expertSEM

Organic SEO is like having perfectly imperfect hair – it looks natural but it actually requires a lot of work.  Successful organic SEO is results-driven and utilizes social media as a way to drive traffic to your clients’ websites.  Because social media is – wait for it – social, you’ll need to cultivate a network of online buddies who will be willing to help you get your clients’ content noticed.  Think of each person with an online presence as having a megaphone – some people have louder megaphones than others and therefore the content that they produce and comment on reaches a wider audience. In the marketing industry, we call those folks with the loudest megaphones “Influencers”. 

Influencers tend to have “niche-power”, meaning that they are the trusted experts in a very specific field.  If your client is an e-tailer that specializes in triathlon gear for example, you’ll need to find Influencers who are authorities within the endurance sports community.   Even if you have limited knowledge of the niche in which you are searching for Influencers, they are easy to identify when you look in the right places:

1)      Google – Influencers love Google and Google loves Influencers.  After all, they were the folks who were invited to Google Wave before the masses knew what it was.  (And most of them now have the chance themselves to hand out invites that seem as rare as the golden tickets into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory).  To find Influencers on Google, first subscribe to 10 industry specific blogs that are updated at least once a day in your Google Reader.  Find a post that a handful of bloggers marked as “like” (located under the title of the post) and click on one of the names.  That person’s Google profile will open in your window, and links to all of their social profiles across the web will be displayed across the top of the page. 

Click on those links, check out their sites, and comment on a few of their blog posts.  Make sure to include your email address and links to at least one of your social profiles in your comments so that they have a way to contact you.

2)         Twitter – Most Influencers have a link to their twitter profile on their Google profile.  Click on that link, and then click “follow” under their avatar when you arrive at their page.  You can also find niche Influencers by searching for keywords  in recently published tweets. Because Twitter has a very specific set of social norms, you’ll need to stroke you Influencer’s online ego before they will willingly push your content out.  See “The Art of the Tweet” by Crystal.

3)         Get local – Influencers are jumping on the geolocation bandwagon right now.  Consequently, they are the most active users on location-based social networking sites like Gowalla, Foursquare, and Brightkite. 

4)         Yahoo! Answers – Influencers are perceived as experts within their niche, and Yahoo! Answers has provided an easy way to identify the users with the most authority.  Click on the most relevant category on the left sidebar.  When that page opens, you will see the profiles of the users who have answered the most questions in that category on the right sidebar.  Click on their profiles to get their contact information. 

Once you identify the Influencers around the web with the loudest megaphones, make sure to build relationships with them by actually being interested in what they have to say.   By engaging in a continued dialogue with Influencers, you will have more linking opportunities.  As their influence grows, so does yours.  This will result in long-term sustained growth in traffic to your clients’ sites instead of sharp jumps and drops in traffic.  Just as you would take care to style that perfectly messy hair, you need to make sure that you are finding the right people to assist you in your organic SEO efforts.