Key Influencers and Search Engine Optimization
Influencer marketing has evolved search engine optimization (SEO) greatly over the years. Once upon a time, it might have been sufficient to seed your web pages with a few high-ranking keywords, but today’s search engines are much more subtle and sophisticated in their optimization approaches. To maximize the depth and breadth of your digital presence, you must wield as much influence over your target audience as possible — and the most effective way to achieve that goal is by aligning your brand with key influencers. Let us examine how influencer marketing can make a significant impact on your SEO.
Success by Association
Key influencers can be major worldwide celebrities with a built-in following wherever they go, or they can be niche personalities who have established a loyal fanbase solely through social media. When these movers and shakers talk, their followers listen. Try to get their attention by including references to them in your own content, linking to some of their most popular posts, or maybe even inviting them to place content on your own site in exchange for some perk or other. By mingling your content with that of a key influencer, you may enjoy a “halo effect” of enhanced SEO as that content receives thousands of views courtesy of its new brand ambassador.
The Power of Shares and Links
One of the most powerful aspects of influencer marketing for SEO purposes is its ability to expand the number of links to your website, blog and other branded content. This occurs through the magic of social sharing. As members of your target market discover your products, services or messaging through your key influencers, they share that information with their online friends, passing your links from channel to channel in the process. All this organic link-building and off-page SEO makes your brand appear much more authoritative in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.
Relevance Makes Right
Don’t forget that Google’s algorithm currently rewards the relevance of online content — not for how many times you mention particular keywords, but for how genuinely meaningful and helpful your content is likely to be to your target audience. Influencer marketing only works when your brand, products and services actually matter to your key influencers and their countless followers. By giving these people what they genuinely want or need to know, you naturally boost your SEO.
Marketers are doubling their influencer marketing budgets in 2017, with 94 percent of them believing in its effectiveness. Do some research on which key influencers can do you the most good, where they live in cyberspace, and how their influence can enhance your influence with the major search engines.
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