Google has shut down link networks and Matt Cutts continues to make videos on what types of guest blogging are OK. If links were quiet, would Google actually put in this attempt? Would anyone get an “unnatural links” warning?
The fact is, links matter. The death is in links that are easy to control. Some may say link building is dead but what they mean is, “The easy links that I know how to build are dead.”
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The worth Of Referrer Data
The question is, why is referrer data useful? Let's think about what Google's been impressive us about precious links: they are those that you would build if there were no engines. So where are we going to find the links we'd be happy about if there were no engines? Why, in our traffic, of course.
Apart from the truth that traffic is probably one of, if not the best, pointer of the quality and relevancy of a link to your site, your traffic data can also help you find the links you didn't know you had and what you did to get them.
Referrers To Your Site
When you look to your referrer data, you're looking for a few easy signals. Here's what you're looking for and why:
1. Which sites are directing traffic to you? Discovering which sites are directing traffic to you can give you a recovered idea of the types of sites you should be looking for links from . You may also find types of sites you didn't wait for driving traffic. This happens a lot in the SEO realm, but noticeably can also happen in other niches. Here, you can often find not only opportunities, but relevancies you might not have predicted.
2. What are they linking to? The most excellent link building generates links you don't have to actively build. The next best are those that drive traffic. We want to know both. In looking through your referrer data, you can find the pages and information that appeal to other website owners and their visitors. This will tell you who is linking to you and give you ideas on the types of content to focus on creating. There's also nothing stopping you from contacting the holder of the site that sent the initial link and informing them of an updated copy or other content you've created since that they might also be involved in.
3. Who are they influential with? If you know a site is sending you traffic, logically you can imagine the people who visit that site are also interested in your content (or at least more likely to be interested than standard mining techniques. Mining the followers of that publisher for social connections to get your content in front of them is a way that can increase your success rate in link strategies ranging from guest blogging to pushing your content out via Facebook paid advertising. Admittedly, this third area of referrer data is more akin to refining a standard link list, but it's likely a different audience than you would have encountered .
As I noted above, I plan to use the term referrer data loosely. As if point three wasn't free enough, we're going to quickly cover a strategy that ties nicely with this: your competitor's referrer data.
Contestant Data
You maybe can't call up a participant and ask them for their traffic referrer data . For the rest of us, I highly recommend pulling backlink referrer data for your competitors using one of the many enormous tools out there. I tend to use Moz Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO personally, but there are others.
What I'm interested in here are the URLs competitors link to. While the homepage can capitulate interesting information, it can often be onerous to weed through and I generally relegate that to different link time frames.
Generally, I will put together a list of the URLs linked to, and then review these as well as the pages linking to them. This helps give us an idea of possible domains to target for links, but more importantly, they can let us know the types of applicable content that others are linking to.
If we join this information with the data collected above when removal our referrer data, we can be left with more domains to seek links on and broader ideas for content creation.
You'll perhaps also find other ways the content is being linked to. Do they make top lists? Are they producing videos or whitepapers that are garnering links from authority sites? All of this information meshes together to make the energies you put into your own referrer mining more effective, allowing you to produce a higher number of links per hour than you'd be able to get with your own.
Is This It?
No. While mining your referrer data can be a great source of information concerning the types of links you have that you should be seeking more of, it's limited to the links and traffic sources you already have. It's a lot like looking to your Analytics for keyword ideas . It can only tell you what's working of what you have already.
A diversified link profile is the key to a well long term strategy. This is just one method you can use to help find what works now and keeps those link achievement rates up while exploring new techniques.
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