By Janette Speyer, Web Success Team – 

Beyond offsite promotions, one of the greatest benefits a quality blogger can offer is links to your website to increase your SEO value. This will result in more traffic, higher search rankings, more visibility, and increased sales opportunities.

Brands are starting to find more and more value in blogs and bloggers. Many are embarking on cross promotions with giveaways, gift guides and brand ambassadorship. All this activity provides great value for your products and services. Your blog ambassadors can become your best sales force.

Here are a few tips to help you find the right bloggers:

Look for Quality, NOT Quantity!

How to use blogger influencers to create good links to your website:

1. Identify the right bloggers to promote your content. Quality! I can’t stress it enough; we do not want spammy links to our website. Research them on Twitter or on other research platforms.
2. Review the website’s page rank; it should over a 2/10
3. Check their social media platforms and social scores on K-Red and Klout.
4. Ask for references from the bloggers.
5. Interaction: the blog posts should have some form of engagement, like a comment or a giveaway that requires an interaction.
6. Social: look to see if the blog has social shares on recent articles.
7. Fresh Content: Must have posted new content within the last week.
8. Follow-Up: you will need to see if the blogger is viable: Look for the website URL, a contact name, an email or a Twitter handler to communicate with the blogger.
9. Create branded content for them to promote on their website and ask them to link back to your website.
10. Bonus: Add a page to your website and display their blogposts to support them.

Once you have established if this blogger’s website is relevant to your products and services do return the favor by creating a page on your website to “link” back to the blog. You can create a fun page with all the blog posts and encourage visitors to share. Using bloggers can definitely enhance your website’s SEO.

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