If you own a website or a blog then you probably know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential to help you gain traffic to your site. But did you know that influencer marketing can improve your SEO? Well-targeted influencer marketing can build up high levels of engagement, and that can flow through to improved SEO for your site.

Every business that operates a website does it because they hope to convert customers. Maybe they want to sell more of their product online. Perhaps they simply want more people to see their site or they could possibly be trying to build up an online community and want more people to join their group.

The problem is that people won’t immediately flock to your site the moment you make it live. You won’t suddenly find yourself grabbing the Number 1 in Google. You need to do a combination of marketing your site and structuring it in such a way that you can compete effectively with the other websites attempting to rank on the front page of Google.

1. Influencer Marketing and SEO

The key advantage of influencer marketing is that it has highly influential people directing potential customers to your site. Google recognizes this, and in turn, rewards you for being “more important” in its eyes.

If you operate a website it is important that you build up relationships with your niche’s influencers. This will usually be a slow, gradual process.

You might begin by simply commenting on their posts and mentioning them in your comments. You might then develop into asking them questions, and where relevant, providing suggestions to them and their readers.

If you provide valuable assistance it is likely that the influencer will eventually take notice of you. At this point, you may find that they begin to share your material via their social media accounts.

In this situation, they are sending people in your direction without any formal relationship being made. They simply recognize you for your valuable suggestions and tell their followers about your expertise.

Keep cultivating relationships with influencers over the long term. The search engines will come to recognize this and reward these connections.

Anybody can pay an influencer to talk up their products, but if you are willing to put time and effort into building up online relationships you may be able to have influencers help you out for free.

The influencer you work with needs to have an audience who are likely to have a genuine interest in your product. Google is not silly either, they will know if you are using a wrongly-targeted influencer, simply because you’ve gone for somebody who will work with you for a few dollars and who you haven’t developed a genuine relationship with.

2. Backlinks

There was a time when bloggers and website owners chased backlinks to attract the search engines. People believed that chasing backlinks was the most important part of SEO.

It didn’t take Goole long to spot this process and adjust their algorithms to penalize such unethical behavior.

Backlinking is still a very important part of Google’s SEO algorithm. Google’s system is now clever enough to tell when a backlink is genuine or not. Only those backlinks that Google believes will provide value to the users are rewarded.

One way that can you build up backlinks is to write guest posts on relevant, genuine blogs belonging to influencers in your niche.

When you guest post on an influencer’s site, the influencer will usually let you include a small bio about yourself, including a link back to your own site. These guest posts can have a number of benefits.

Influencer marketing can be an excellent way to improve your SEO. Just don’t rush in trying to build relationships overnight. It takes time to build up relationships, just as it takes time to improve your Google rankings.

Influencer marketing can improve your SEO but it takes time. Don’t expect overnight success.