Jun 2, 2017
How I Got 22 Follow Links With Infographic Marketing
In 5 Easy Steps
This article was originally posted here in my personal blog:
I am guessing you are reading this because you already know how important link building is for any SEO strategy.
You understand that it boosts your page’s authority which in turn helps you rank higher for your chosen keywords.
You also know it can be a great source of traffic.
You have heard all about how to use written content to build these links but are after something extra. This is where infographic marketing comes in.
I will show you exactly how I used ‘infographic submission sites’ to gain easy and quick follow links back to my site within half a day. I have even included a full list of the submission sites I used.
I achieved these results for a client. I cannot disclose their identity so instead I am going to use a fictitious example. So please, close your eyes and imagine you own a website focused on the extremely popular topic; ‘The Cows of Bali’ …
In case you need some help imagining this …
STEP 1: Create an infographic
How to choose the right infographic:
Choose one of the keywords you have identified in your SEO strategy. Check no-one else has created an infographic on the exact same topic, or if they have, it can easily be beaten on quality or quantity.
How to create the infographic:
There are many online free builders.Two of my personal favourites are:
1. Canva: Because of it is so easy to use.
2. Easel: Because of their extensive and well-made templates.
I would highly recommend you test out your chosen site before fully committing to creating your complete infographic.
Take 10 mins to create something simple and try to download it. You should be able to tell if you gel with this tool in that time and also you should check if there are charges for downloads.
The guys at Creative Blog have created an extensive list of free infographic creation sites.
How long it takes:
I timed the process and this infographic on cows took me 17 mins. I already had all the pictures I required…
…because yes, I am the sort of person who goes to Bali and takes pictures of cows.
The first time it may take you longer to get used to the tools. Start by creating something simple, like the above.
Spend no more than 45 mins to create your first infographic.
STEP 2: Create a post specifically for the Infographic.
Create a new post in your Word Press site which is dedicated to the infographic. (If you are using another blogging site then still create a new post. The exact steps of how to do this may differ from below.)
This page will be submitted to the infographic submission sites.
To do this effectively and in a way which gains you ‘follow links’ go through the steps outlined below.
Add some text at the beginning of the post, to introduce your infographic.
Step 3: Optimise this page for SEO
To do this all of the below must be optimised.
Text at the beginning of the post
What:
The text that comes before the Infographic. It should be written under the ‘paragraph’ setting.
How to optimise this text for SEO:
Must include your keyword or LSI keyword. *
Title of the post
What:
The title tag of your page. This is shown by Google, Yahoo (or other search engines) on the results page.
If you don’t already have it, add the ‘Yoast SEO’ Plugin to your site. At the bottom of your post you will find this plugin. Click ‘Edit snippet’ then add the title here:
How to optimise for SEO:
Must contain the Keyword and the word ‘Infographic’.
Must be no longer than 60 characters.
Must be unique. No other posts on your website should have the same title (this is important).
Should only contain ‘|’ as punctuation. Use it for separation instead of a ‘.’.
Meta description
What:
The description which is shown under the title on the search results page.
You also edit this in the Yoast SEO add on at the bottom of the post. Click ‘Edit snippet’ then add the meta description:
How to optimise the meta description for SEO:
Should contain the keyword or a synonym of your keyword (otherwise referred to as LSI Keyword) LINK . (Rather than force keywords choose something to entice people to click. 80% of the time you should include the keywords).
Must be no longer than 160 characters.
Must be a genuine description of the page. A good rule of thumb I like to follow is: 1 sentence summarising what is on the page. 1 sentence as the call to action, making someone want to click to open the page.
H1
What:
The title which appears on your blog post itself. You can either put this within the text and set it as a H1, or within the ‘title’ box of the blog post.
or
It is VERY important that you do NOT add a H1 in both of these locations. Two H1s are very bad for SEO.
How to optimise the H1 for SEO:
Must contain keywords or LSI keywords.
Should be no longer than 50 characters,
Must be a genuine title for the page & make sense. It will appear at the top of the page so it must make viewers want to scroll down to see the infographic.
Must only be one in number.
Internal Anchor Text
What:
The text used on a page when it is embedded into a link to another page. Basically, the text you click on and are redirected to another page.
‘Internal’ means within your own site. This is the text you use to link to other pages or posts within your own site.
How to optimise for SEO:
Must contain keyword.
Should be linked from at least one other post or page within your site.
Image Alt text
What:
The alternative text which shows up if your image does not load. In this case, your image is the infographic itself. You edit this when you upload your picture.
How to optimise for SEO:
Must be a genuine description of the image
Should contain keyword.
External Anchor Text
What:
Similar to internal anchor text. ‘External’ is the text websites other than your own used to embed a link to your post.
External linking is another word for follow/ no-follow links and the focus of this article .
How to optimise external anchor text of your infographic blog post for SEO:
Must contain keywords.
Here is another picture of the cows in case you were getting bored of the screenshots
With written content you can only undertake this one way; by asking whoever owns the site you are requesting the link from to include your chosen anchor text.
However, this runs the risk of the owner refusing.
This is one of the main reasons infographic marketing works better than ‘written in’ and achieves links which boost your SEO ranking for your chosen keywords.
With infographic marketing the best way to get the anchor text you want with your follow link is to use this code embedder.
Embed this code at the bottom of the image.
Hubspot have written a brilliant guide on how to create this code, so I will just take you through the steps to do this:
1. Site name = The name of your site.
2. Post URL = The URL given at the top of your page. It is the URL a user would use to access your infographic blog post.
3. Image URL = This can be found when you insert the infographic onto your post. You can go back into ‘insert media’ click on the image and find the ‘image URL’. Below shows where this is on Word Press.
4. Image alt text = This is what we optimised earlier. It can also be found in the ‘insert media’ popup also.
5. Width of the image = The width of the image as it appears on the post. It can also be seen in the ‘insert media’ popup. Alternatively you can see it when clicking on it and then clicking the little pencil ‘edit’ icon.
6. Image height = As Hubspot explains this should be left blank so not the distort the image.
7. Embedded box width & height = I like to make this the same as the image width so it looks good on the page. The height can be set as you like aesthetically, I prefer not too big so tend to go for 100px.
Cut and paste the code which the embedder then provides you with. Put this code either under your image or within the coding- which is the ‘text’ box in word press.
STEP 4: Submit your infographic to the infographic submission sites
This is when you get the follow links.
Submit the page URL and the embedded code to all of the bellow, free and paid sites.
Many of these allow you to submit your embedded code separately.
When I did this I had no budget so I only submitted to the free sites. This meant the quality of the infographic was even more important as was its uniqueness.
Paid sites will give you more of a guarantee return but if the quality of what you produce is up to scratch it shouldn’t be necessary to use paid sites.
I have posted the full list of infographic submission sites I used on the original post HERE: http://lebrunblack.com/index.php/2017/04/14/infographic-links/. I managed to gain 22 follow links by only using the free sites listed below.
STEP 5: Sit back and let the magic happen
After a few days check the number of backlinks you now have with Ahrefs or SEOprofiler. (Both of which offer a free trial).
They both take a while to pick up on new links. The newer your site is the longer they will take so don’t worry if it takes at least a week.
So there you have it, a detailed guide as to how I got 22 follow links in only half a day’s work using infographic marketing.
If you have any more questions feel free to get in touch with me.
LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) are keywords that have a similar meaning to your primary keyword. They are NOT just synonym or keywords as most people cite.
THIS POST COMES FROM MY PERSONAL BLOG AND CAN BE FOUND AT: http://lebrunblack.com/index.php/2017/04/14/infographic-links/
PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK TO FIND THE LIST OF THE SITES USED.
