Referrer: measure ROI, learn about visitors, ID key content

A Referrer is a Visit Characterization that describes the source of traffic to a page or visit. Search engine “guru” Danny Sullivan, a founding editor of SearchEngine Land, describes the referrer as the Caller ID of the internet, but for places rather than people – that is, it does not identify the user by name, but the place on the web that the user came from.

Knowing your referrers tells you where traffic is coming from, how much is coming and what trends there may be, according to Web-stat live. Referrers tell you if visitors are coming from a search engine; from ads, whether pay-per-click, banners or print ads that used a unique URL; or a link from another website or a link in an email. It can also identify which social media sites are working hardest for you.

Search engines are a major referrer for most websites, and traffic from search engines has increased over the past 15 years, says in bound marketing firm Moz. If you notice a decline in traffic from search engines, there is cause for investigation. Moz also notes that there are three main search engines in the United States: Google, Bing and Yahoo. It’s important to know approximate percents of traffic that come from each of these, so that if there is a decline in search traffic it will be easier to determine whether it’s a global issue, meaning there may be a problem with your site, or if it’s an issue related to a specific search engine that may be a “penalty or devaluation of your SEO efforts,” according to Moz.

Impact on Marketing ROI

A big benefit of knowing your referrers is that you can tell which marketing efforts are bringing you traffic, says SearchEngine Land's Sullivan. And that is hard to do with non-digital marketing. This information can assist in making decisions about where to spend advertising dollars.

For example, at my university, in the past when people registered for an open house, we would ask them how they heard about the event. Some people would say they heard an ad on a radio station where we had not placed an ad, or saw an ad in a newspaper in which we were not advertising. At that time we were not set up to collect and track referrer URLs in any way, and more registrations came on by phone, so the data was not accurate and did not help us determine the best return on marketing investment.

Now, all event registrations go through our customer relationship management system’s information request form, and we can easily track referrers. To promote events we run banner ads on news station websites with a direct link to the registration page. We also use unique URLs in print, radio and Pandora ads so that we can track those referrers and determine which specific ads are worthwhile. Additionally, we can tell how many registrants learned about the event through our internal marketing efforts. Our metrics have improved and we are more confident in our marketing spending.

Gather more information about visitors

Once you identify top referrers to your website you can also learn more about the visitors who come from there. Some questions that you may want to ask include:

·      What type of content is offered on the referrer site?

·      What page of that site links to your site?

·      How are you represented on the referring site?

·      Are there errors you could reach out to correct?

·      What keywords do you share?

·      What keywords does the referrer use that may be applicable to your site?

Knowing your referrers also helps you find links that you were not aware of. Perhaps another site links to resources that you offer on your site, and you may want to link back to them as a partner. Maybe you find a news article posted somewhere that mentions you or your content. If you were unaware of this, it may be an opportunity for you to promote the news item yourself. Identifying the sites that refer to your page will also give you a sense of other sites that may be good referrers with which you may want build a relationship, says Dave Davies of Search Engine Watch.

Identify key content areas

Noting specific pages that referrers are linking to is also helpful because it gives insight into what type of content people are looking for, continues Davies. That will help you to generate new content which could drive more traffic. Researching your referrers can give you more insight into visitors and offer other opportunities to get your content to new eyes, he suggests.

Finally, referrer information also tells what keywords a person used to get the link to your site when they come from a search engine. Moz says that this can be helpful for ad word buys, to track trends in keyword searches and to watch how you perform on your identified keywords.