Referral traffic is a fantastic digital marketing technique that helps marketers to attract interested readers and potential clients to your website from a variety of avenues. Since referral traffic is driven by either social activity or inbound links, it offers several SEO benefits, as both of these get your website in the good books of the search engines. MozCon conducted a survey recently, showing that referral traffic is the second most preferred channel by marketers driving traffic to their website after organic search.

This technique is recommended by SEO gurus and digital marketing specialists because it exposes your content to new audiences, giving you new opportunities to engage with your target market and improve your conversion rates. If you want to know how you can boost referral traffic, here are some useful tips:

1.    Social Bookmarking Sites

These sites allow you to tag and bookmark different online resources, and are a great source for generating referral traffic. A good place to start is Stumble Upon which allows visitors to view content from the internet and share it easily on different social media networks. Another good site is Reddit where people from around the web gather in search of interesting content. However, the competition is fierce on Reddit because millions of posts are published on it, and for you to generate referral traffic from this platform, your content needs to be truly unique and attention grabbing.

2.    Social Media Networks

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that spending a better part of the day on social media has become a hobby for most of us. Connecting with your target market on social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Twitter, and others can boost referral traffic to your website in several ways. For example, you can engage in discussions on LinkedIn, and offer your insights into for resolving issues and answering questions that people are asking. You can also share links to your blog posts relevant to the discussion to direct people to your website.

3.    Press Releases

Another easy and quick way of getting some boost in referral traffic is publishing press releases. You can use a press release to announce achievements and milestones like acquisitions, earnings release, new offers, product launches, and more. Anything that is news worthy and capable of catching a reader’s interest is a good topic for a press release. Since including complete information about the company is the standard practice, they can be a great way to generate referral traffic.

4.    Pinterest

While Pinterest is relatively new, it has quickly gained ground and became a prominent player in the social media world.  A study by Shareholic showed that Pinterest provide a higher chance of getting referral blog traffic compared to Twitter. Moreover, it generates more referral traffic than YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google Plus combined.

5.    Guest Posts

Guest posts are an excellent source for building up referral traffic. Especially after the latest Penguin update, focusing your efforts on creating guest blogs, and posting them on site that are relevant to your business will give you the opportunity to showcase your content to potential audience, enabling you to attract high-quality referral traffic. For a steady flow of referral traffic, it is best that you create a schedule of guest posting and stick to it.