples products then ask for a link
4. Write Lists, like the top ten or top twenty or even top 100 best ways to do something. These attract links like crazy when done right. They also usually do well on social networking sites like Digg or Stumbleupon.
5. Comment on other peoples blogs, try & strike a relationship with other bloggers in your niche or topic. Once you build up a relationship you can exchange links or even ask for them to post about one of your recent entries & vice versa.
6. Write Articles & publish them on article directories. Include links to your blog in the resource box. Make sure & use relevant anchor text like Earn Money Blogging etc
7. Add links to your site on Wikipedia in the relevant section. So for example if your site if about pottery, add a link to your site in the relevant section. Sometimes the links get deleted if they don’t deem your site relevant enough, but sometimes the links stay & give good traffic
8. If you sell a product creating an affiliate program can drastically increase your exposure & also increase your incoming link count. Provided you use an SEO Friendly Affiliate Program.
9. Include options on your site that allows visitors to email articles to friends, vote for articles & generally participate more. This will increase the chance they will recommend your site or mention it to someone else.
10. Claim your blog on Technorati & include an “Add to Favourites” button on your sidebar. The more popular your blog becomes, the more people will add it to their favourites.

There are hundreds more ways to increase your referral traffic, this gives you a general idea of the basics. Getting this type of traffic is one of the hardest parts of running a blog, but once you get into a stride, you figure out what works, what sort of articles work then you’ll be on the road to riches :p

If you do anything that works really well for you why not share it by commenting & I’ll include it in this post.