As a small business owner with limited budget to spend on marketing, it is crucial to ensure that every campaign yields a positive ROI in one way or another. Although the goal of marketing is always to connect your business with the right customer base, there are other ways to measure the success of your campaigns. Whether it’s an increase in sales or a increase in awareness, your marketing efforts should help you achieve your goal. One result that people often miss when they think of influencer marketing is SEO ranking. Although it may seem like influencers don’t directly relate to your SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking—using influencers can actually help search engines discover and rank your content more easily. Influencers Help Build Strong and Credible Link Profiles According to a study conducted by MOZ, the SEO experts, the quality and authority of the links to your website play a big part in your website’s ranking. The best way to build your domain authority is to improve your link profile by increasing the amount of backlinks that point to your site. Backlinks: n. Incoming links from another website. Working with influencers to create content for their blog is a great way to increase the authority of your own site. Make sure that in every campaign, you are asking them to include links to your website in their posts and articles. This will also increase the chances of your links being shared further amongst the influencer’s network. Influencers Create Fresh Content Creating consistent, quality, shareable content is often on the bottom of the task list for small businesses. Working with influencers is a surefire way to gather high quality content that you can share to your own networks. In 2011, the head of Search Quality at Google, Amit Singhal, announced that Google was developing a new factor for their algorithm called the “Freshness Update”. This meant that the algorithm will consider up-to-date content as of a higher value than content regarding the same topic that are outdated. Collaborating with influencers guarantees fresh, branded content that you can share on your own platforms. Always remember to ask them for the assets created so that you can cross-share them. Influencers Can Increase Content Reach and Engagement Number 5 on Moz’s list (see graph above) is your visibility and shares. Influencers are influencers because they have a niche audience that are engaged and trust what they say. In a study conducted by Twitter last year they found that most users trust influencers almost as much as they trust their friends! This means that they are willing to share content that influencers put out, which then amplifies your brand even further. Tip: To further increase the reach and engagement of your content, you can work on co-branding campaigns such as contests and giveaways. Set the rules of the contest/giveaway so that entrants must be following and engaging with your accounts as well as the influencer’s. Or take it a step further and ask them to sign-up for your newsletter so you can build on your list! Whatever campaign you decide to implement, always make sure that an aspect of your brand is being shared on the Influencer’s accounts. Increase Your Brand Integrity The above three points all add up to an increase in brand integrity. When you have a good link profile, well-shared content, and high engagement, your brand is more likely to be recognized as an authoratative site. Search engines are more likely to place you higher on their SERPS if they can gather that you have a trustworthy site that can provide what searchers want. If you’re looking to spend your efforts developing a marketing campaign that can help not only your company’s social media awareness, but also your SEO, Influencer marketing is something you should definitely look into.
