Over the years, ranking high on the Search Engine Results Pages has forced many businesses to become very inventive when doing their SEO.
Some of the methods used have been shady while others have been inspirational.
In the past, people used keyword stuffing, spam comments and testimonials, invisible text, and paid links in an effort to get people to visit their websites and blogs.
These manipulative techniques soon became outlawed by search engines and using them could result in complete banning from the SERPs.
This is why people are looking for white hat methods of getting better rankism and avoid backlisting.
Playing it clean when it comes to SEO can also be very challenging since it can take a long time for your website or blog to be ranked high.
This is where influencer marketing comes in.
Influencers, already have a wide range of readers, all willing to pay attention to his or her opinions.
When you work with an influencer, then you improve your search ranking and bring in a lot of targeted readers to your website or blog.
In this article, you will understand why you should look for influencers to work with and how it will help your blog or website in ranking high on the search engines.
Table of Contents
Section 1 – Understanding Influencers
What is an influencer?
What Are Social Media Influencers?
Types of Influencers
By Follower Numbers
By Types of Content
By Level of Influence
Section 2 – How Influencers Improve SEO
Building credible and authoritative inbound links
Boost brand visibility and engagement
Keep your content fresh
Generate collaborative content and publishing
Finding relevant authoritative influencers
Section 3 – Step-by-Step Guide to Influencer SEO Success
Define Your Target Audience
Identify Your Preferred Influencers
Engage Your Preferred Influencers
Work Together
Section 1 – Understanding Influencers
What is an influencer?
An influencer is someone who can be defined as having the following:
- A high number of followers in a particular niche, where he or she actively engages them. The volume of the following is determined by the size of the topics discussed.
- The ability to influence the buying decisions of his or her followers, due to his or her position, knowledge, authority, or relationship with the audience.
You must note that these individuals are not simply marketing tools, but are social relationship assets, who can be engaged by brands to collaborate and achieve a marketing objective.
Who are social media influencers?
Social media has rapidly grown in importance as a marketing channel over the last decade. In January 2019, a “We Are Social” report said that over 3.4 billion people use social media on a daily basis. This is about 45% of the world’s population.
These huge volumes of social media users also tend to look at influencers to guide them in making purchasing decisions.
Influencers on social media have built a niche for themselves, by building a credible reputation using their expertise and knowledge.
They actively make regular posts about their niche topics and interests on their preferred social media platform. This engagement generates a large following of enthusiastic people who pay close attention to their opinions.
Businesses have embraced the use of social media influencers in their marketing strategies since they can create trends and encourage their followers to buy products and services from these businesses.
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Types of Influencers
There are various ways in which you can categorize influencers.
This is something you need to do when you want to align a marketing campaign to a particular social media influencer type.
You can group influencers by the niche in which they operate, but this narrows down your options considerably.
The best way to categorize influencers is:
- By their follower numbers
- By the types of content that they post
- By their level of influence
Influencers can be low in one category and very high in another.
For example, when you target influencers based on their celebrity status, they seem to have a lot of followers who listen to them, but these people may not have the expertise in particular niches, say technical gadgets.
There are other influencers who have a lot of expertise in technical gadgets, but they cannot have the expertise to promote a lifestyle change, for example.
This is the reason why you must understand the types of influencers based on these categories, so you can know which ones to target when you are undertaking a marketing campaign.
Let us take a closer look at the categories of influencers and see how you can use them to market your business.
#1: By Follower Numbers
Mega-Influencers
Mega-influencers are people who have an outstanding number of followers. Basically, these are categorized as people who have more than 1 million followers on their social media networks.
Mega-influencers tend to be celebrities, who have gained fame online. These can be musicians, movie stars, sportspeople, and even television stars.
Mega-influencers are a very expensive group of people to work with, and they are mainly targeted by major brands. Some of these influencers can ask for more than 1 million dollars to create a post promoting a product or service.
Mega-influencers are also finicky about the companies that they work with. Basically, these influencers work through agencies and are very difficult to approach if you are just a small company.
Macro-Influencers
Macro-influencers are people who have a relatively large number of followers, but cannot be compared to mega-influencers. The number of followers for this group range from 40,000 to 1 million.
They tend to be more accessible to small and medium businesses for collaboration purposes.
There are two types of people who can be found in this group:
- B-grade celebrities, who have not yet hit the big time, but still have a substantial following.
- Online experts who have successfully built a following based on the niche and topics that they discuss.
In this group, online exerts are a favorite for firms that want to engage people within their niches.
Macro-influencers have a high profile and can be a great asset for raising awareness.
There are more macro-influencers than mega-influencers, which makes it easier for businesses to find one willing to work with them.
Macro-influencers also have the experience of working with brands, which makes it easier for your business to communicate with them without having to explain the nitty-gritty details.
However, there is a caveat when it comes to using macro-influencers.
They are also known to engage in a lot of fake news and opinions, generally aimed at getting attention and not building trust. You must be very careful and vet these influencers before you engage them.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are normal people with a sizable number of followers who they have engaged through their knowledge and expertise about a particular niche or topic.
Micro-influencers have a special relationship with their followers who have put trust in their opinions over a long time. Their followers are normally devotees of the niche.
For micro-influencers, it is not about the number of followers that they have but the relationship and interaction they have with their audience.
If you must consider numbers, micro-influencers can be termed as those having between 1,000 and 40,000 followers.
Micro-influencers are very particular about the companies that they engage with for promotional purposes.
They value the relationship that they have built with their followers and do not want to promote potentially harmful products or services.
They do not actively know about the players in their niche and you have to approach them and explain why you want their services.
Due to this special relationship that these influencers have with their target audience, they can even promote a product or service for free, as long as they feel it will greatly benefit their followers.
Micro-influencers have a special power that has grown over the years. There was a time when their marketing potential was non-existent, to say the least.
Today, they are probably as effective as celebrities when it comes to promoting brands.
This is especially true for Gen Z users, who spend a lot of time on the Internet as opposed to watching Tv or engaging in sporting activities, or going to movies.
In reality, micro-influencers are the future of influencer SEO.
There is a lot of fragmentation of niches on the Internet. It does not matter how obscure your business niche is, you will probably find a group on Facebook or Pinterest that deals with the products and services that you create.
It is in these small groups that micro-influencers have the most power.
Nano-Influencers
Nano-influencers can be termed as the “Big fish in a small pond”.
This is a new type of influencer group that has become relevant due to its profound influence within a very small and specialized niche.
They may have a few thousand followers or even less than a thousand followers, but their opinions are religiously followed by their audience.
Most big brands think of nano-influencers as being inconsequential, but they can be very important to people within a small and specialized niche.
Nano-influencers will most probably ask for very little compensation when it comes to promoting a specialized product or service. Basically, their engagement is due to a love for the topic and niche they operate in, and not for monetary gain.
They are a great place to start when you are starting to use influencers for SEO purposes.
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#2: By Types of Content
When it comes to influencer marketing, the highest number of influencers is found on social media and blogging. These are mainly micro-influencers.
However, there has been an increased use of YouTube for video influencer marketing.
Let us take a look at the types of social media influencers categorized by the type of content that they produce.
Bloggers
The people with the most authentic and vibrant relationships with their followers are bloggers and people who write posts on social media.
This has led to brand targeting them as the primary partners for collaboration when it comes to influencer SEO.
If a popular blogger mentions your business on blog articles and social media posts, then you will get an increased interest from their audience, wanting to try out your products and services.
Bloggers have built a sizable volume of followers within their specific niches.
You can find blogs that have a lot of influence when it comes to health, child care, music, personal development, SEO, and many others.
Most successful bloggers have a healthy respect for their audience and they create trustworthy content, which makes them great for influencer SEO purposes.
Another way in which you can use a blogger for influencer SEO purposes is to participate in a guest post or interview.
If you get permission to create a guest post or have an interview on an influential blog, you control the narrative, and you generally have the platform to promote your products and services, including linking back to your own blog or website.
If you want to go a notch higher, you can opt to pay an influential blogger to promote your products or services using a paid post.
In this case, you can write the post yourself, or direct the blogger on exactly what you want them to say on the post.
Sponsored posts are paid for, unlike the casual mention that you can get in a general article or guest post. Sponsored posts have to be labeled as such using a disclaimer, so people know that the content is paid for.
The sponsored post disclaimer has not been seen to affect how people interact with the products or services mentioned in the post.
The Gen Z demographic does not seem to be bothered by the fact that a post has been sponsored.
When you want to optimize your website or blog by using an influencer, the best avenue to go for is the blogger category.
YouTubers
Video content has also become very popular as a way of swaying peoples’ buying decisions. YouTube has become one of the primary channels for video influencer marketing.
Instead of having a video posted on a website or blog, you can have a YouTuber create a video where they mention your products or services to their followers.
You may also create your own channel and then have popular YouTube influencers mention or link to your channel in their description section.
For example, if a Youtuber has created a popular video about fashion accessories, you can create a video showcasing your fashion products and then have the YouTuber link to your video.
Podcasters
Podcasts have become very popular today and have become an avenue for influencer marketing.
Several podcasts have become a household name. a good example is “Entrepreneurs on Fire”, by John Lee dumas.
If you have never listened to influential podcasts, you can get a list of curated podcasts on Digital Trends, and get to know how you can use these channels to promote your business.
Social Posts Only
You cannot mention the above categories without mentioning social posts only.
These people who have excelled in using blog posts, YouTube, and Podcasts to influence their followers do not simply wait for them to appear magically and read their posts, watch their videos or listen to their podcasts.
They rely heavily on using social media posts to promote every piece of content that they come up with.
The major social media post-only channel has been Instagram, where influencers get people to know about their new content by creating visually stunning images to catch the eyes of their followers.
#3: By Level of Influence
Celebrities
Celebrities have been accredited with being the original social media influencers. Although their importance is waning when it comes to influencer SEO, they still have a role to play.
Celebrity endorsement is the trend that started influencer marketing. Businesses have used celebrities to promote their products and services for a very long time.
There are still many big companies that use celebrities to endorse their high-end products and services to this day.
However, there is a snag when it comes to using celebrities for influencer SEO.
They are not willing to work with many businesses apart from their own.
If a celebrity uses a product or service and they love it, they do not have any problems when it comes to mentioning them in their posts.
This is a case where the celebrity has enjoyed the product or service s is highly incentivized to promote it.
For instance, many musical instrument manufacturers have benefited hugely from celebrities who use these instruments.
A viral video that zooms in on a guitar being played by a sensational musician will go a long way in boosting the sales of that guitar even by fans.
A major problem that brands encounter when using celebrities for influencer marketing is that they may have little credibility with their audience on certain issues.
If Justin Bieber recommended an acne cream, then many of his followers could buy that product.
However, people who want to buy an affordable retirement home may not be swayed by his home ideas – he would probably market homes that cost millions of dollars which is out of the reach of his fans.
This is the reason why brands are not so enthusiastic about working with celebrities, especially when targeting normal people hustling to get ahead in life.
Their marketing value matters more to high-end product manufacturers and service providers.
Respected Opinion Leaders
Thought leaders such as journalists and industry experts are considered influencers and hold great value for brands.
The qualification, positions, and experience of industry leaders and thought leaders are the drivers of their influence on their followers.
This type of respect is gained from the type of work that they do.
For example, a journalist who works for CNN or writes for Time Magazine is probably not an expert on some of the topics he writes about, but the fact that he or she works for a prestigious media organization can make him or her a credible influencer.
The influencers who fall within this category include;
- Academics
- Journalists
- Industry experts
- Professional advisers
If you engage a journalist working for a popular publication or media company, and the journalist talks positively about your products or services, then he or she is acting as an influencer and will help bring traffic to your business.
One of the major perks of using journalists as influencers is that they can write a piece for free if they feel the products and services are newsworthy.
The lines between traditional media and online media are blurring. You can find content creators and bloggers working with thought leaders and industry experts.
It is not uncommon to find these people being mentioned in blog posts and social media campaigns.
One thing that many thought leaders and industry experts share is that they built their followers through offline means, such as newspapers, industry publications, and media houses; this means they may not have as much influence on social media and other online avenues.
Chromo-Influencers – Normal people with a somewhat large following
Although the major proportion of influencers have built a following due to their expertise in a particular niche, others have gained credibility informally through their attractive and engaging online activity.
For example, a person who creates funny social media posts about everything has a following based on his talent as a comedian and not any formal expertise in that niche.
Others have gained a credible following based on the videos they create, which may not point to a particular niche.
Basically, these are just normal people, doing what they love and gaining a following due to a special character that they possess.
These are influencers who can be used across a wide range of niche products and services, but may not have the “specific” impact that can be created by people in the other categories mentioned above – however, they can be very effective.
There was no formal tag used to describe this group of influencers until a British Agency, PYMB, came up with a trademarked name, Chromo-influencers.
They came up with the name based on the fact that these were the highest-performing group of people that the agency has ever worked with.
The chromo-influencers are people with the best understanding of their followers and communicate in a language that they understand. They have slowly enticed their followers based on their personal characteristics.
The number of followers seen in this category varies widely, but you will find that their opinion matters very much to their followers.
Section 2 – How Influencers Improve SEO
Creating backlinks is still a supreme SEO technique, but getting quality backlinks has continued to be a challenge for business owners and bloggers alike.
Influencer SEO can help you build authoritative links to your blog or website and build your user engagement signals, visibility, and traffic.
Influencer SEO is a powerful tool and you need to add it to your SEO toolkit.
Let us look at the benefits that you can derive when you use influencers for SEO purposes.
Building credible and authoritative inbound links
In most cases, using influencers for inbound links will require you to disclose that the links are sponsored.
The only way to go around this is to create influencer campaigns that are driven by organic content.
Traditionally, major brands have use influencers, especially celebrities, in their TV commercials.
These are sales-driven campaigns that are created to push the products and services directly to the target customer.
When you want to use influencers for SEO purposes, you need to create campaigns that are specific to issues that people encounter within your niche.
This means that you are not using the influencers as an extension of your sales team, but using them as an awareness tool, when they create videos or text content that mentions your products and services.
In this way, you can legally bypass disclosure.
The best way to go about this, if you are just starting engaging influencers is to target micro-influencers, and get those credible inbound links.
Boost brand visibility and engagement
One of the major obstacles that brands and marketers have to go over is getting heard above the noise.
The competition in the digital marketplace has become extremely fierce.
According to Moz, engagement, and traffic is ranked as the fifth most important ranking factor on Google.
In a manner of speaking, the more you engage your target audience, the more traffic you get on your blog or website, which in turn leads to higher revenue generation from your products and services.
This is why influencer marketing and SEO are crucial assets to every digital enterprise.
An advertising survey by Nielsen showed that 92% of people trust recommendations made by their peers above advertisements pushed by brands.
Who do these consumers turn to when they need the opinion of someone they trust?
They go to the influencers that they follow.
Twitter and Annalect did surveys that showed that users have the same implicit trust in influencers as they have in their close friends.
Influencers have the power to make their followers religiously trust their every review and recommendation about products and services.
This is why influencers SEO can be used to increase your visibility and trust on social media, blogs, and videos.
The kind of traffic that influencers can drive to your blog or website will boost your SEO rankings better than paid ads.
However, you must also consider the content engagement of the influencers that you target.
You might find an influencer with a million followers who may not have the same convincing power as a micro-influencer with only 30,000 followers.
Business Insider lends credence to this fact by stating that, “Posts from people with small followings get strong engagement and bring an air of authenticity and trust”.
This is what is called reach versus engagement.
To illustrate this further, take a look at the difference between followers of YouTuber Connor Franta and Celebrity Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon has more than 38 million followers, while Franta has 12 million (207% greater reach). However, Fallon’s engagement is at 1.2 million followers, while Franta has an engagement of 2 million followers (66% greater engagement).
It is therefore more reasonable that you would be better served by having Franta mention your brand as opposed to Fallon.
Use influencer SEO to increase your visibility (reach) as well as engagement, by choosing the right influencers to work with.
Many people overlook this crucial aspect of reach vs. engagement when they are looking for influencers to partner with for SEO purposes.
Keep your content fresh
One of the major challenges that brands and content marketers face is creating fresh content regularly.
This is another area where influencer marketing can be of use.
You just need to engage influencers to create unique and captivating content that your target audience will find hard to resist.
Influencers can also push their audiences to create fresh content for you.
Using user-generated content is one way that brands are getting their names to stand above the crowd.
Influencers can drive their target audience to generate images and videos that show them using your products and services.
You can come up with a hashtag, which your influencer can use to create a post that will drive users to generate more content using the same hashtag. This can increase your social impressions dramatically.
Generate collaborative content and publishing
Creating collaborative content and publishing is a great way of cultivating deep relationships with influencers. This will improve your SEO efforts.
Having a high-quality partnership with an influencer makes sure that you have exceptional content, which will have collaborative opportunities shortly.
This should be looked at as a long-term goal, but once you build a mutually beneficial relationship, your collaborative content such as interviews and stints can bring in a lot of traffic for your business.
This can be achieved by bringing in different authoritative views, which will complement each other.
As partners, you both benefit from your mutual audience pool and the links you create will boost your SEO ranking.
The kind of relationships that you build through influencers can also give you and your business an inside access route to publishers who would otherwise be unreachable.
Influencer marketing opens doors – these doors could lead to other benefits and opportunities for the growth of your business.
Finding relevant authoritative influencers
Now that you know what kind of influencers you can target and the benefits that you can derive from them, you need to know how you can identify the influencers to work with.
When you get the right influencers to work with, you maximize the power of influencer SEO for your blog or website.
There are certain key metrics that you should consider when choosing influencers to work with. These include:
- Looking at the domain authority of an influencer, in the case of bloggers.
- Checking on the number of unique visitors the influencer gets every day, week, and month.
- Checking on the influencer engagement per post.
- Checking on the influencer demographics, such as gender, age, and location.
Considering the power of influencer SEO techniques, it is a major concern that many businesses and marketers are coming up short.
You should not ignore the power that you have to improve your SEO ranking by working with influencers.
This leads us to the next section, where we show you how you can go about improving your ranking using influencer SEO.
Section 3 – Step-by-Step Guide to Influencer SEO Success
The following steps will show you how you can create a strategy that will boost your SEO rankings by using influencer marketing.
Step 1 – Define your goals
Whenever you start creating a marketing strategy, you must start by outlining your goals. Set your objectives for what you aim to achieve through engaging influencers in your niche.
When you define your goals at the onset of your SEO plan, you shape the consistency of the strategy throughout its life.
You will also be able to define the statistics or metrics that you should monitor to measure how successful the campaign will be in the end.
Some of the major goals that you should identify include the following:
- Brand awareness – increasing the number of people who recognize, trust, and love your brand.
- Solid Brand identity – increasing the number of people who see your brand value and personality.
- Build your audience pool – getting more people to follow and subscribe to your blog or website.
- Engagement – getting people to like, comment on and share your content.
- Lead Generation – getting more people to click on your offers and lead magnets.
- Increasing sales – getting more people to buy your products and services.
- Customer loyalty – keeping more people interested and connected to your products and services.
- Link building – getting more links from authoritative influencers leading to your blog or website.
Step 2 – Choose the type of influencer SEO campaign that you want to follow
After you have identified your goals, you need to think about the type of influencer SEO campaign that you want to follow – the campaign must be in alignment with your goals.
There are usually three types of campaigns that you can use for influencer SEO purposes:
- Inspirational
- Paid
- A mix of both
You can inspire an influencer to share your content with his or her audience or create their own complimentary content.
You can pay an influencer to promote your products or services
You can use a mix of both.
Take a look at some of the following influencer SEO campaigns that you can use for your own purposes.
- Gifting – giving the influencer free products or services in exchange for a favorable review or mention – this is very popular in the tech industry.
- Guest posting – creating content and then using it on an influencer’s blog.
- Sponsored content – paying an influencer to feature your products and services on their blog or social media channels. You have the option of creating the content or letting the influencer create it on your behalf.
- Co-publishing content – collaborating with an influencer to create content that can be featured on your blog or website, their blog, or any other third-party site.
- Social media mentions – this is where you get the influencer to mention your products and services on their social media profiles or share your content.
- Contests and giveaways – this is where you start a contest and then ask the influencer to promote the content as you are willing to give away prizes to their followers.
- Influencer takeover – this is where you let the influencer take over your social media accounts for a defined period.
- Affiliate collaboration – this is where you give an influencer a percentage of any sales that they bring through their own efforts.
- Discount codes – this is where you offer a discount code that the influencer can give out to his or her followers to use when buying your products or services.
- Brand Ambassadorship – this is where you get influencers to become your brand ambassadors, where they promote your products and services in exchange for free products, exclusive offers, and features on your own brand.
These are just some of the influencer SEO campaigns that you can apply for your products and services. They are not set in stone, so you can customize them as you see fit for your business.
As you go about creating your influencer SEO campaign, feel free to use one or more of these ideas, in a manner that uniquely fits your brand.
Step 3 – Identify and Define Your Audience
You are probably raring to get your influencers, but before you do this you must define and identify your target audience.
Once you are clear about the goals of your influencer SEO strategy and the influencer type of marketing you want to use, then you should start thinking about your target audience.
You should spend some time outlining the specifics about the people you want to connect with using influencer SEO campaigns.
You must have a buyer persona, which shows the psychographic and demographic segmentation of your target audience.
Once you have a clear picture of your target audience, you will be able to define the influencers to use to reach them.
Step 4 – Identify the Right Influencers
Now you are getting to the exciting part of creating your influencer SEO strategy.
It is time to identify the influencers that you will use to connect with your target audience.
We have mentioned the influencer categories in this article, but let us mention them briefly:
- Bloggers
- Social media stars
- Celebrities
- Industry experts
- Thought leaders
- Current customers
- Non-competing brands
- And many more
Once you are clear about the type of influencer(s) you want to use, it is time to begin researching individuals and other non-competing brands that you can work with.
Influencers who share your audience pool
In order to find influencers whose target audience is the same as yours, you can use Alexa’s Audience Overlap Tool.
Type in the website or URLs of websites that you know have the same audience you are targeting.
You will get a report showing you several websites that have a similar audience.
The report will give you an indication of the number of guest blogging opportunities that you have.
This would be a great place to start looking for ways in which you can collaborate with these websites and their influencers.
If you are selling a course that deals in SEO, you might find authoritative websites such as NeilPatel.com.
Enter the URL and then see which other sites the audience visits.
Use the list of sites to look for ways to get a guest posting opportunity. You may also come across bogs owned by influencers with who you can work.
Get influencers through backlinks
With the use of Alexa’s Competitor Backlink Checker, you can find potential influencers within your niche.
You can enter up to 10 sites that your ideal audience visits. You can enter the sites that you found using the Audience Overlap Tools above.
Then run the backlink checker.
You will get a report that shows you all the links that point to the sites you have entered in your search.
You can then use this list to find influencers who are willing to give you mentions, or a link back to your site through the use of organic content.
They have already done this with your competitors, so it should not be a hard sell.
Get influencers by topic
If you do not have an idea of the sites that you share an audience pool with or any of your competitors, you can use Alexa’s Keyword Share of Voice Tool to find influencers who share your niche and topics.
Simply type in the term or keyword related to the niche where you want to gain an influence.
The report will display several sites that share the same voice for the term or keywords you entered.
Get influencers based on the total volume of engagement for a particular topic or niche
With Alexa’s Content Exploration Tool, you can find authoritative sites that have a high engagement within the topic or niche.
You will also see a list of the most popular articles about the topic drawn from Reddit and Twitter.
There are many other tools that you can use to find an influencer to collaborate with in your influencer SEO strategy.
You can go to social media and use hashtags to find influencers on Twitter and Instagram.
You can also use the following tools to find influencers on blogs and social media.
Step 5 – Vet Your Influencers
You are probably excited now that you have identified influencers with who you can work, right?
Well, hold on before you start reaching out to them.
You need to vet them and make sure that they fit in with your goals and brand.
As we mentioned earlier when we discussed reach vs. engagement, it is better to work with an influencer who has a small following, but with a higher engagement rate.
You should not simply look at the number of followers that an influencer has and decide that is the best one for you. Make sure that he or she will be able to engage your target audience, and bring you visitors.
In order for you to learn more about the interests of the influencer’s audience, go back to Alexa’s Audience Overlap Tool and enter the site or URL of the influencer.
Review the report and identify trends that tell you more about their audience.
By examining the other sites that the audience visit, you can see how their interest is met by the influencer. You can also discover their needs, habits, and identities.
You should also examine their reach and authority.
Although quality is said to be better than quantity, you also have to make sure that the influencer that you choose has a reach wide enough to help you meet your goals.
This is especially crucial if you are going for sponsored posts, and you have to pay for their services.
Examine the statistics to determine the kind of reach an influencer has.
When examining influencer social media accounts, you should look at the number of followers that they have and also the kind of engagement that the audience has with their content.
Check on the comments people post on their sites, the likes, and also how the influencer responds to these comments.
When examining influencer websites and blogs, pay attention to their on-site statistics.
Alexa’s Site Overview Tool can help you check on the page views, the time spent on the site, the bounce rates, the number of visitors, the number of sites that are linking in, and the overall Alexa rank.
The Alexa rank is a measure of how authoritative a website is.
Vet the content and messaging of your target influencer so that you get those who have a marketing strategy that aligns with yours.
Take your time and check on any other content that your target influencer shares and make sure that it aligns with the messaging of your brand.
This means taking the time to read through their status updates on social media, the content on their websites, and any guest posts that they have created.
The content and messaging of your target influencer should be:
- Relevant to your industry, products, services, and brand.
- Of high quality and the kind that your brand would be happy to be associated with.
- Indicates your brand’s core values or mission and does not deviate too much from your brand’s beliefs.
Step 6 – Create irresistible content for your target partner influencers
If your approach to working with influencers includes creating guest posts on their websites or blogs, then you have to make sure that the content is appealing to them.
If you want the influencer to crate sponsored posts according to your directions, then make sure the outline you give is appealing to them too.
In order to do this, you have to come up with ideas that target top keywords in their niche and make sure that it fills gaps that appear in their content.
You can use Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool to find the top keywords that will be appealing to your targeted influencer.
Get a phrase or topic that is related to the niche that the influencer is operating in and then go for low-level keywords that people are using frequently.
This will aid you in creating content that the influencer will find useful in driving traffic to their website or blog, and which will link back to your blog or website – a win-win situation.
You can also use Alexa’s Competitive Keyword Matrix to find content that will fill in gaps in the influencer’s content.
Type in the web URL of the influencer and nine other competitors, and then use the filters to show organic keyword gaps that you can leverage to create content that the influencer will easily accept.
The report displayed by the tool shows the keywords that are driving traffic to the influencer’s competitors.
Once you check on the topics that the influencer’s competition is using to gain an edge, you can then create content that addresses these topics and pitch it to your target influencer for guest posting purposes.
This kind of information can give you an advantage when you are looking for guest posting opportunities on influencer blogs and websites.
When you do your due diligence and identify what the influencer needs in terms of content, you will have an advantage when it comes to pitching for guest posting opportunities.
The influencer will accept your guest posts and you will be able to derive traffic from their huge volume of readers through backlinks to your website or blog.
Step 8 – Monitor your outreach
Once you start working with influencers or performing guest post outreach, you need to keep your communication organized.
You should be careful that you do not lose opportunities to work with powerful influencers because your outreach was confusing and annoying.
For instance, if you are working with a team, you must ensure that there is no duplication of messages to the same influencer.
You should also know who you have contacted to avoid sending them the same email over and over.
You should have a system that tracks and follow-up on your influencer outreach attempts. The document that you create should have:
- The identity of the person you have contacted
- The date when you reached out
- Who on your team contacted the influencer?
- Any side notes about the communication
- Any plans to make follow-up communications
- The status of the outreach.
Step 9 – Monitor and analyze your performance
When you have completed an influencer SEO campaign, there will be a sense of achievement when you see your products and services being mention on social media and authoritative bogs.
However, having mentions about your products or services is not an indicator of success.
In order to determine your performance, you must measure the campaign and see if it fulfilled the goals that you set out in the beginning.
The only way to check on your performance is to track and measure your results. Use statists and other metrics to measure the success depending on the marketing goals that you had set up in the beginning.
Here are some of the statistics and metrics that you should track and measure based on the goals that you identified:
- Brand Awareness – Check on your page views, social media mentions, website traffic, site user numbers, and the time spent on your blog or site.
- Building Brand Identity – check on social mentions, the number of articles written, and links created.
- Increasing audience volumes – check on the follows and opt-ins you have generated.
- Engagement – check on the shares, likes, and comments that you have generated.
- Lead generation – check on the opt-ins
- Sales volume – check on the revenue changes and the new sales you have generated.
- Customer loyalty – check on the renewal rates as well as the customer retention rates.
- Link building – check the number of backlinks that you have and their quality.
Measure the data generated from each of your individual influencer SEO campaigns and see what worked and what failed to achieve its goals.
This kind of reflection will help you optimize the next campaign that you undertake so you get better results.
Repeat the successes and stop the failures and you will be on your way to improving your ranks due to influencer SEO campaigns.
In conclusion
Google’s ranking algorithms have become extremely complex. With the increased volume of content, there is the need to create content that elevates your business above the noise.
Traditional SEO practices have become difficult to maintain and many people are almost abandoning SEO altogether.
Those who try to use SEO agencies are also finding it hard to get to the top of the search engine results pages due to the steep competition, even among these agencies.
They all try to outdo each other for the benefit of their clients, but getting tangible ranking results is still very challenging.
If you want to get an upper hand over your competition, use Influencer SEO to improve your ranking and get more visitors and customers for your business.
Influencer SEO is trending today, and you should use it before it becomes flooded with competitors vying for the same influencers.
Try out the tips that we have mentioned above and then use the comments section below to tell us how you fare after trying out influencer SEO on your blog or website.
