If search engine optimization is part of your daily tasks, you most likely have heard of referring domains. It is an important metric for SEO specialists, especially when measuring the results of a link-building strategy. It also can help you get a high domain authority, and therefore shine on the SERP for your targeted keywords. Here's everything you need to know about this crucial KPI.
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Templates using this KPI
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Integrations using this KPI
Referring domains, which can also be called linking domains, are external websites from which your web page gets one or more backlinks.
Although incredibly similar, there are some differences from backlinks, which are 1 hyperlink pointing back at your domain, from other domains. For example, if you have 3 links from Ahrefs, then it would count as 3 backlinks but 1 referring domain.
They are a multitude of tools that can give you a full backlinks report, which includes all referring domains. It will also tell you if the links are high-quality, your new backlinks, and on what anchor text they have been placed. Tools such as Ahrefs, or Moz do an excellent job to give you all the necessary data about your backlinks and you can track this data from both tools with Dasthis.
This is a hard one because there aren't industry benchmarks. A good way to see if you have a good backlink profile is to compare it to your competitor's. Make sure you have at least the same number of referring domains, and ideally more as the websites you want to outrank. The general rule of thumb is the more referring domains the better, as long as they are from quality sources and were acquired organically.
Again, it's hard to know if you gave a bad total number of referring domains without spying on competitors. Also, check if you have more outbound links than inbound links, which isn't a good indicator. If you are just starting or your strategy isn't generating wanted results, we recommend checking our best practices section.
Your referring domains report can be added to monthly reports. Here are a few :
SEO report template
This report contains all of the most important metrics for your SEO strategy from your favorite SEO tools, like Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google analytics. Track your number of backlinks, top referral sources, domain authority, top queries, and your overall SEO performance.
Google Analytics report template
Track all your webpage data, from traffic sources like organic traffic or referral traffic, audience metrics, conversions, transactions, sessions, and top pages. Grab this template as it is or personalize it in a few clicks.
Digital marketing report template
Are you reaching your target audience? Are your marketing efforts generating new clients or conversions? From SEO to social media and PPC, this generic report gives you a good overview of all your online marketing strategy metrics.
When performing a link-building strategy, here are a few tips and best practices to keep in mind.
Don't get too many referring domains at once
Unfortunately, you are at Google's mercy and you need to be careful to not be on its bad side. Building backlinks and referring domains should be as organic as possible. Focus on long-term content marketing strategies, guest blogging on quality links, directories with high domain authority, etc. Getting a too high number of backlinks in a month will most likely get flagged by the Google search engine results algorithm.
Keep an eye out for broken links
A great way to get backlinks is to keep an eye out for broken links on quality web pages. As a website owner, you don't want broken links, so why don't you find awesome opportunities and recommend your content to replace them? This is a great practice, especially if one of your competitors closes the shop or gets bought. Along with thorough keyword research, also check referring domains and contact those website owners to add your own links.
Quality links from quality websites
Although we said earlier that the more links the better, you also need to focus on quality. The quality of your link profile is a very important factor for Google. Low-quality backlinks can actually hurt your search engine ranking, whereas high-quality referring domains, even if you have much fewer website links, should help your page rank. You also want to diversify your type of referral domain: resource page, web directories, podcasts, blog comments, forums, etc.
Although referring domains is widely used, there are multiple synonyms that can be used. Here are a few:
Ref. domains, RDs, Linking domains, Followed RDs, Dofollow RDs, Unique domains
Conversion Rate
Customer lifetime value (CLV)
Backlinks
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Cost per lead (CPL)
Domain authority
Domain rating
Unique visitor
Return on marketing investment
Bounce rate
Pageviews
Average time on page
Traffic sources
Keyword Difficulty
Return on ad spend
