4 Ways To Deliver Powerful Backlinks Using Visual Content
37% of marketers say that visual marketing is the most important form of content in their business. It’s all about engagement, and visual assets deliver far better on the engagement front than written content. Higher engagement levels correlate to more sharing; more sharing gives you more backlinks—plain and simple. But how does one use visual content to deliver more powerful backlinks? And what if you’re camera shy? Well, there’s good news. Visual content doesn’t require a PhD in film or photography for you to excel at it. Plus, there are several ways to produce quality content that won’t break the bank.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. Here are some ways you can produce backlink-worthy visual content today.
- Infographics
“Info”- facts provided or learned about something or someone.
“Graphic”- relating to visual art, especially involving drawing, engraving, or lettering.
Combine the two words together and you get one of the most shareable visual cues on the internet: infographics. They look something like this…
Source: Contently.net
Infographics are a fancy way of organizing information with an emphasis on graphic design. They don’t have to be overly informative, they just have provide readers with a basic amount of useful information to be shareable. The example above is a very basic list of the 10 best cities for freelancers, something that you or I could write about in under an hour. But thanks to the delightful visual component of the infographic, it makes the written content way more interesting (heck, we’re talking about it now aren’t we?).
The best part is you don’t need to go out and buy Photoshop for $100’s or $1,000’s. There are many free tools that can help you design your own infographic relatively easily. One is called Canva, and it comes with hundreds of templates for just about any piece of visual content—including blog posts, emails, newsletters, press releases, etc.
Infographics can be shared like wildfire. Not only do the increased backlinks improve your page and domain authority, but they literally improve your personal authority as a thought leader in your industry!
When you make an infographic, you should always include an embed code. This is the HTML snippet that a person will grab when they post your infographic on their own site. It’s really important to include one because this will provide you with extra link juice, and will remain forever linked to your website since it includes your post and image URL.
2. Guestographic
Taking the concept of infographics a step further, let’s talk about guestographics for a second. This is a relatively new term for an absolutely dynamite way of building backlinks. The general idea is that you’re creating an infographic with the purpose of having it placed on another publisher’s website, rather than your own.
The goal is to approach a site owner who has a higher web authority than you, and get them to post it on one of their pages—providing you with contextual backlinks for your efforts.
What high authority site owner would use my infographic? Many, as long as you’re giving them value.
Brian Dean of Backlinko explains how one of the first infographics about Pinterest racked up nearly 500 backlinks, even though the design is relatively simple and the content isn’t anything complex either.
Whether you’re creating an infographic on your own site, or one for another publisher’s site, make sure you’re infusing a blend of value and originality to consumers.
3. Visual Social Media Platforms
For those in the visual content world, one of the most exciting social media platforms is Instagram. And today, it’s never been easier to combine it with Pinterest—another pretty awesome social media platform. Content creators can post a featured image from one of their articles to Instagram and easily copy the link to Pinterest. If the image is appealing enough, you can get lots of shares.
Let’s say you’re running a pet adoption center and trying to get more qualified leads to your site. Well, Instagram is especially famous for users posting images of their animals, so if you used the platform for pictures of your pets that are up for adoption it would surely garner you some attention. The winning formula for Instagram, or Pinterest, is simple: cute pet + appropriate hashtags = lots of likes and new followers.
4. YouTube
Uh oh, we might’ve just struck a nerve for those camera shy individuals. Maybe these two truths will change your mind:
- YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
- YouTube video results appear atop most search queries
In other words, YouTube is still too massive to dismiss, especially when talking about visual content creation. Luckily, you don’t have to love the camera to create a YouTube video. For certain niches you can get away with producing a simple powerpoint presentation and still rank. But if you don’t mind standing in front of the camera, there’s nothing like a live webinar to get people watching and sharing your content.
Tutorials are also highly effective. If you can SHOW users how to do something, you’ll not only be rewarded with tons of shares within YouTube, but your video will likely rank near the top of Google for search queries of that question.
For example, here’s page one for “how to dance.”
Appearing as the first piece of content after an Answer Box is really valuable for your brand, and it’s more attainable than you probably think. With a little keyword research, you’ll be well on your way to scoring backlinks through your YouTube content.
How to Win at Visual Content?
It’s like a birthday cake. The outside frosting is visually appealing, attention-gathering, and perhaps even noteworthy, but the inside of the cake is where the true quality lies. It’s important that you’re producing high-quality, useful information for your audience before delving into the visual content creation, otherwise it won’t get shared—no matter how pretty it looks.
If design isn’t your thing, you can still reap the rewards of visual content. Simply find a freelance designer who can properly articulate your vision. Even if it costs you a few dollars, aren’t the possibility of backlinks worth the investment?
