By now, most people have heard of influencers. However, there is sometimes a misconception about who they are and what they can do for you. Perhaps the most well-known types of influencers are in the fashion, fitness or beauty industries, but influencers are everywhere.
Influencers have become a staple of the modern marketing environment, but it’s not just about promoting products. When utilised the right way, influencers can actually have a great impact on your website’s SEO.
What Actually Are Influencers?
In simple terms, influencers are people who are considered to be experts in their field. However, they also need one crucial ingredient which is often more important than their expertise. Because an influencer can’t influence without a huge online following. In many cases, influencers are minor celebrities who may not necessarily have any specific qualifications or expertise. But they do have a captive audience.
However, when we’re talking about influencers who can help improve your SEO, we mean thought leaders and industry experts. While the popular YouTubers and Instagram stars are great for selling products, they don’t necessarily do a lot for your SEO. Unless they also run a popular website of their own, which is more beneficial than social media. When trying to boost your SEO, you want people who run popular blogs, because the whole idea is to try and have them create backlinks for you. This might be mentioning your business in their blog with a link to your site, or even allowing you to write a guest post.
How to Build Influencer Relationships
Firstly, when you consider using influencers to help with your marketing, you need to look at their audience. For example, if you’re in the financial services business, you need to find influencers who share your target audience. Models who promote health and beauty products or athletes who promote activewear aren’t going to reach the people you’re trying to.
So, find some influencers who have a similar target audience but aren’t in direct competition. Also, consider the best platform for making contact. For business, LinkedIn is going to be more beneficial than Instagram. Next, what you’re looking for are people who have trusted, well-respected websites or blogs. These are the people who can really help impact your SEO.
Once you’ve identified people you may like to work with on guest posts or backlinks, the best thing to do is engage with their content. Make a connection, then perhaps build up to a private message and build your relationship further. It’s important to note that some influencers will only offer paid services. We’ll touch on this at the end of this article.
Can Influencers Really Impact My SEO?
When used correctly, influencers can definitely impact your SEO. This is mostly done through backlinks, as we discussed. Google’s algorithms look favourably on relevant backlinks, but it’s also pretty clever in identifying dodgy backlinking processes.
For example, if you’re selling car tyres and you try to get mentioned on popular health and beauty blogs just because there’s a large audience, Google can identify that the backlinks is not relevant to readers. However, if you write a guest post for an automotive industry blog, with a backlink to your site, Google will reward you for it. Ultimately, it will lead to more traffic, more relevant traffic, and improved SEO rankings as a result.
Be Wary of Paid Backlink Programs
As a final note, we should caution you against using paid backlink programs. These are usually schemes promising to put links to your website on several other sites around the web. However, the links are unlikely to be relevant or really promote any sort of engagement. The only time it makes sense to pay for backlinks is if you’re applying to put a guest post with links on a reputable industry website that has a large audience relevant to your products. These sometimes come with a fee, and that’s fine if Google can see that the content and links are relevant and legitimate.
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