Every year, a slew of new SEO promises rises to the very top of must-have lists for every brand out there. Some strategies retain their relevance in the months and years to come, but some become outdated as soon as newer, bolder ideas reach the spotlight, in the face of algorithm changes that will govern how companies tackle their digital presence. For the past several years, influencer collaborations have become the go-to solution for all kinds of marketing benefits, and brands are still heavily relying on this single tactic to grow their digital relevance.
As this strategy has become so overwhelmingly popular and widely implemented, Google and other search engines have recognized it as a valid contributing factor to any SEO strategy. So, if you’re in need of an SEO boost, perhaps you should think of a collaboration that will leverage your reputation and put forth your brand’s finest features for all the world to see. Here’s how influencer marketing can jump-start your SEO efforts this year.
Building credibility and brand authority
As far as specific metrics go, brand authority certainly isn’t a clear-cut example, but it definitely consists of a few key factors that showcase how your business is perceived in your community, if your brand is a trusted entity, and if your information is verifiable across the board. From reviews, engagement rates, website traffic, all the way to purchase rates, and on-site activity, credibility is a fluctuating term that is visible through a few constantly changing factors.
However, brand authority definitely impacts your ranking, and search engines reward brands whose audiences perceive them in high regard. With that in mind, collaborating with influencers has a positive effect on your credibility, as someone with direct experience with your brand keeps supporting your business, and you keep delivering on your promise. What’s key in this collaboration is its longevity and transparency, so it’s essential that you maintain an open relationship with your influencers for the sake of your reputation, and hence, your ranking.
Growing your quality link portfolio
One particularly vital aspect of SEO is ongoing link-building, or when it comes to influencers, link-earning. Every time they post a review about your product or service and then attach a link in the description to send more visitors towards your site, they validate your service not just in the eyes of your target audience, but in the eyes of search engines.
Quality backlinks that generate traffic are the core substance of any powerful SEO strategy. More quality links means more on-site engagement as well as engagement via social media, which in turn gets more traction for your brand and enhances your relevance in the digital world.
Enriching your local content strategy
When you need to reach a local audience, collaborating with a micro-influencer means that you can have a relevant figure contribute regularly to your local content strategy. In fast-developing markets such as Australia, companies in each region fiercely work on their digital presence to retain their visibility in the search engines.
To do that, they will work with local experts such as Only SEO Gold Coast to customize their content strategy and reach their local audience more effectively. This means working, on one end, with professionals who know the local market intimately and understand the market’s specific needs, and on the other, working with local influencers whose voice truly matters to your target demographic. This gives your content strategy a new layer of purpose that can only boost your ranking over time.
Boosting brand awareness
The line of action goes as follows: when you have a strong brand identity linked to a relevant influencer, you put your brand in front of the eyes of the right, interested people, which in turn increases your visibility, and more visibility helps you gain more brand awareness over time.
This may be a time-consuming process, but one that will last long, otherwise you’re looking at quick spikes of interest in your target demographic that an ordinary ad can create, and that will wither away as quickly as it arose. That is why awareness cannot be built through pushy, sales-based content, but through influencer marketing that leverages genuine, user-made content such as reviews. We live in the era of digital WOM, and your influencers are the gatekeepers of that portion of your presence.
Influencer marketing may sound like a surefire way to succeed online by getting your brand towards the top of the SERPs pages, but truth be told, the secret is in the implementation of your strategy. As long as you build long-lasting, genuine, transparent relationships with a select few, your brand will stand a chance to evolve and benefit from these influencer bonds, which your SEO will reflect. That is why you need to give it your best to research the right candidates and work with the right people, and you’ll give your SEO the boost it needs for your brand to gain more traction.
Jolene Rutherford
Jolene Rutherford is a marketing specialist – turned blogger, currently writing for technivorz.com. Interested in digital marketing and new technology trends. Love sharing content that can help and mean to people.