How do you find and collaborate with relevant influencers for off-page SEO campaigns?

When looking to find and collaborate with relevant influencers for off page SEO campaigns, your goals should be to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to our website, and improve search engine rankings. Your audience should be people who are interested in our product or service and who have a significant following on social media or other online platforms. These influencers should have a strong engagement rate with their audience and be seen as trustworthy and credible sources of information. To achieve these goals, we should look for influencers who have a similar target audience with your brand. We should consider their niche, audience size, engagement rate, and overall reputation.

Most influencers are very approachable people. I have found that finding the right influencers is harder. Some people match demographics of their customers others go for mega-influencers with over 1 million followers. The important thing is being sure they have a good reputation. Stay clear of activists or influencers who are too edgy. You want people who engage with people in a respectful manner. Your services and products will be more appealing with influencers who have a good reputation. Although they charge for posting they are often a great bargain compared to other methods of promotion. Influencers often have a net 7 day reach that is larger than TV networks.

I agree, and would add that starting with preexisting data from Google Ads or Bing Ads might be where to find this information. Start with the best converting users if available, else, use the most engaged based on click trends.

"Define your off-page SEO campaign goals & target audience before seeking influencers. Focusing on desired outcomes (e.g. traffic, conversions, awareness) and specific demographics ensures a tailored approach that aligns with chosen influencers for maximum impact. 💼🎯 #SEO #InfluencerMarketing" Good Luck!

Building a persona is not difficult. That is it's not difficult if you've done the R&D to know how to do that. And the major areas that help you to segment the market in an organic way. It's everything Joshua just mentioned and more for my company ADSC. We do a deep dive into the exact kind of people that we know will not only be customers for us but our customer's customers. Know the ecosystem & you have a much better chance of knowing your best targeting for sales. It's hard to know where you're going without a road map. The road map is out there sitting in the open as what's called OSI (Open Source Intelligence). But you have to know how to read the map. Careful attention can be everything

One thing I've learned when it comes to off-page SEO is that the truth is in the data. Tools such as SparkToro enable you to perform topical searches to identify influencers who discuss or mention topics or keywords that are relevant to your business, and sort those insights into actionable data. I would start with these third party tools before querying hashtags in YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram.

Although people often think of You Tube , LinkedIn has many people with huge diverse networks. If you are connected or following someone with a million plus followers reach out to them.

Most YouTube channels offer an About tab in the channel, which offers contact information for potential advertisers. One method that has worked for me in the past is to request the influencer be on your podcast or be interviewed for a article you plan to promote on a topic they may be an expert at.

I've been on both sides as an influencer and as an SEO marketing consultant. As an influencer, I would immediately dismiss messages that started "Dear Sir,". I even got one that began, "first_name%%" because they didn't even take the time to check their template before sending! When pitching influencers, please send a concise message on what is expected from the influencer and the benefit (payment) they would get working with you.

I don’t find it difficult to work out details with influencers. They are used to requests and the good ones will be checking you and your company out before they agree to any terms. The best influencers protect their reputations as well.

It’s a mutual trust relationship where there is a sincere respect factor involved as well as the ability to feel comfortable with an open dialogue among the respective group audiences and followers. Knowing that the objectives are similar and aligned in essence and that there’s something meaningful in what that person is trying to achieve is extremely important.

You can provide influencers with a specific call to action. Often your website or you can create a dedicated landing page. If you are selling a specific service be sure to give them the link to the exact page on your website that coordinates with the product you are referring to.

When working with mid to low tier influencers it is important to keep an eye on your ranks. A lot of influencer blogs add links to content more frequently, and as such it can dilute the ranking potential of a link from a blogger like this. Google determines these sites as potential link farms, and I've personally found it ineffective. Instead, it is worth working toward more quality offerings and collaborations. But I appreciate this is hard to perform. So do yourself a favour and invest in content or Digital PR (DPR) angles that passively earn/drive inbound links. This is much more inline with Google's policies around links.

Verify that the influencer's followers are real followers. You might be surprised how many are not. The ratio for followers vs engagement is about 4% or higher. There are some online influencer tools that can help assess. A quick Google search will list a few you can try. You can simply look at the top posts and see how many likes vs comments vs shares to get an idea. Also take the influencer's website URL and enter into an SEO keyword tool online. This will give you an idea of the amount of monthly traffic the influencer receives. Although keyword research tools do not give 100% accurate details, they can give you a better idea if the influencer is worth the investment.

Remember the rule. Reputation of the influencer is an important factor. Don’t create more trouble for yourself with someone who has a large following who is political or controversial

Finding and collaborating with influencers for off-page SEO campaigns involves thorough research and strategic networking. I typically use social media platforms and influencer marketing tools to identify influencers whose audiences align with the targeted demographic. Once I've identified potential influencers, I reach out to them with personalized messages, highlighting the mutual benefits of our collaboration. The goal is to establish a relationship where we can share content that is both beneficial to the influencer’s audience and enhances the online visibility of the client’s brand.