With attention-grabbing visuals, easy-to-digest data, and a socially shareable format, the use of infographics in content marketing has soared in popularity over the past few years. But did you know that infographics are much more beneficial to your brand’s SEO (search engine optimization) than written text alone?
Including infographics in your company’s marketing plan will help boost content views, bring potential customers back to your website and social accounts, and increase your ranking on search engines.
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Why SEO Matters
Your company’s online presence matters now more than ever. Websites and social media accounts are visited and scrutinized by most potential customers and clients. You want the public to find your sites and information quickly. Putting a priority on SEO marketing will give you an edge over competitors.
The basics of Search Engine Optimization involve creating content rich with keywords and relevant phrases to increase the discoverability of a website on any search engine. Websites are ranked on search engines based on SEO, bringing more traffic and engagement to those companies that have put in the work.
SEO content is content that will attract traffic to your site organically. Another easy way of establishing better SEO is through the creation of backlinks. When more websites, blogs, and social sites link back to your site, it will be much easier to find.
Benefits of Infographics
It makes sense that content containing images or graphics rather than text alone attracts significantly more views. A well-designed infographic may be widely shared online, ensuring your messaging reaches a large audience while bringing more viewers to your brand’s website.
Infographics can help boost SEO by:
Making Complex Topics Understandable
Well-designed infographics are easily digestible content pieces. Images and graphics will pull viewers’ attention, while complex data or information can be presented in simple graphs, charts, and other visual representations.
The brain processes visual data 60,000 times faster than it processes text. Putting complicated ideas or information into a visual format gets messaging across so much faster.
Raising Brand Awareness
Viewers and customers can easily share infographics on blogs and social media sites. The more viewers share your content the more your brand becomes known and recognized.
As pieces of visual content, infographics should always represent the brand. Remember to include brand colors, logos, your website URL, social media accounts, and any recognizable brand imagery in the design. If you can include clickable links back to your site, this will easily help increase your website’s SEO.
The majority of people are visual learners. With the use of infographics, you not only tell the public about your brand and what it has to offer, but you show them as well. The visual addition will help stick in the viewer’s memory.
Bringing Traffic Back to Your Site
As mentioned, having clickable links on infographics to bring traffic back to your website will increase your brand’s SEO. The more your content is shared, the more backlinks you will acquire. Backlinks are links on other blogs, websites, and social accounts that link back to your website.
The more backlinks you have, the higher search engines will rank your site. Backlinks demonstrate that your brand is well known and that the information you are putting out is valuable to viewers.
Creating quality infographics and other marketing content with well-researched and presented data, charts, and graphs sets your brand apart as an expert in your field. The more relevant and useful information your company presents, the higher your reputation will be both to the public and to search engine ranking algorithms.
SEO Optimized Infographics
So we know that creating and sharing infographics increases a brand’s SEO. However, to make the biggest impact with your content, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Meta Description
Before designing an infographic, you should list out important keywords to focus on. Keep these keywords in the content metadata wherever the infographic is posted.
Image Alt Text
Most infographics are saved in static PDF or image file form, and the text will not be search engine crawlable. Because of this, be sure to include image alt text with relevant keywords and branding. The alt image text tells engines what your content piece is about.
URL String
Wherever you post infographics, be sure that relevant keywords are included in the url.
Size and Download Time
Online viewers do not have a lot of patience when it comes to content download time. Be sure that your infographic is saved in a reasonable file size that will load quickly on any site or social account.
Social Sharing
The best way to ensure viewers share your content is by including social sharing buttons. Make it as easy as possible to get your information and branding out in the virtual world.
Following these technical tips will help get you the SEO results you want from using infographics for your company or brand. However, the best content is ultimately content that is well-designed and brings value to the viewer. Any branded content should inform, educate, entertain and inspire.