We all know that Google Analytics give us access to a wealth of information about our website traffic. You can find out not only how many website visitors you have but when they came, what content they looked at, how long they stayed and what page they exited from (along with much more valuable information). One of the statistics that I keep a close eye on is referring sites (under traffic sources).
Google Analytics Referral Traffic
Imagine my surprise when I sat down to analyze my website traffic for January and I discovered that my 3rd highest source of referral traffic came from SocialMediaToday.com. The reason I was so surprised is that (as much as I hate to admit this) I had never heard of them before.
Now, I pride myself in trying to keep up with the major social networking sites but let's face it, that can be a daunting task. So who are they and how the heck did I get so much referral traffic from them?
Syndicating Your RSS Feed
As I started taking a closer look, I noticed that within 2 days, I had 47 visits from their site. Upon closer inspection, I found the link and followed it to find out how this happened. It turns out that the link was from the RSS feed that I syndicated to Tia Peterson's BizChickBlogs website. (Ladies, be sure to check out Tia's BizChickBlogs community.) It turns out that Tia syndicates her RSS feed for Biz Chick Blogs to Social Media Today.
(Hmmm . . . interesting! The connections suddenly made sense to me. Even though I was totally unaware of a site, I benefited from referral traffic because of my connection to Tia. Isn't social networking wonderful?)
A Community of Bloggers
What is Social Media Today, anyways? They describe themselves as a community of bloggers and they pride themselves as being a "blog of blogs" so to speak. It's free to join and you can syndicate your RSS feed to them. (Don't look to this site to connect and socialize like on Facebook or FriendFeed. It's not that kind of a site. You can find them on Twitter and Facebook though.)
So, what's the article that drove this new traffic? It's "The Synergy of Business and Blogging" - a Collaborative Effort of 31 Bloggers" the free eBook that I contributed to last month. (Be sure to read the post if you haven't already and download your free copy - no strings attached. I don't even ask for your email.)
Your turn! Have you had a similar experience? Do you know someone who you owe a big thank you to? (Thank you Tia!) Have you discovered valuable information that you were unaware of by delving into your Google Analytics statistics?