How to get referral traffic (and how to get more of it)

What referral traffic is, in one minute

Referral traffic is the share of your website traffic that arrives from a backlink on another website rather than from search, an ad, or someone typing your address in. When a reader clicks a backlink in a guest article, a directory listing or a community thread, analytics records that platform as the source and files the visit under referral. It is the oldest mechanic on the web, and for a B2B audience it is still one of the most valuable ways to get qualified visitors — links like these lift your SEO as they send them.

What makes these visits convert is context. A visitor who follows a backlink from a source they trust has already been warmed up by the platform that sent them, so they land knowing roughly what you do. That is why a modest amount of referral traffic from the right website often beats a large amount of cold traffic from anywhere else — and why learning how to get it is worth a marketing team's time. The backlink does two jobs at once: it sends a real visitor today, and it strengthens the SEO authority that helps your search rankings tomorrow.

Where referral traffic comes from

Before you work out how to get more of them, it helps to know which platforms actually send them. Most of a website's referral traffic comes from a short list of source types, and each one asks for a different kind of content in return for the link.

Read the table as a menu, not a ranking. The best mix of platforms depends on your audience and the content you can realistically produce: a data-led SaaS company will lean on digital PR, while a services business can use partner websites and directories like the ones above. Find out which platforms your buyers use, then reach out there first.

How to get referral traffic: five tactics that work

Each tactic below is a way to earn a backlink on a website your audience already trusts, using content and outreach. None are quick hacks; all of them compound. Pick two or three that fit your business and use them properly — teams like SMEs and agencies use this whole list — rather than starting all five at once.

1. Reclaim unlinked mentions

Plenty of websites already mention your brand without a backlink. Each one is a referring website waiting to be switched on: a short, polite note asking the author to make the mention clickable turns existing goodwill into a working link. It is the single fastest way to get referral traffic from work you have already done — no new content required.

2. Ask partners, suppliers and customers for a backlink

The cheapest referral traffic you will ever get comes from the relationships you already have. Partner pages, "who we work with" lists and case studies are all natural homes for a backlink back to your website. Make the request specific — send the exact URL and a line of anchor text — so the backlink is easy to add on their platform.

3. Publish guest content where your audience reads

A guest article on a respected industry website puts your backlink in front of exactly the audience you want, and earns a durable referring website at the same time. Lead with content that helps their readers first; an editor will only backlink to your website when the piece stands on its own. This is slow, relationship-led work, which is why many teams hand it to a specialist — our guest post service exists for exactly this.

4. Turn original data into digital PR

A small survey or a number nobody else has published gives journalists and bloggers a reason to backlink to your website. One good data point can become a source of referral traffic that other platforms cite for years. You do not need a big study — you need one statistic worth quoting, packaged as content people can build on.

5. Strengthen the authority behind every link

Referral links and SEO reinforce each other, so a deliberate link-building programme lifts your SEO and your traffic at once. If you want to move faster than organic outreach allows, our Ahrefs DR link building and backlink services build the source base for you, with every link documented.

How to get more referral traffic once you have started

Getting the first links is one thing; getting more referral traffic, month after month, is a different discipline. Once a few sources are live, the goal shifts from finding any link to compounding the ones that work — turning a handful of websites into a steady base that also feeds your SEO.

The lever that matters most is content that earns links on its own. A one-off guest post gets you one link; a genuinely useful resource like a template, a calculator or a data study gets linked to again and again, so more referral traffic arrives without more outreach, and it lifts your SEO as the links add up. Build one asset like that and every new website that discovers it becomes a fresh source, which is how the best B2B teams get more referral traffic from less effort over time.

The second lever is repetition across platforms. Once a tactic works on one platform, run it on the next: if a guest article on one website sent good referral visits, pitch three more like it; if one directory converted, use every directory your market uses and find out which sends the most. Consistency is what turns a lucky link into a channel, and it is how you get more referral visits to your website than a competitor who tried each source once and moved on — so keep working the platforms that pay out for your website.