How do referring domains matter for web visibility?

Visibility on the web is becoming ever more important and ever harder to achieve. As the Internet floods with brands all clamoring for the attention of audiences and algorithms, how can you make sure that your brand stands out in the crowd? One of the keys to this is optimizing your website for search engines — SEO.

SEO is crucial for Internet visibility, but SEO is not as simple as it once was. Search engines like Google heavily favor quality and relevance in the pages they promote. How can you prove that your content is relevant and of high quality if nobody can find and engage with it? It’s a bit of a Catch-22: you need the engagement to please the algorithm, but you can’t get the engagement if the algorithm doesn’t promote you.

Referring domains can be key to leapfrogging this awkward conundrum and building strong SEO. They can increase organic traffic and improve your SEO profile by linking to your content. 

Here, we’ll go through what referring domains are, how they’re useful for brand visibility on the web, and how you can get your own backlinks into high-quality referring domains.

What are referring domains?

Referring domains (sometimes called ‘linking domains’) are domains that link to other sites. They ‘refer’ audiences to third-party sites via backlinks.

If you’re trying to raise your digital profile and SEO, getting backlinks into referring domains is highly desirable. The number (and quality) of domains referring to your website and/or digital profiles can make a huge difference to your reach, reputation, and popularity with search engine algorithms.

What’s the difference between referring domains and backlinks?

Referring domains and backlinks are not exactly the same thing. The former are domains that link to other domains.

Backlinks, on the other hand, are the hyperlinks that take users from the referring domain to the referred domain. For example, in the image below taken from a recent Namecheap article, the text in orange is a hyperlink (or ‘backlink’) that, if clicked on, will take the user through to the .ORG Impact Awards site. 

In this case Namecheap is the referring domain, and the orange text is the backlink:

So, a single referring domain can contain multiple backlinks to different websites.

While the two are very similar and intrinsically related, it’s important to understand the difference between them, as the number of backlinks vs the number of referring domains you have is another important factor for SEO.

Receiving three backlinks from a single referring domain is helpful, but obtaining three backlinks from three different referring domains is even more beneficial. This is because backlinks from multiple domains signal to search engines that a broader range of sources find your content valuable, enhancing your website’s credibility and authority.

Why do you need referring domains?

Why do you need to know so much about referring domains? What practical use do they have for your business? Let’s take a look.

1. They’re great for SEO

The major benefit of referring domains is that they’re fantastic for SEO. We’ll be going into this in more detail later, but for now, here are just a few of the ways that referring domains boost your SEO:

• They raise the quality of your backlink profile.
• They can have a significant impact on your Google Search rankings.
• Depending on the reputation and quality of your linking domains, they can bring a big boost to your own reputation in the eyes of Google’s algorithm.

2. They increase your audience

Not only do referring domains improve your SEO and increase visibility, but they also bring in more organic traffic simply because everyone who visits the referring domain may also click through to your website.

If your backlinks are well placed within the referring domain and excite interest, you’re more likely to get more traffic. So, if you can, ensure referring domains place and format your links well.

3. They can boost your brand’s image

Backlinks are great for bolstering your reputation, especially if they’re embedded in high-quality referring domains.

When someone links to your website, they’re giving you a big vote of confidence. They’re saying that they trust you and (depending on the context of the backlink) that they respect your content and maybe even consider you an authority on certain topics.

All of this is great for your brand’s image and reputation, both with search engine algorithms and with the general public.

How do referring domains improve SEO?

If you want to improve your search engine ranking, there are few better ways to do it than to develop a good linking strategy and build backlinks into referring domains.

Search engine algorithms prioritize high-quality content produced by authoritative domains with wide appeal. Ultimately, the algorithm’s ‘aim’ is to provide searchers with top-grade, accurate, and relevant search results. Referral domains play a big part in the algorithm’s selection process.

A high level of referral traffic — especially if that referral traffic comes from somewhere with a high domain rating — indicates that your content is of good quality, trustworthy, and relevant to particular topics, industries, locations, etc. 

Localization efforts in your SEO strategy can further enhance this, as targeting content to specific regions helps ensure your referrals are relevant and impactful. So, getting relevant content into good referring domains is one of the best ways to quickly grab the algorithm’s attention and rise through the search index.

This is especially the case for B2B SEO, which can be tougher to manage than more commercial SEO. By getting quality backlinks into industry-relevant referring domains, you can quickly build up a very useful backlink profile. Referrals from authoritative websites will tell Google that you are an important player in this particular industry, which will, in turn, encourage its search engine algorithms to prioritize your content for industry-relevant searches.

There is a caveat to all this, though: your backlink profile is important and can impact your SEO success. You may have loads of backlinks across a variety of referring domains, but if those domains aren’t reputable, trustworthy, and authoritative, then your backlink profile will suffer, and you won’t get the SEO gains you were expecting.

So, when working on a backlink campaign, remember that your backlink profile will be better if you get your links into high-quality, reputable, and popular domains.

How to check referring domains

It’s useful to be able to check which domains are referring to you and how well their referrals are working for you. But how?

Luckily, it’s not too complicated to check your referring domains and backlinks. You can do it from the Google Search Console, which will give you a rundown of referring pages for any URL.

Screenshot sourced from Google

You can also use Google Search Console to get a rundown of the total number of external links to your site, the top linked pages (i.e., your pages that are most frequently linked on external sites), the top linking sites (i.e., the referring domains that send the most traffic to your site), and the top linking text (i.e., the best-performing anchor text for your backlinks).

How can you get more domains to refer to your website?

By this point in the article, you’ve hopefully understood that referring domains are very good for your brand, and the more external websites you can get to refer to you, the better your SEO performance will be. 

Now, let’s take a look at how you can persuade strong websites with high domain authority to carry your backlinks.

1. Produce great content

There are all kinds of tips and tricks for search engine optimization and building backlinks, but the best possible strategy is to become exactly what the algorithms want: a high-quality, engaging, and authoritative website.

By creating the kind of content that people want to consume, you will automatically become the kind of website that referring domains wish to link to. Nobody wants to link to a poorly-written, poorly-designed site, as carrying spammy links like that is as bad for the linker’s reputation as the linkee’s. Linking to good-quality, engaging, accurate, and relevant content works in everyone’s favor.

So, give your content an overhaul and focus on your content creation strategy. Bring in the best writers and designers that you can access. Look deep into the kind of content that resonates with your target audience. Create a comprehensive content plan. And start making a name for your brand as a source of fantastic, high-quality content.

2. Embed images, gifs, and videos

Images, gifs, and videos all contribute to the quality of your content. Well-placed images, engaging gifs, and even good formatting all make your content more interesting and more likely to pull in audiences. And the kind of content that pulls in audiences will also pull in referring domains.

Make sure that the images, gifs, videos, and design features that you use are relevant and appropriate for your content. Don’t just stuff visual content in for its sake. Ideally, your imagery should complement and enhance your copy.

Also, make sure that your images and videos don’t make your pages perform poorly — especially on mobile. Optimizing your pages for mobile may involve compressing videos and imagery so that they render faster and don’t cause lag. 

3. Network

A strong network is a huge advantage for link-building efforts. You can leverage a good network to get high-quality backlinks into friendly referring domains through things like guest blog posts and so on. 

Often, this kind of arrangement works on a tit-for-tat basis, in which brands will exchange guest posts, feature on each others’ podcasts, etc. This works out for both brands, as it increases their reach and brings in more organic traffic than would otherwise be the case.

When networking with a view to backlinking, look for brands that will complement your own offering. For example, relevant websites for an activewear brand to work with would include sports sites, gym sites, fitness influencers, and so on.

4. Hire professionals

If you don’t have the time or skills to properly get to grips with all the above, it may be a good idea to hire professionals who can audit and overhaul your content, landing pages, and linking profile for you. This is an especially good idea if you work in an industry that’s tricky to market through traditional SEO, such as B2B SaaS. In this case, a good SaaS SEO agency can create content, optimize your existing pages, and network hard-to-find high-quality domains willing to carry your backlinks.

If you don’t want to go down the full SEO agency route, something as simple as hiring a freelance writer for blog posts and social media content can make a huge difference. By elevating the quality of your content and varying the types of content you put out, you can start building the kind of content profile that will make referring domains want to use your backlinks.

Use referring domains to raise your visibility on the Internet

Referring domains are incredible for SEO. Getting plenty of backlinks into plenty of high-quality referring domains will work wonders for your online reputation. It will increase organic traffic and encourage search engine algorithms to rocket your pages up the search index.

By producing high-quality content that domains will be proud to link to, you can increase your chances of getting your backlinks into more (and better!) domains. So, be sure to put your all into your content strategy.

Networking is also your friend when it comes to referring domains. Like-for-like deals in which friendly brands and websites collaborate and swap guest posts can build up a strong stable of backlinks that will make search engines take notice.

And, of course, if you haven’t the time or the specialist skills to do all this yourself, there are freelancers, contractors, and agencies who can help out. Don’t be afraid to shop your SEO and backlinking needs out to the professionals if need be!