I know how much you probably yearn to generate massive engagement and traffic on your posts and this is why I have decided to enlighten you on how to go about it using backlinks. A backlink is simply a link from one website to another.
But before we begin, you need to first understand that a vast majority of backlinks do not actually drive referral traffic.
Sometimes, even large scale industries experience setbacks in terms of traffic generated. Factors like the way people consume content and the ranking of the referring site gives a clear analysis of this.
Sources of referral traffic
The first thing to note in your quest for traffic is that links built should come from pages with a lot of incoming traffic. This means that the traffic source determines the kind of referral traffic that may likely be sent your way. Please note that though its data is estimated and it’s not entirely accurate, you can use paid tools like SimilarWeb to check the domain’s traffic distribution.
There are basically two main sources of referral traffic namely direct and organic traffic.
Direct traffic
If a business site domain has a lot of direct visits, this means that their brand is strong and has a highly engaging community dedicated to interacting with it.
A website with a lower percentage of direct traffic may still have a reasonably engaged community if the overall volume of traffic generated is high.
There are metrics to look out for when wanting to generate direct traffic some of which include:
Social shares gained per post
This can readily be done with the help of Buzzsumo. To do this, simply locate the Content Research section and then navigate to Content Analyzer. Select the time span and key-in the domain name to display the number of shares the pages of the domain is getting across various social media platforms. If high, it is a clear indication that the community is active and capable of bringing you the needed traffic.
Comments gotten per post
It is not easy to make posts that can garner likes, let alone comments from your audience and viewers, so if people are reacting to your blog posts with likes and comments, it’s a very good sign.
Performance of their social media channels
You can also use Semrush, particularly its Social Media Tracker tool to know how a domain social media channel is performing. To do this, go to Social Media Toolkit, select Social Media Tracker, setup the campaign, and then key-in the time period to view the domain’s social channels performance.
Influencers with an average of 1000 to 10000 social followers always have great communities as their users actively engage in conversations. This goes to show that personal blogs of micro-influencers are a good starting point.
Organic traffic
This can be used to generate referral traffic with these simple tips;
If a specific page attracts a great number of search and visits and ranks well on Google, best believe that some of this traffic will go to the links on the page.
You can also check how much organic traffic a particular page is getting using tools like Semrush and SpyFu amongst others.
Want to make a list of links with the highest traffic potential? Try these steps
The first step to achieving this is to draft a list of sites
This can be done using a tool like Semrush Traffic Analytics tool that generates referral traffic to your competitors. To do this, enter the web address of a competitor, select search, and then click on the “traffic sources” tab.
Semrush is a paid tool, but you can run a number of traffic searches each day with a free account. You may need to search several of your competitors to build a more substantial list of target sites as data may be fairly limited.
The next step is to identify the exact pages sending traffic to your competitors
I recommend using Ahrefs as it allows you search for a domain name right inside the backlink report. If opting for this, take the URL of a competitor found via the first step and key it in.
Look to the left-hand side to see an icon labeled “referring domains”. Click on it. A list of domains along with various metrics will appear.
Search for the “links to target” column and click on the button with a downward arrow to view a list of individual pages from the domain under consideration. The pages displayed are linked directly to your competitor.
Search for the “Traffic” column in the metrics gotten. If you see a reasonable number of search traffic, look to the left to see the URL linked to your competitor. This is the page/URL you have to get a link from. Scan through and make a list of pages possibly sending traffic to your competitor, noting down just the pages URLs
The last step is to get traffic estimations for these pages in order to prioritize them
To do this, use the Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool which provides a series of data, including search traffic estimations, and permits you to process up to 200 domains/pages at once.
Copy and paste the page URLs into the Batch Analysis tool to get a table with data. With this, you will be able to easily prioritize your list by exporting it and adding filters in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
Contents you can update with a link
There are posts that can be updated with a new link. Some of these posts are personal blogs, list-based posts, and posts by the company employees, amongst others. Please note that there are some posts that cannot be updated with a new link.
Before starting the outreach process:
- Connect with the author of the post beforehand. This will help foster a better relationship and response. You can leave comments on blogs or use social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to also achieve this.
- Ensure the person in charge of making decisions as regards placing a link is relevant. This is because one of the causes of outreach campaign failure is the irrelevance of the information in the email.
- Ensure you have something of value to offer them in exchange. This could be an offer to help promote their content or to simply add them to an exclusive community.
Conclusion
To get long-term referral traffic, use traffic generating links as they are the best links. Though difficult to acquire, they are worth the effort.
With all discussed so far, you must have learned how to locate link targets and identify content that will work in your outreach campaign.