Alexis Kestler
In 2023, succeeding with organic search requires a multi-pronged approach, including leveraging social media influencers. This comprehensive guide will explore how partnering with influencers can boost your SEO rankings and online presence.
Why Combine Influencers and SEO?
Influencers have become a commanding force for reaching consumers. But despite their popularity, many brands wonder if working with influencers can actually impact SEO.
The data shows a resounding yes.
According to a Markerly study, influencer marketing earns $6.50 for every $1 spent—delivering better returns than even SEO or paid ads [1].
Additional evidence shows that:
- 72% of consumers trust influencers over traditional celebrities [2]
- 49% of users depend on influencer recommendations for purchases [3]
These statistics demonstrate how audiences view influencers as authentic experts and rely on their opinions.
As a trusted voice, influencers provide brands several interlinked benefits:
Authoritative Links and Content: Influencer content and backlinks boost domain authority signals.
Engaged Audiences: Influencers bypass algorithms to directly reach interested users—your ideal new customers.
Viral Interest: Aligning with influencers can spark interest in your brand and trigger organic word-of-mouth growth.
The compound impact generates higher rankings, referral traffic, lower CPCs, and greater conversion rates over time.
Now let’s examine exactly how partnering with influencers enhances specific SEO factors.
Key SEO Areas Influenced by Influencers
While influencer marketing impacts many aspects of digital marketing, three core SEO pillars see direct improvements.
1. Higher-Quality Backlink Profile
Gaining backlinks from highly reputable websites remains critical for ranking well in SEO—but doing so relies heavily on who you know.
Influencers often already have existing relationships with key industry media, blogs, publications and other powerful domains. Collaborating provides backlink opportunities you otherwise may never gain access to.
But it’s not just the site authority that matters—anchor text and context also contribute toward value. Influencer mentions often use powerful branded anchor text within relevant editorial content. This sends positive relevancy signals that generic paid links can’t match.
Here’s a glance at just how much influencers dominate the link-building game:
- Top YouTubers have over 12,000 domains linking to them [4]
- Macro influencers commonly have hundreds of referring domains [5]
- Micro influencers tend to have strong niche authority within their sectors [6]
Leveraging these networks results in a steady stream of authoritative backlinks that significantly enhance your domain authority over time.
2. Expanded Content Marketing Efforts
Google still ranks pages primarily based on the uniqueness and relevance of on-page content. But actually producing enough insightful, high-value content poses an immense challenge for time-strapped marketing teams.
Fortunately, creating shareable content is what influencers do best. Strategic partnerships translate into a constant flow of blogs, videos, visual assets and other media you can repurpose.
Influencers also attract more eyeballs and engagement thanks to their existing following. More clicks, likes, and shares signal to Google that the content resonates with users.
Expand your content strategy through multi-channel influencer campaigns focused on assets you can optimize for SEO and promotion. Think beyond one-off sponsorships toward a pipeline of content feeding your website over months and years ahead.
3. Greater Brand Visibility and Awareness
Earning those critical first links and initial content assets only presents part of the picture. Having more discoverable touchpoints allows search engines to better understand your brand and where you rank.
However, even the best content won’t drive clicks if nobody can find it. This is where leveraging influencers’ built-in audiences across social channels amplifies your efforts.
Influencers wield outsized visibility compared to following counts alone. Aligning your brand across their social platforms rapidly accelerates discovery beyond your owned channels:
| Platform | Average Impressions Per Post |
|---|---|
| 20-60k | |
| 10-30k | |
| YouTube | 100-500k |
More eyeballs directly converts into tangible SEO results:
- Increased branded search queries
- More referral traffic to your site
- Additional links and social shares boosting rankings
- Greater earned media opportunities
In this sense, influencer partnerships act as amplifiers rather than just allies—expanding your marketing potential exponentially versus limited solely to owned channels.
Treat influencers as gateway drugs for addicting new users to your brand story. Initial hookups spark viral word-of-mouth interest that search engines honor accordingly.
Okay, hopefully you’re convinced on the SEO superpowers unlocked through influencer collaborations. Now let’s shift gears towards activating these partnerships successfully.
Finding SEO-Relevant Influencers
All influencers are not created equal. Finding ones that actually move the SEO needle requires asking the right qualifying questions:
Do they create high-value content? Scan blogs, videos and other content. Judge overall uniqueness, depth, media use and engagement. This determines content quality for repurposing.
What affiliations or domains already link to them? The more reputable sites connecting to an influencer signals overall trust and authority. Prioritize ones with existing strong search footprints.
Does their audience match your personas? Mismatched psychographics and interests limits content effectiveness. Assess social followers and engagement metrics against your target users.
What is their industry reputation? Weigh testimonials and brand partnerships for how much subject expertise they demonstrate. Positioning matters here—their reputation rubs off.
Do they allow sponsored posts? Confirm upfront that the influencer participates in paid partnerships. If money remains a blocker, seek ones open to barter arrangements.
Finding influencers solving an SEO pain point differs from general brand awareness plays—drill down on ones addressing weaknesses in your search strategy.
Compile a chart tracking influencers against these criteria to determine high-potential partnerships. Next, we’ll cover turning those targets into tangible SEO wins.
Executing Successful SEO Campaigns
Just because you identify promising influencers doesn’t guarantee actual ROI. Craft thoughtful campaigns with SEO top of mind:
Set Growth-Oriented Objectives
Outline specific numeric objectives for traffic, content gained, links acquired or rankings boosted. This focuses the program towards moving SEO needles versus vanity metrics alone.
Structure Multi-Channel Efforts
Negotiate an integrated campaign across the influencers’ blog, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other channels. Multi-channel exposure ensures broadest visibility possible.
Co-Create Optimization Guidelines
Provide optimization guidelines that the influencer agrees to implement during content creation focused on ranking priority keywords or backlinks.
Promote Through Paid Amplification
Don’t rely solely on the influencer’s organic reach. Invest additional paid advertising budget into further amplifying high-performing posts.
Track Performance Against Benchmarks
Analyze campaign performance against your original goals and projections. Determine net traffic, links gained, conversions and rankings boosts attributable to the influencer content.
Following a research-backed optimization framework prevents leaving SEO results down to chance. Now let’s explore avoiding common influencer partnership pitfalls.
Sidestepping Influencer Marketing Mistakes
Many brands waste budgets on lackluster influencer campaigns by overlooking obvious but damaging missteps. Here are solutions to the most common ones:
Relying on Fake Metrics
Don’t focus strictly on vanity metrics like followers or impressions when selecting partners. Prioritize actual engagement and conversion rates reflecting genuine audience interest.
Ceding Complete Creative Control
Give influencers reasonable creative license tailored around guidelines supporting your SEO and branding needs. Overly restrictive rules limit authenticity while no direction whatsoever fails to achieve strategic goals.
Skipping Campaign Analyses
Post-campaign, thoroughly analyze performance data assessing SEO and conversion impact generated. Without review, you lack insights to refine future efforts.
Ignoring Influencer Relationships
Don’t go radio silent on influencer relationships post-campaign. Consistent communication and new opportunities encourage re-sharing of your content and building links over time.
Sidestep these unnecessary potholes undermining ROI through intentional campaign planning and partnership nurturing.
Ready to Skyrocket Your SEO?
As search competition intensifies each year, savvy brands realize succeeding at SEO requires new angles and allies. Influencers represent the perfect Trojan horse for entering high-authority circles otherwise inaccessible.
Now that you know how influencers boost SEO and the keys to successful partnerships, the next step lies in activating your outreach.
Identify relevant influencers, make initial contact discussing mutual value, and sketch initial campaign ideas.
Even modest pilots demonstrate potential before allocating bigger budgets towards moved needles not just vanity metrics.
Want help connecting with the right influencers or developing high-impact campaigns tailored to your business? Our team specializes in uncovering insider opportunities tailored to your SEO needs. Click here to schedule a free growth mapping session.
References
- Markerly Statistic on Influencer Marketing ROI
- Experticity Study on Influencer Trust
- Twitter Stat on 49% of Users Depending on Influencers
- YouTube Influencer Backlink Case Study
- Forbes Piece on Macro Influencers and Backlinks
- Mashable Coverage on Micro Influencers and SEO
