How Does Influencer Marketing Affect SEO?

Off-Page Influencer Marketing Can Lead to Better Site Ranking

Off-page SEO is the other websites, content, and links that enhance the credibility of a brand’s website. Despite the approximately 500 to 600 Google algorithm updates every single year, ranking higher on Google continues to rely on an underlying and enduring principle: E-A-T.

E-A-T is a tried and tested metric for growing a brand’s presence in its target market. It stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness, and it’s what Google’s algorithms are looking for. It’s what the AI robots are scrolling for as they crawl, index, and eventually rank any website.

Google likes and promotes brands that publish high-quality content that addresses user search intent. The algorithm prefers videos, infographics, articles, and charts that demonstrate this brand is an authority in this industry.

Users see content-producing brands as trustworthy and reliable. The website site will reap the rewards by securing a prominent position in search engine results pages (SERPs) and advancing visibility even higher.

But it’s not only a brand’s on-page E-A-T that contributes to search engine optimization. SEO is also impacted by your site’s internal link structure, sitemap, page load speed, optimized anchor text, social signals, and backlinks pointing to the website from other high-authority domains.

If a brand is using social media as part of a digital marketing strategy, its marketing team already knows that brand mentions, likes, retweets, shares, and links can all play a part in boosting the website’s ranking performance. External links pointing back to the website are essential for SEO, but it usually takes a lot of work to get them.

Now consider how using influencers can amplify a backlink and social media strategy to help with optimization. SEO can be significantly improved by influencers’ ability to create unique and engaging content, expand the reach of your audience, and link to your product pages.

Influencers are a Reliable Source of Engaging Content

In a recent marketing survey conducted with over 1,500 SEO professionals, it was discovered that the most important factor for ranking on search engine results pages was the relevance of on-page content.^[1] Relevant content creation is where influencers shine the brightest.

Creating entertaining and meaningful content is one of the most critical components of on-page SEO. A website’s page content must aim to deliver search results that answer the search queries people type into Google’s search bar. On-page SEO also requires the proper use of title tags and meta descriptions.

Did you know that boosting social signals is also one of the off-page SEO strategies that can improve your SERP ranking? Brands should strive to create and collaborate on social media content that increases engagement through likes, comments, and shares.

However, when it comes to comparing a brand’s creative assets to content generated by influencers, social media users prefer pieces of content that come from their favorite accounts. This holds true across multiple platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Influencer or user-generated content (UGC) is viewed as more authentic and relatable by consumers. It can also deliver engagement rates that are eight times better than generic and sterile brand-generated content.^[2]

Influencer-generated content is also less expensive to produce. Brand-generated content requires creative teams, video producers, professional photographers, and social media strategists.

Cutting content creation costs with an influencer will dramatically improve the ROI of any campaign. Every brand can depend on influencers to supply a steady stream of high-quality, trustworthy, and engaging content that’s a fraction of the cost of what your business would pay to source in-house or on-site talent for professional quality content.

Here are a few other reasons why influencer-generated content outperforms brand-generated content:

Influencers know their audience better than anyone else on the brand’s team. They have built their audience by producing what they want to see. Trust them to continue doing this for brands as part of an influencer marketing and SEO strategy.

Influencer-generated content can be produced quickly, while brand-generated content often requires a long lead time due to production schedules and company sign-off requirements.

Influencers can often encourage their followers to create their own content. This effort can create an even stronger brand presence and spark a whole new movement. If their followers mention your brand’s name or use branded hashtags, impressions and awareness will spike.

Influencers understand the behavior of their followers. They know what keywords resonate and what calls to action will get a better response.

Influencers are audience engagement and communication experts. Promoting brands and products is quite literally their bread and butter. Trust the experts to portray brand partners in a positive and thereby profitable light.

Influencers Can Deliver Quality Backlinks

A prominent position in SERPs depends on both on-page and off-page SEO. Off-page SEO refers to the backlinks that are directed to a website from high-authority domains.

Link building is often difficult and time-consuming. It requires industry collaboration and relationship building. It requires genuine relationships with real people and teams. It can also take time to develop and later deploy, and it cannot be done haphazardly.

However, if you employ an influencer marketing strategy that includes influential bloggers, they can be a good source of links pointing to your site. If the bloggers are well-known promoters of products or services in your industry, their links can influence other high-authority domains to link to you as well.

You can also invite your influencer bloggers to guest post on your own site. It’s not a direct way to build links, but if you promote the influencer’s content on your brand’s social media feed, it could increase engagement on the post and potentially encourage other high-authority sites to link to yours.

Influencers who don’t have websites can encourage links to your site because they act as link-building advocates for your brand. Followers trust the content they see influencers sharing on social media, so they’re more likely to share your brand’s content than if you posted it on your brand’s social media profile.

Sharing then takes on a snowball effect as more and more people see the social media posts that include your content. As your content becomes more popular, it’s more likely to get picked up by high-authority domains that decide to link to you.

Influencers Can Increase Reach and Site Traffic

Reach is a metric used to measure how many accounts or eyeballs landed on any one piece of social content. For an influencer with thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers, getting a wide reach should be easily doable.

Site traffic is often a result of good SEO; it isn’t a ranking factor for it, however. But when many people visit your site and react favorably to your content, they’ll be more likely to use social media to share it or mention your brand’s name.

So, even though influencer-driven website traffic won’t directly affect your SEO, it will help to improve the social signals that do contribute to your ranking.

Influencers Can Promote Targeted Brand Keywords

Detailed keyword research will alert marketing teams to the helpful keywords and phrases the brand should be using and optimizing in the website content. But an even more powerful strategy is to instruct influencers to use the same keywords – particularly branded keywords – in their blog or social media posts.

With the repeated mention of branded keywords by trusted influencers, brands will ultimately see an increase in website traffic. By increasing the odds that the brand name will show up in search results, the increases stack up on each other.

Double-check that hired influencers are using targeted keywords in the alt text on images and videos. Any blogging influencers should also be properly leveraging title tags and meta descriptions for each blog post.

Influencers Can Be One More Tool in Your SEO Arsenal

It’s long past the days of keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO techniques for improving your site’s position in SERPs. The priority for content production should be conceptual and practical content that solves a problem for the target audience.

If you want your site to get a better ranking on SERPs, focus on producing engaging content that’s optimized with strategic keyword research. You must also campaign to encourage high-authority domains to link to your site.

Google’s Search Console is another tool that can aid your search engine optimization. SEO can improve when you use the Search Console to:

• Analyze Your Web Analytics
• Fix Technical Seo Problems
• Optimize For Mobile Devices

You don’t have to be a web development expert to gain insight from Google Search Console. Everyone on the team who’s tasked with content marketing responsibility can benefit by keeping close tabs on what Search Console reports. Consider using influencers to make your search engine optimization job a little bit easier.

Influencer Marketing and SEO Strategies Are Better Together

Influencers essentially act as search engine optimizer assistants by enhancing and boosting an off-page SEO presence. Their strong connection with followers and ability to encourage engagement and sharing can help to position a brand’s website as one that offers the kind of relevant and meaningful E-A-T content that Google web crawlers love and leads to SEO success.

Source:

[1]https://sparktoro.com/blog/google-ranking-factors-2019/

[2]https://www.aspireiq.com/blog/4-reasons-why-influencer-generated-content-is-so-powerful/