Using referrers as a source of traffic

A simple way to get people to send you hits is to display top or recent referrers. This article expands on the following:
-What are referrers;
-Types of referral scripts.

Simply put, referrers are websites that send you visitors. Be it google, a link trade, or some random website that has linked to you.

Some websites have what is called a toplist. This is a script that keeps track of how many people each website sends them, and lists these sites in order from the one who sends the most traffic to the one who sends the least (or it may only show the top 10). These are a good source of quick traffic, so do a few trades with these type of sites. The only problem is that your link on their site is not a hardlink, so it wont affect your page rank. For Blogger, a good toplist script is Xclicks. It can be tedious to set up, so follow the guide on the site.

A very simple way to show the top x referrers is a script called e-Referrer. Simply sign up, copy and past a piece of code and it will display on your site the last x referrers and how many visitors they sent you. To the left is a screenshot of how it looks and the features are highlighted

Remember, if you find a site that looks like it could be a good source of traffic and it has a script running like e-referrer, send some hits to them to get listed on their referrer list to get some traffic back.

The code for e-Referrer can be easily installed using the following steps:
- Log in to your Blogger account.
- On the first "New Post" click "Layout".
- Click "Add a Page Element".
- Choose the "HTML/JavaScript" then click, "Add To Blog".
- Paste the e-Referrer code into the space provided. (ctrl v)
- Click "Save Changes".

There are other scripts available out there that can be used for blogger. If you come across a site that has a decent looking script, try to find a link for it on the site.

Using similar websites to find sources of traffic

The following article expands on the following ideas :
- Link trades ;
- Public Stats / Hit Counters ;
- Top Referrers.

One of the best ways to get an idea of sources of traffic is to surf websites that are similar to yours. No matter how unique your site is, there will still be other sites that have common content to some extent. Finding these sites is merely a matter of googling your keywords or keywords that you think are similar to yours.

Once you find a few appropriate websites, look over the links area and see if they are accepting link trades. If your site is up and running, send them an email or fill in the link trade form. Link trades are a great source of traffic and also help to increase your page rank. If the site does not advertise that it is accepting link trades, it may still be worth sending them a polite email requesting a link trade. Alternatively, you could put up their link on your site and send them some traffic for free. Some sites will place your link up as a result of this. Still looking at the links area, it is worth clicking on the listed links that are similar to your website to see if they are accepting link trades. Follow the same steps as in the previous paragraph.

Some websites have public stats. I.E. they make available the infomation for website viewers to see where the website is getting its traffic from. This is fairly rare, however keep a look out for this button as it is a common stat counter that shows public stats. Click on it and you can see where the website is getting its traffic from. Vistit these sites and see if you can trade links with them or submit your link. Similarly, websites may have a link similar to "top 100 referrers' which lists sites that are sending that site the most traffic. These links are well worth checking out.

Each of the concepts discussed above are explored further in the website and can be accessed by clicking on the labels either at the end of this post or in the sidebar.