Leveraging Influencer Marketing for SEO | by Kendra Madsen | Apr, 2023

One of the leading marketing strategies coming into 2023 is influencer marketing. Influencers have built an audience on social media platforms and blogs and earned their audience’s trust, so their recommendations are the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing tool. Businesses that have invested in influencer marketing have seen $6.50 in revenue for every $1 they invest. Influencer marketing has many benefits, including ROI; I will focus on how to leverage influencer marketing to improve your SEO.

Influencers are the ultimate content creation experts since their entire business depends on creating engaging content that builds their audience’s trust and virality. These types of content include blog posts, sponsored articles, social media posts and competitions, and videos. There are multiple ways that these types of content can improve your site’s SEO, including some obvious SEO benefits like generating high-quality backlinks. Your business also gets unique and engaging content to add to your site. 60% of marketers in one survey shared that influencer-created content performed better than branded content; improving user engagement is another positive signal to Google.

There are also less obvious SEO benefits, such as increasing your brand awareness, which can increase your business’s branded searches. You’ll also get your brand in front of new audiences and see how those audiences engage with influencer-created content. By digging into the comments and interactions with your influencer-created content, you might uncover new content ideas and keywords you should be ranking for.

How do you find and connect with the right influencers in your industry? To start, you’ll want to be clear about your target audience. Who are you looking to get your brand in front of? You’ll also want to be clear on your brand and values. When finding an influencer, you want to find someone who matches your business’s values and brand image well. Doing so can be challenging if you first need more brand clarity.

Once you’re clear on your goals and targets, look at influencers with an audience that matches your goals and fits well with your brand. Lastly, you’ll want to look at their reach and engagement. How many people see their content, and how does their audience interact with it? Depending on your goals and budget, you may go for a mega-influencer with over 1 million followers and an average 1.21% engagement rate or a micro-influencer with 1,000 to 100,000 followers and a 3.86% engagement rate.

When you’ve identified the influencers you’d like to work with, start engaging with their content, then reach out to them and start a conversation. As you develop a rapport with them, ensure that your values and brands align and see if they would be willing to create content around your product. Once you’re ready to start your partnership, discuss your goals for the influencer campaign and how their skill can help you reach them. Influencers are content creation experts constantly creating unique and engaging content, so trust them to do their thing.

You’ll want to see how this has impacted your SEO during and after your influencer marketing campaign. To start, you’ll want to look at the backlinks you’ve earned and mentions and shares on social media. Backlinks will build credibility and signal to Google that your content is helpful and trustworthy. While comments and shares on social media won’t directly impact your SEO, they can increase brand awareness and direct traffic to your site, both of which can improve how your site ranks.

The subsequent measurement you’ll want to consider is traffic and traffic sources. You’ll be able to see direct traffic from social media, referral traffic from backlinks, and an increase in organic traffic with more brand awareness. Look at the dates you’re running your campaign to see how it increased your site’s traffic and from which sources.

Finally, look at how this traffic engaged with your content onsite. You’ve probably added the influencer-created content onto your site, which will likely increase engagement, especially if it involves a video. High time on page and engagement time signals to Google that your site creates a great user experience and can improve your rankings.

Influencer marketing is a top marketing trend this year and for good reason. The influencer market in the US was valued at 16.4 billion in 2022, and many marketers plan to invest more in influencer marketing this year. As you invest in influencer marketing this year, remember to incorporate your efforts into your SEO strategy to see even more returns.