TJantunen.com

I have a problem. I’m addicted to search engine traffic. You probably wouldn’t be too surprised since my day job is an SEO specialist. I’m just doing what I’m skilled at for generating traffic. However, in 2010, I want to focus more on generating referral traffic, or traffic that comes from sites other than search engines.

I have a couple reasons for doing this.

Search Engines Change

The search engines will change their algorithms, which could cause me to lose my rankings. This has happened to many people including Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger himself. A couple years ago, Google did an update to their algorithm and Darren lost a lot of traffic. Fortunately, the traffic returned but it did teach him a lesson not to rely too much on search engines for traffic.

I want to diversify my traffic to make my site more defensible. The first step is increasing referral traffic.

Competitors Can Improve Their SEO

Many of my competitors have higher PageRank and more backlinks. I have better rankings because I optimized my site whereas the other sites have not done much SEO. If they ever learned SEO or hired an SEO specialist, they could easily overtake my rankings.

To Improve My Credibility

I think you get more credibility from a link on a quality site than a top search engine ranking. Plus, the link helps you improve your rankings, so you kill two birds with one stone.

There are a couple blogs with less traffic than me but they have more authority and influence. They get more comments, links, and mentions on Twitter and the blogosphere. If I focus on getting referral traffic, Iwill improve my reputation within the niche.

Also, referral traffic is usually higher quality than search engine traffic. For example, my visitors from referring sites visit more pages, spend more time on my site, and have a lower bounce rate than my visitors from search engines.

Goal For 2010

Currently, over 85% of my traffic comes from the search engines. For 2010, I want to lower that percentage and increase the referral traffic percentage from 6.5% to around 12%-15%.

I spend most of my time doing keyword research and publishing posts. But to reach my goal, I’ll have to do more networking. Here are 3 ideas I have in mind.

1. Become More Active Again in a Popular Forum

The first thing I did in coming up with a plan was to check the sources of my existing referral traffic. In 2009, I found that much of my referral traffic came from a popular forum. This was a little bit surprising because I was only active on the forum for three months. But then I remembered that the forum has a lot of traffic and they allow you to place links back to your site in the main content instead of just the signature.

I stopped being active on the forum because I felt like I was leaving too many links to my own site. I didn’t want to get penalized or banned. However, I should’ve just slowed down and taken a less spammy approach.

My plan in 2010 is to become a useful forum member by answering questions and participating in forum threads. I’ll still link back to my site but I’ll make sure to only have a couple links per month. I think four is a good number.

I’ll place my links in different sections of the forum to expose my site to different audiences. This will also reduce the perception of spam.

Finally, I’ll only link to my best content.

If I’m active in this way, I shouldn’t have any problems.

2. Start a Guest Posting Campaign

It’s sad but I’ve done much more guest posts for my clients than my own blog. I’ve been satisfied with my overall traffic, so I haven’t felt the need to do many guest posts. But with my new focus on getting referral traffic, guest posting is a great strategy.

It helps me reach new audiences and it builds authority since I would be associated with the online influencers in my niche.

3. Create a Facebook Page

I’ve gotten some traffic from Facebook. This was unexpected because I haven’t promoted my blog on Facebook at all. I did some quick research and found that my niche is pretty active on Facebook.Therefore, I’ll setup a Facebook page for my blog and add friends that are interested in my niche.

The Facebook page should also motivate me to keep my Twitter account updated since I’ll put my tweets on the page.

Over to You

What strategies have worked for you to increase your referral traffic?

Performancing offers blog management services to improve your blog for 2010.

from Performancing.com – Helping Bloggers Succeed

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