Ultimate Guide: Building Backlinks Through Infographics In 5 Steps

Creating stunning Infographic in 5 steps.

The opportunity of building backlinks with infographics can’t be missed. For small businesses and websites building inbound links are difficult but through infographics, it is easy to get tons of links to your website or blog. It can build links very fast and can do wonder in improving both traffic and page rank. Investment of time and money in creating stunning infographics always delivers good SEO results.

Infographics make everything better. By combining data and story the complex problems can be made easy for people to understand.

Infographics are the secret to enrich the backlink profile. Infographics make possibilities endless. With endless possibilities provided by infographics, you do not need to worry much about creating backlinks.

What is a backlink?

Link is a relationship between a pair of web pages. Inlink also is known as backlink means a page is linked from some other page. The linking text which we call anchor text can be different and depends on the discretion of the webmaster of the other page. The anchor text itself also influences page rank. The total number of times a page is backlinked is called link impact which is one of the most crucial factors in search ranking.

Is link building really hard now?

For a new site, it is not an easy task to build a link profile. It takes time and consistent efforts. The penalty tools like Panda and Penguin keep eye on black hat practices and punish those sites by degrading page rank.

Earlier people engaged in black hat link building habits. They used unethical link building practices to increase their backlink profile. Ideally, the quality site with quality content should get more visibility so that they can be beneficial for internet users and vibrant search engines. So, rightfully Google introduced these algorithms to keep a check on such unethical habits and to improve the search results and user experience.

The more qualitative with high authority backlinks always have been hard to build. The webmasters of high authority sites generally don’t give a link to low authority sites. But few quality backlinks are better than thousands of low authority backlinks and an infographic can do wonder in getting high authority backlinks.

Does having quality content automatically earn good backlinks?

It may earn good backlinks only if this content is visible to the right and relevant bloggers and webmasters. But still, there is no guarantee and there are limited chances of getting links.

Moreover, there may be many more people who want to link to your site but they are unaware of your great content. The majority of the sites and blogs don’t have audiences and followers so how would they get links even if they are having great content. Therefore you should take deliberate action of link building and must have the right kind of strategy. Link earning is great philosophy but link building exercise should be taken deliberately.

So a smart strategy should revolve around creating quality and engaging content, research on the targeted audience, publishing content on different platforms where your audiences spend time, making outreach efforts to the webmasters and bloggers with consistent follow-ups. Building a healthy relationship with industry people is the key.

Do you know the power of visual formats?

One of the creative methods to build links is through visual formats. The pie charts, bars, data points, graphs, info-graphs, and maps are widely used in visual formats. The visual data are easily and quickly consumed than text articles. Visual content is processed 60,000 times more than textual format by our brain. Retaining the power of content is increased if it has visual elements.

In fact, people on social media are more engaged with images and love to share. So, what is an info-graph? Infographics are amazing tools - they can help in converting hard to digest and complex problems or data into something interesting or fun for your audiences.

So, most boring and complex data can be made interesting so that prospects and audiences can digest and engage easily.

In this busy world where an internet user spends very little time on a particular web page, the data and information presented in attractive visual formats can help in understanding your message in a short time. They help in engaging visitors with your website or blogs.

Why infographics are so popular among digital marketers?

According to research on average, a person spends only 10-15 seconds on one website. The human attention time span is just 8 seconds. So when a visitor lands, the website must capture the interest of the visitor within 8 seconds.

Moreover, internet users are likely to read info-graphics 30 times more than the pure textual format. Generally, people can remember up to 80% of what they see while they can only retain 20% when they read the text.

So, if you have an awesome design or info-graph then the visitors may share it or recommend it to their friends. This increases the chances of visibility or getting links for your website. Sharing infographics on social media platforms is one of the most powerful content marketing strategies which many people don’t know.

In the past few years, infographics have been great tools to acquire high authority backlinks and are still an effective way for marketers to gain visibility and links. They are a wonderful and effective way of communication. They are more liked by media persons and publishers because they can enrich news articles by inserting info-graphs.

The modern info-graphics have more attractive and animated designs which are more liked by the audiences and entertain them. If you have designed a stunning an info-graph based on popular demand and sentiments then it can go viral if rightly promoted.

Therefore, no doubt infographics are great assets for marketers to get high domain authority links from news sites and other popular sites. The small businesses can make the best use of infographics for getting links. By seeing the popularity of infographics, they should be a core part of the content marketing strategy.

What are the salient features of an effective infographic?

The layman should be able to understand and comprehend your message on the info-graph. It should tell a story using texts, data, and eye-catching design elements. The story should be extracted out of the data and presented beautifully from start to end on the info-graph.

The story should be compelling and add value to the readers. The great stories are hidden in data relationships. To find the story you need to take advantage of data visualization. Data visualization is one of the most important techniques to discover or extract useful value from raw data or numbers.

Get data from credible sources, it would be better if you can use your own in house data collected from different methods like surveys, feedbacks, customer reports, etc. The data collected from such methods will be your company’s proprietary. You can have an edge over your competitors by storytelling from original data. The story extracted out of proprietary data will be unique and can get the attention of a wider audience. Therefore from data mining and visualization, you can get meaningful insights about loopholes or further improvement in your processes and strategies.

You can follow the below steps to find a compelling narrative from data.

Organize data and visualize different trends, patterns, and correlations among data, you can use data visualization software tools like Tableau, Infogram, Spreadsheets, and Sisense.

You need to examine various relationships present in data. The bar and line charts can be used to observe trends in data for a given period of time. For example, samples collected for a particular vaccine can be utilized to tell a story whether that vaccine has been effective or not since its inception in the region. If the number of patients has been decreased for given years then it can be concluded that the introduction of vaccines has been successful.

Similarly, by using scatter plot charts you can find how closely two variables are related. You can identify whether there is a correlation at all or not among these variables and if there is a correlation then what kind of it is negative or positive.

Therefore from a given set of data, a story that is beneficial can be harnessed by using different data visualization techniques and tools. These hidden relationships make raw data great assets or gold mines for different organizations. Let's not forget that data is the new oil in the 21st century. The content marketers can use storytelling to increase sales or tap potential which has not been explored so far.

Before designing an info-graph the research on your targeted audience should be done. You should know for whom you are creating design and for what purpose. You should understand their pain points, needs, problems, and desires.

Although social media are popular for sharing and reading infographics what about if the size is not apt. If it is too short the reader may guess that it is not having any value addition and if it is too long then readers may not have the patience to go through till the end. So the right size matters a lot.

In both cases, you may fail to get the right response. Therefore it should be of the right size and must have white spaces between the design elements. These blank spaces increase readability and avoid confusion.

Most of the audiences over the internet judge the relevancy of the content based on its headline. The headline should give hint to the users about what exactly the info-graph explains. So the introductory lines or headline should be such that the reader should be able to tell immediately what the info-graph is all about.

The data must be accurate, authentic and from credible resources like government agencies and other well established reputed organizations. The mention of data sources on the info-graph will increase the trust of the audiences. It is generally seen that if the post has a mention of well-known organizations then it is more likely to be shared by the people. References add more credibility to the post. Moreover, the trust of webmasters for getting backlinks can be earned.

So, presenting accurate data is another most crucial aspect of the infographics.

Another important aspect of visual formats is the color usages of the design. There is no doubt that colors trigger different moods, emotions and behavior hence affect readability, understanding even buying decisions.

You need to understand the color psychology of humans to make infographics that have a great look and feel. The visual effects should appeal to the eyes of the readers. Better color visuals increase the willingness of the readers. Color combination, use of bright colors and contrast should be great as per the requirement. [Louise Myers on color theory]

Targeting the audience is essential for a successful info-graphics campaign. You should start the process of creating an info graph by first brainstorming about your audience and their needs. Without addressing the problems of your intended readers the info-graph would not fetch good results.

The info-graph which is general in nature and does not meet the requirement of a specific group will land nowhere.

The time and efforts invested will go waste if it does not achieve its goal.

You must do research on different aspects like for which niche you want to create the design, audience tastes, the demography(age, sex, household moms, retired people, college students, etc.) and where they are located (geo-targeting, different regions have different needs, culture, language, and tastes).

The more targeted info-graph will have more engagement and high conversion rates. For example, different age groups people like different fonts and colors. So you should design an infographic that is more readable and appealing to the audience in your niche. Taking care of such small things can make your infographic more effective and stunning.

Search for the sample info-graphs in your topic present in all over the internet. You may use tools like Buzzsumo and Google Trends to judge the popularity of the topics or ideas. You can also use visual social media platforms like Pinterest to see the latest and popular info-graphics in your niche.

Use Google search to find the relevant info-graphics. Your info-graph should be better than those are already present and published by your competitors.

In order to make a killer info-graphics, you have to come up with super quality data in your niche. You can use backlinks extracting and content research tools to know what type of content and from where your competitors have got links through infographics.

Keep doing improvement according to the latest tastes and trends of the audiences. It is a continuous process so that you can get backlinks and leads on a continuous basis.

Even if you are able to create a killer info-graph but what about if it is not shared enough especially on social media? Therefore you should make it more sharable by including various social media icons.

Use bar charts, pie charts, maps, flow charts, decision trees, and other elements to present different types of data. Keep color psychology in mind while using different color combinations for design elements.

Therefore, just putting data on infographics is not enough but you need to make a great, most effective infographics and promote it on the right platforms so that it can go viral.

Too much information and data will also make it complex to digest so it should tell a succinct story. The simple and clear infographics telling a story is more likely to be more popular among large audiences because of its simplicity, clear understanding and more data retaining capacity.

What are the best Infographic makers?

If you are not a professional designer then you can start with free templates available in the gallery of infographic creators. Each template meets the need for a unique kind of problem. For example, these already designed templates can be used to show events in a chronological manner, to do a comparative analysis, to illustrate any given process, etc.

So based on your research and purpose carefully choose the best layout or template on which you can visualize your data in the logical and best way.

These infographic makers come with free and premium services. Naturally, free tools have limited capacity in terms of quantity of templates, fonts, shapes, icons, etc. Paid tools have more advanced capabilities based on their premium plans.

But before starting the actual design, it is always better to draw the rough info-graph first on the blank paper. Create a layout and determine the position of each element and do adjustments until it looks stunning. It helps a lot in making necessary changes.

There are many infographic designers or creator tools but only a few of them have great flexibility usability and design elements. Below tools with their distinguished features are commonly used by content and digital marketers.

Piktochart is easy to use and great for people who do not have any prior experience in making infographics. It does have a great map and charts capability. The beginners on infographics can start with this great simple tool.

Visme is also simple to use and comes with additional features. The templates are rich and have a wide variety. The drag and drop features are amazing. The integration of maps with infographics is interactive. It supports dynamic content and animated objects. You can prepare infographics from scratch without any template by using its library of content blocks. It provides the feature of team collaboration.

Infogram is another infographic maker with great data editing in spreadsheets. It has fast processing and can export CSV and XLS data.

Can you design info-graph yourself free of cost? Yes, you can make but you may need to spend some small money to get access to best templates. In case if you want to hire a designer he may charge fee.

How to make the Infographics viral?

Just making killer infographics with compelling narrative is not enough, it should be submitted in popular directories where publishers are hungry for attractive visual stories.

Efforts should be made to submit infographics in popular directories, websites, and blogs. People like media persons always keep eye on these sites for getting stunning infographics so that they can publish them for their audiences.

Therefore, just creating an effective infographics does not complete your work. You need to promote your piece of art and creativity by submitting them into appropriate and popular directories. And you should also share your designs with the right kind of influencers.

Try to publish them through social media and guest articles.

Identify the good sites with good authority so that you can have quality links.

In addition to infographics, also try to make high-quality content on the entire site keeping in mind the quality and profitable keywords.