How to combine SEO & Influencer Marketing

Today with brands continuing to come under increasing pressure to establish long term customer engagement, many traditional marketers do not realise that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media influencers can work together to elevate the success of the brand. 

Far too often, the fact that both have the same goal – marketing the business goes unnoticed. Instead of creating one seamless marketing strategy, they allow the consumer to receive conflicting messages through varying pieces of content.

Whereas if they were to develop strategies that combined influencer marketing with SEO and leveraged the value of both, they would be confident in achieving the business’s aims.

So in this article, we’re going to consider some of the strategies that marketers could adopt to effectively combine SEO with influencer marketing. Still, before we do that, let’s take a moment to consider what influencers can bring to a brand and why they can possibly add more value than traditional advertising.

What value can influencers bring to a brand?

One of the most prominent challenges marketers face today is finding ways to be heard in a sea of competitors. The competition in today’s digital marketplace is fierce. As a result, many brands consider that influencers have a critical part to play in their long-term marketing strategy.

The reason being is that influencer content is often much more authentic to consumers in any context and reaches audiences that brands might not achieve using the more traditional channels such as paid for advertising.

The most important thing for any brand owner to remember is that each influencer marketing channel serves to conquer a specific goal. By raising awareness about a brand, product or service via an influencer, it’s improving its chances of earning the trust of potential new customers or brand advocates.

These followers can then automatically engage with a brand and create a chain reaction in which they talk about it and share the content. This higher engagement leads to increased website traffic, which search engines consider when ranking a website.

Such is the power of influencer marketing to outshine all other forms of advertising or marketing. Adweek, the US advertising bible, recently covered a joint study by Annalect and Twitter that found users trust influencers almost as much as they trust their friends.

The sole job of influencers is to develop unique and compelling content that the brand’s target audience can’t resist and actively encourage their community to share unique images or thoughts associated with the brand or marketing campaign. Those marketers who leverage influencer connections can begin to see how those relationships can impact their entire marketing program.

Besides driving additional web traffic, influencers hold the keys to providing unique consumer insights that can significantly increase branded content on search engine results pages (SERPs).

How to combine SEO with influencer marketing

Train your teams on SEO

As much as you like the creativity of your combined influencer and marketing teams, they may lack SEO knowledge. Therefore continuous training is critical, and they should be kept fully up to date with all new trends and changes in the SEO field. Have the content manager oversee all of your campaigns, make sure SEO principles are followed, and you have shared SEO goals that your influencer and marketing teams can embrace.

Build your marketing & influencer campaigns on search data

One of the great things about search data is that it conveys user intent, making it fundamentally useful for any marketing or influencer campaign. Therefore you should begin your content plan and SEO strategy by identifying long-tail keyword phrases your target audience is using. Use this strategy to craft relevant content that intersects your audience both on your website and across all their active social media channels.

Speak the same language

Identify the target profile of the influencer’s followers, not the target audience; this is way too broad. For example, if the product is jeans for men aged 16 -25, you can’t sell the same to all men. Suppose the product is for millennials who work out. In that case, you need to create high-quality, memorable images that your influencer can use on Instagram and Facebook, targeting millennials who work out. Then, for continuous engagement, link back to the website for more details.

Use the exact keywords

This may seem like an obvious point to make, but it’s vitally important to know that you, your marketing team, and your influencers are all using the exact same keywords. Knowing that you are collectively designing campaigns around the same keyword strategies will ensure that you will continue to be successful now and in the future with the same search results.

Influence your way out of the SEO silo

Make sure you provide your influencers with search terms to use in their blog copy and social posts. Your net SEO will increase when influencers use those targeted keywords in their blog title tags or Pinterest pins. Blogs and Pinterest work symbiotically, as both are evergreen and Google indexes both.

Focus on reach and engagement

SEO is not just about search ranking; while social media activity is not just about posting content, these are simply tactics used in reaching an audience. Engage with your audience on your website, social media posting and influencers by posting regular high-quality content, but keep your focus on meeting the reader’s/followers needs.

Post quality timeless content

In professional services, SEO and social media have become nearly indistinguishable. Today’s social media post produces tomorrow’s search results. So you must make sure your content on your social media platforms, your website, SEO paid ads, influencer marketing anywhere else you put it is constantly updated and speaks to who matters – your ideal consumer. Don’t try to be timely; try to be timeless, and your content will pay you dividends in the long term.

How influencer marketing impacts your SEO

Suppose you are strategic with your affiliate and feature page links in your influencer campaigns. Then influencer content can help to significantly traffic to those pages. As a result of an increase in traffic, Google will update your page rankings respectively.

Also, industry expert influencers can add credibility to your website and help you achieve the Google ‘EAT’ principle –  expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which continues to be one of the most critical ranking factors today.

Blogger influencers who have high domain authority scores can give your website quality backlinks. Each of these will help to improve your performance on search engines and increase your overall online visibility. Remember that the better your SEO, the greater your inbound traffic and the less you must pay to acquire new customers.

Determine the success rate for integrating influencers into your SEO strategy

To fully understand just how well your website is performing on search engines, you need to use some analytics tools. Google Analytics is excellent for helping you track traffic, individual page performance, bounce rates, and so much more and what’s more, it’s free.

Besides using Google, you can also invest in other SEO software tools that will give you more backlinks and keyword research tools to help you update your marketing KPIs.

It’s essential to establish the criteria for your website performance before you start integrating influencers into your marketing strategy and using the suggested methods listed here. But remember, once you begin introducing SEO KPIs into your influencer program, you need to track your website performance continually.

Conclusion

Influencers can have a significant impact on driving your search engine optimisation (SEO). If authentic influencers recommend that consumers take action, followers are more than likely to take that recommendation seriously.

By keeping your influencers and creative teams entirely up to date with your SEO goals, they will be able to make any of the necessary tweaks required to generate the desired results for keeping your brand ahead of the competition.

Searchical SEO

Employing the best SEO techniques is essential to optimise your site positively and as one of the leading SEO agencies here in Australia. Searchical SEO can offer expert advice on marketing strategies for your business and help to improve your site’s visibility.

We’re here to ensure you get the best advice to help improve your sales or product reach. We have a highly qualified team with many years of experience helping business owners achieve favourable results related to their website in search results.