Recognise the value of creator-led SEO

Ashley says: “Embrace creator-led SEO, and everything that entails.

That means working with content creators on other platforms, such as TikTok, YouTube, etc. It could be the MrBeasts of the world – but even on a much smaller scale, working with hyper-localised or smaller community creators.

It depends on your budget. MrBeast is a grand example; that’s the one that grabs people’s attention because as soon as you mention his name people instantly know who you mean. For most brands, you’ll be looking at the lower end of the scale and working with people with smaller followings, leveraging their expertise and their community to further your brand’s SEO efforts.”

Should every brand work with creators?

“I think so. There are going to be instant connections between people and brands in a B2C space, but this is also effective in the B2B space and across other industries. This isn’t just something for fashion or high-consumer brands to leverage. There is an opportunity for other types of brands across various industries here as well.”

How do you find and reach out to creators?

“Generally, it should be quite simple. If you understand your brand and your audience, then you’re probably already following these types of creators in your space – or you at least know who they are.

If you need to do something massive on YouTube, MrBeast instantly comes to mind. For brands in fashion, there will be thousands of fashion influencers you could think of that you would want to work with. It’s up to the person on the brand side, or SEO agency, that’s leveraging this. You need to understand which creators already have an established relationship with your audience.

Then, it’s about doing the work. Usually, you will reach out to their management or agency and say, ‘We want to work with your client. Is this a brand that they feel they could have a relationship with?’ That is super important. You shouldn’t just be saying, ‘How much do you charge? Here’s a paycheck.’ It needs to be very much relationship-led and audience-led.

If the creator does want to work with your brand, then you can start building that relationship and exploring it. Understanding the finances is important, but you really want to understand what the creator is going to get out of the situation (in terms of helping their community and providing useful content to their community) and what the brand is going to get out of it. Do they have an established community that you can work with? Are you going to get results?”

Do creators have pre-determined rates, or do you approach them with a budget?

“It varies. We’re still establishing what that’s going to look like in the long term. If you look at the influencer marketing space, as with SEO, there are always going to be people looking to cut corners and do things as quickly and cheaply as possible. When they’re doing that, it’s a race to the bottom dollar – finding the cheapest influencer to work with where they’re still going to get awareness. That’s where bad influencer marketing has really lacked.

You should focus on doing good work, and doing effective work. You want to explore those relationships and make it a positive experience for both sides, instead of just being concerned with how much it’s going to cost.

In terms of the campaign idea, I will often instantly think of a creator that’s perfect for the projects that we are working on. It’s likely that they’re going to want to do it as well, particularly if they get passionate about it. You should be saying to a creator or their agency, ‘We’ve got a really good idea that we think you/your client’s going to love. Would you like to be part of it?’

A lot of the time, if you show up with something that they’re going to be really passionate about, and that they think they can get good content from, then they’re going to be more willing to work with your brand anyway.”

Why are these kinds of long-term relationships so important in SEO now?

“We’re starting to see a transition into a new era of search and SEO. New signals are emerging, such as the new E in EEAT and the experience and expertise around that. If you can position an influencer as the authority on a topic and leverage them for your SEO content, it makes sense to take advantage of a long-term relationship rather than only working with them for a month or a single campaign.

They could be authoring content for a longer period of time which would allow you to build their authority, whilst positioning your brand in a position of authority at the same time. Brands need to develop longer-term relationships with authors for the EEAT benefits and the topical authority that comes from it.

There is still an element of link building where you are looking to gain X number of links from X and Y publications. However, when you’re working with a creator, you can say to those publications, ‘Your audience cares what this influencer does so you should cover this topic and link to our page.”

What level of influencer should you aim for, and is there a budget you would recommend?

“It would be irresponsible for me to provide a blanket approach when it comes to budget because different brands are going to have different budgets.

Focus on your goals for the campaign. If your big goal is to build brand awareness, then it might make sense to go with a slightly bigger creator, which may incur a bigger budget requirement. If your goal is acquiring really qualified leads, then you might work with a smaller creator. Understand what you want from the campaign and let that drive what your budget becomes. Be really strategic.

Once you’ve done that, it’s a matter of understanding your goals and what the creative is going to be, and then making sure that you get the most out of the relationship to justify the expense. If you’re going to work with a creator on TikTok to create TikTok content, don’t just leverage TikTok. Repurpose that content and put it on your website. Make sure it’s part of a blog or a landing page, or turn it into a testimonial. Get it on your website so you’re immediately getting more bang for your buck. Then, get that video onto your other social platforms as a YouTube Short or an Instagram Reel. Getting the most out of the content that you create is a really effective way to justify the expense of creator-led SEO.”

How do you measure the SEO value of the content an influencer produces for you, particularly when it’s posted on their social media?

“It’s important to remember that, when we talk about SEO, that doesn’t just mean Google anymore. For the longest time, it’s been really easy to say that the SEO benefit is ranking in position one, getting X number of clicks every month and X number of impressions, and going through those metrics that we all know, love, and hate.

When we start embracing TikTok SEO, for example, there are different metrics that may mean different things for your brand. How many people have watched that TikTok? How many people have then gone onto your landing page? If you know that you released the campaign in January and traffic went up by 1,000, you can assume that around 1,000 people have come through from the TikTok content you’ve produced (alongside everything else you’ve got going on). Then, you can look at the bottom dollar. How much money have you made off that increase in traffic? What’s the business advantage, profit-wise?

In terms of SEO benefits, you should consider the visuals on the SERP. When you create that influencer content and get it covered by publications, is that appearing in the news features on the SERP? If so, your brand could be ranking position one and also ranking in the news feature above that, and then all the publications that have covered you are there on the SERP as well. Your visibility goes from just one blue link to having a news feature, all those publications underneath, and the position that you are ranking.

You can dominate a SERP in ways that weren’t possible before, which gives you a big advantage over your competitors. You’re visible on the SERP and they’re not, which is fantastic.”

Can you retain the same visibility once the relationship has ended?

“The news features at the top of the SERP are always evolving. As new people put out content, that’s going to change. Your content will very quickly disappear from that section of the SERP after it’s provided its initial value.

That’s where it becomes really important for you to leverage the influencer relationships that you’ve built and paid for with on-site content. A really good way to do this is to take a keyword that you know is going to have long-term value (e.g., an informational query or a longer tail query) and build the creative for the influencer relationship around that query.

Then, once the influencer relationship ends and you’ve faded from the news publications listings, people are still searching for that query. Therefore, they’re still being exposed to the content you’ve created and you’re still getting long-term benefits from that relationship.

Over time, you can expect the initial effect to dissipate. However, in typical SEO fashion, if you can do it strategically you can extend the amount of time that content is going to be working hard for your brand.”

Would you recommend creating long-form articles from creator-led videos, perhaps using AI?

“I would definitely create a long-form informational content piece based on that influencer content. However, I wouldn’t necessarily say that you should utilise AI to do so, at this point in time. We’ll see how AI develops.

Creating a longer piece of content that can leverage snippets – transcribing the video, taking the best bits, editing that, and making it work for your brand – is absolutely going to give you longer-term benefits.

When Google’s Perspectives filter starts to roll out, influencers are going to start gaining a lot more credibility as authors. Saying, ‘[X feature], contributed by [influencer name]’ is going to help your SEO authority as well.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop spending as much time on keyword research in its archaic form. Stop spending time developing strategies based wholly on keyword research, search volumes, and the old metrics that we’ve leaned into for years. It’s becoming out-of-date.

Instead of building a strategy based on that, base your strategies around what your audience is interested in. You know your community best. Leverage creator-led SEO to do that, and build your strategies that way, as opposed to relying solely on keyword research.”

Ashley Liddell is SEO Content Strategist at Reprise Digital, and you can find him over at AshleyLiddell.co.uk.