Importance of Referring Domains in SEO

Are you looking to build an online authority? Do you want to show up at the top of your search engines? Along with other tools, you might have also added the maximum backlinks you could, right? But did you know that simply adding backlinks won’t help you?

Well, read on to clear all the question marks in your mind.

What is a referring domain?

So, not just the backlinks, but the source of your backlinks are also important. We all agree that the key to standing out is getting quality backlinks to your page from the best websites out there. Now, these websites are what we call the referring domain.

 Referring domains or otherwise called ‘linking domains’ are the websites that contain the backlinks to your website. All they do is drive visitors to your site.

You might be wondering why referring domains are so important when we just want quality backlinks to improve our page’s optimization, right? To understand that, we need to first see what these two actually mean.

Referring Domains Vs Backlinks

So many people are confused about referring domains and backlinks. Are you one of them? Let’s clear that for good, shall we?

Firstly, all backlinks without any doubt, come from a referring domain. However, not every referring domain can give you a backlink to your website. Backlinks are just hyperlinks while referring domains are websites that generate these links.

But what do they do? See, backlinks improve the crawl frequency of a website. Backlinks embedded in images or texts, add more value and help the site rank better. But, also be aware that if you have a lot of backlinks from the same few referring domains – the ranking of your site will decrease.

While for referring domains, it works quite the opposite way. The more the number of referring domains your site has, the more valuable and high ranking your site will be. A well-built website may contain thousands of backlinks directing to different pages as well as the other way around.

For example, if you have ten backlinks generated on ten different domains – your site will be regarded ranked higher and considered more reliable. Meanwhile, if you have 100 backlinks on just 10 domains, then your site is in serious trouble, trust me!

Why are referring domains important in SEO?

Now, if you want to improve the number of people visiting your site, you must understand how referral domain can change your site’s life. So how does it work?

Google places immense value on backlinks and therefore it checks a lot of factors in deciding the quality of a backlink. One of the factors is where the backlinks in our websites come from. Referring domains help us get noticed from heaps of other websites. Using backlinks from the top referring domains is important. I repeat, very, very important.

Did you know that around 90.88 percent of pages without any referring pages lose out on traffic from Google search pages? So where does that bring us? The search-engine Gods will smile at you only if you have unique number of referring domains to your website.

If your site still does not have high-quality, multiple referring domains, you are losing on some big-time traffic. And ultimately the engagement along with.

 Everything said and done, are you now thinking of how to build one? You are in luck, read away.

How to get more referring domains?

Unlike backlinks, you need a lot of referring domains to wave the flag at Google. Building a profile of referring domains might take more time than you anticipate. Read on to find out more ways you can get more referring domains

1. Know your Audience 

2. Content is the fuel

3. Give a Push 

4. Be a Guest “Guest blogging”

5. Know what’s works for them 

Know your Audience 

The first rule in SEO is to know your audience. Do a market survey and identify your ideal visitors, audience who might be interested in what you are saying. After all isn’t that what we are all aiming for. This will help you in building relevant referring domains that will bring you results.

Also it will be a good idea to map out top websites that are doing well in your niche or expertise. This will help you tremendously instead of blinding a set of referring domains.

Content is the fuel

For any magic to work, you need to have rocking content that will earn you links. And before you go blindly creating content, you need to have a strategy in place that will give people a reason to link back to you. You must make sure to cover possible content gaps and maximum relevant topics in website.

Do you have inforgraphics, interviews, ebooks etc on your site? No? Well, its never too late to start now as they are guaranteed ways getting more referring domains.

Give it a Push 

Well, just creating content and sitting put won’t help, will it? You need to go out there and make the right eyes see your content. Make sure you specially promote it to people who share a similar niche or content as yours. This might make them link back to your content.

Be a Guest “Guest Blogging”

writing blogs on a bunch of unpopular sites, unfortunately, won’t get you anywhere. It might even earn you a black hat from Google. Guest writing blogs in an authoritative website of your niche is one to increase the referring domains along. You can start by listing down the popular blogs or sites you want to write to and reach out to them. This will bring in new visitors with the possibility of converting to your audience

Know what’s Works for them

Any numericals or data on any website is almost always linked to the original site. So, what do we do? We create linkable original data! So include any data, surveys, numericals, case studies etc., you can as this will increase the chance of getting you additional links back to your webpage.

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