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marți, 2 noiembrie 2010

SEOptimise

How To Use Infographics for SEO & Linkbait

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 09:22 AM PDT

2010 is the year of the infographic. Infographics are probably the most popular way not only to visualize data but also to get links this year. In modern SEO linkbait is the most common method of “link building”. To be more exact: Linkbaiting is not link building as you don’t build them manually like say in directory submission but you create content and then get the links by people you do not even contact.

Infographics have proven ideally suited to both spread awareness about issues and as viral content people share and link to.

It’s surprising though that SEO blogs and forums rarely deal with the creation of infographics to get links and exposure. The reason for this lack of tutorials may be the interdisciplinary approach an infographic requires.

A viral marketer determines the topic of the infographic.
An SEO specialist will find out the keywords you want to target.
A journalist or statistician has to to research the data needed to display.
A graphic designer has to actually make the infographic.
A social media marketer is needed who pushes it out to social media and influencers.

Of course one person can perform several of these tasks maybe even do all of it in some cases but usually more then one person will be involved. Thus a blogger can’t really cover all of these steps. There are some blog posts out there introducing parts of the process. I’ve collected them and compiled a list of a dozen resources showing you how to use infographics for SEO and linkbait. Scroll down to check it out.

As you see below roughly half of these posts deal with the circumstances of publishing an infographic and actual examples or case studies. The other half are tutorials that explain different ways of actually creating the infographic itself.

Where do you start? The idea is the most important part. You can’t take any random data set, create an infographic and expect people to share it all over the place. An infographic has to strike a chord with many people without being the lowest common denominator. It really has to contain some info. You can’t just focus on trivia like celebrities.

Also infographics work best for huge numbers or complex processes nobody can really fathom. A great example is the BP oil catastrophe which by far extended the term spill from day one but people couldn’t really imagine the sheer size and the dire consequences of it. The BP oil spill thus spawned a huge number of infographics to illustrate the disaster.

While the term infographic also entail the “graphic” it doesn’t have to a fancy graphic. Often a combination of maps, diagrams and a few images reduced to their symbolic character are enough.

The starting point for a successful infographic one it is ready is still often Digg, the almost dead social news site. While Facebook, Twitter and even Tumblr have by now much more overall traffic and influence than Digg, the Digg frontpage can make the infographic succeed elsewhere.

Of course many bloggers, especially the less important ones who lack the ability to create killer content themselves love to include infographics in their blogs. It’s a good idea to contact some bloggers directly and send them the infographic. Of course you have to research bloggers who really care for the topic you illustrate.

On the other hand you need to display the infographic on your site or blog to get the credit and links in the first place. So you have to make sure that you are the first to publish it and that a predefined embed code includes your site as the source. Don’t forget to add the source at the bottom of the graphic itself as well.

12 infographic resources: