Using Key Online Influencers for links and traffic

Key Online Influencers can help you get both strong links and valuable traffic, but what are they a how can you identify and approach them?

What are Key Online Influencers?

Key Online Influencers (KOI’s) are people in your industry or genre who have an already established following, they may be bloggers or website owners who are trusted and generate discussions via social media.

When identifying key online influencers don’t just look at the number of Twitter followers of Facebook fans they have look at their activity online. Do they get involved in conversations; do they write thought-provoking content and generate a lot of comments on their posts and articles? If they do then these are the people you should be approaching for links and referrals.

Why Use Key Online Influencers’s?

KOI’s have already built up trust in their niche and quite often one tweet from them will generate a lot of traffic to your site.

Key Online Influencers should not be used for general link building and will not do anything to damage their own reputation so make sure you if you approach them you have content of value such as a video, interesting article or competition.

Blogger Incentives

We all know that paying for links is bad, bad, bad but KOI’s know their worth and they will only feature your site or content if there is something in it for them. This doesn’t mean you should offer them money but sometimes an incentive for their readers and followers is a good way for them to promote you or feature your content.

Freebies, competitions, prizes and vouchers are a good way to add incentive and Key Online Influencers like to be the ones to offer their loyal followers a deal.

How they can help you

As mentioned Key Online Influencers have a loyal following and have spent years building up a good reputation and trust. A link or recommendation from them in your industry can be very valuable as a SEO link and as part of an inbound marketing strategy.

Before contacting a KOI always make sure you can offer value through your website or content, be polite and respectful and hopefully you can create a good relationship that will be mutually beneficial and help your blog or website succeed.

Sadie Sherran is Head of Search at SEO Creative and works closely with clients on their SEO, Social Media and internet marketing campaigns.