Amanda Cruz-Lombraña is the global content SEO team lead at Shopify.

I like to think of the internet as a neighborhood. Instead of neighbors chatting over the fence saying, “Hey, you should check out that new bakery on Main Street,” you have websites sending visitors to each other through hyperlinks, or referral traffic. 

As a small business owner, referral traffic is like having thousands of people in very different neighborhoods around the world all recommending your business to their friends. In this article, I’ll explain how referral traffic works, why it’s so important, and what you can do to generate more referral traffic to your site. 

What is referral traffic?

Referral traffic is when someone visits your website by clicking a link on another website. This hyperlink is a vote of confidence in the quality and value of your site. Referral traffic is not organic web traffic that comes from Google search results, and it’s not considered direct traffic, either. Unlike paid ads, referral traffic can compound. Once that recommendation is out there, it can send visitors for weeks, months, maybe even years.

Although there are paid approaches to generating referral traffic, it’s most effective when it happens organically. You can generate high-quality referral traffic when other writers and website owners truly believe your site offers value to their audience.

Why is referral traffic important?

• It helps you connect with your target audience
• It enhances your search engine optimization efforts
• It brings higher intent visitors

Referral traffic provides several benefits. Here’s why this type of website traffic matters for businesses:

It helps you connect with your target audience

When you’ve already done the boots-on-the-ground work and your brand is gaining momentum, referral links can provide a gateway to an audience you would never reach organically. For example, Sock Candy founder Mary Gui gained an audience in part by styling outfits on Instagram. When someone shared a photo of her on Reddit and linked back to the Sock Candy site, it led to a traffic spike from a community that prides itself on authenticity. 

Whether your brand gets mentioned in an online forum, blog, or news outlet, referral traffic can introduce your brand to a carefully curated community.

It enhances your search engine optimization efforts

Referral traffic is rocket fuel for your search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Quality backlinks are a positive ranking factor, signaling credibility to Google and other search engines. When referral visitors engage with your content, it sends even stronger signals to Google. That’s usually because the person who landed on your site stayed there, telling Google that your page is topically relevant to them.

It brings higher intent visitors

Referral visitors come through warm introductions and with a higher intent because they have already been vetted by the referring site. This means they’re likely interested in your type of content or product. That removes friction from the conversion process. 

How to check your referral traffic rate

To check your referral traffic rate in Google Analytics , follow these steps:

1. Open Google Analytics.

2. On the left-hand menu, click on Reports.

3. A new menu will open. Expand the Acquisition menu, then click “Traffic acquisition.”

4. This will open a list of traffic sources, ranked by volume. In this view, you’ll be able to see the total referral traffic to your site within a set time frame. 

5. To get more granular, click the “+” icon at the top of the list of traffic sources, and select “Traffic source > Session source” from the dropdown menus.

6. In the search bar above the list, enter “referral.” This will show you a list of all referring domains and the volume of traffic they generated.

What’s a good referral rate?

There is no magic number, but a good referral rate can range from 5% to 25%. It depends on the industry, your content strategy, and your existing link profile. If your referral rate is less than 5%, you want to think about what you can do to grow that number. 

How to generate more referral traffic

• Prioritize evergreen content
• Focus on quality content
• Guest post
• Position yourself as an SME
• Get on review sites and directories
• Establish a strong social media presence

Here are six methods to increase referral traffic: 

Prioritize evergreen content

Start with the basics: Build up a solid foundation of evergreen content. At this stage, you don’t want to create content that is too timely, since that’s going to become obsolete fairly quickly. The more evergreen content you have, the longer the shelf life of each backlink. 

Once a topic is obsolete, no longer trendy, or no longer relevant, people will move on to the next topic. Timely topics can also be more costly to pursue; they require you to constantly chase trends and news, whereas evergreen content can drive referral traffic for years.

Focus on quality content

In the world of AI, when anything can just be spit up by a bot, it’s more important than ever to produce quality content. The key is to create content that is authentic to your brand and draws from your expertise. Aim to create unique content that’s not already out there. 

What really gets links is original research and resources that solve real-world problems. You want to create top-of-funnel content, or content that’s going to help your customers solve problems or guide them toward finding solutions. If someone uses a tool you create or learns something practical from your research, they’re likely going to want to share it with others. 

Guest post

Guest posting involves writing articles for another website or blog, typically with the goal of linking back to your own site. Aim for thoughtful, strategic guest posting instead of a spray-and-pray approach. Identify five to 10 blogs, email newsletters, or trade publications that you and your audience read, and figure out what you can bring to the table. 

In this kind of quid pro quo arrangement, you offer valuable insights in exchange for a link. As part of the strategic partnership, the website links back to your landing page on a related topic on your website to subtly promote your brand. Aligning with the right publications can bring authenticity and a real connection to your audience. 

Position yourself as an SME

Another method is to position yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) in the goal of attracting interviews. Consistently posting on LinkedIn or signing up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO) can help you get new opportunities. I cannot emphasize HARO enough. It’s a daily newsletter that comes to you from journalists at a variety of publications seeking sources to speak on specialized subjects. 

You can pick and choose who you want to reach out to, and if they decide to quote you, they’re almost always going to include a link back to your site. I’ve used HARO to get placements on The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as micro CPG trade publications. Although it’s valuable to win placements in tier-one news media, you may better connect with your niche audience in a trade publication with a narrow focus.

Get on review sites and directories 

Popular review sites like Yelp, your Google Business Profile, and the Better Business Bureau can all be fruitful traffic sources. Where I see merchants reap the most reward is with industry-specific review sites. For example, one of my clients in a previous role was a pet supply store. When they managed to get featured on a review site dedicated to pet products, they saw better conversion than generic directories.

Establish a strong social media presence

Social media can plant the seeds of audience interest, and referral traffic is what you harvest. Technically, social media platforms are not considered referral traffic; they are their own channel. However, social media posting can lead to more links and more mentions everywhere else, and those mentions become referral traffic. For example, 44% of Gen Z learns about new brands every day on social media. Users discover your products on social media and then talk about them on blogs, in email newsletters, and on review sites.

For social media, consider your audience—for example, LinkedIn is for B2B, Instagram is for visual brands, and TikTok can be for younger demographics. You don’t want to just post and pray. Engage meaningfully in these communities, and understand there’s a little bit of testing and tinkering to learn what is going to land and resonate. 

When your social media presence gets people talking, people will link back to you. Your social media strategy should fuel that kind of referral engine and not replace it.