Infographics and SEO | The Digital Clicks Blog
Over the past year, we’ve seen a massive boom in the popularity of infographics online. For those who don’t know, an infographic is an image representation of large quantities of information or data, presented in a way that is simple to understand and often aesthetically pleasing. It’s no secret that Internet users have a notoriously short attention span, with most people spending less than 60 seconds on a website before moving on. It’s become such an important factor in web communication that Google has even started to include page-loading speed in their search results ranking filter. This is why it’s vital that you capture a person’s interest the moment they see your page and then proceed to deliver the information. You might ask at this point, "Okay, infographics are great tools, but what does this have to do with SEO?” We’ll get to that in a minute. First, it’s worth learning why they’ve become increasingly popular recently. Let's start with the obvious: they’re fun, easy-going, and interactive—a fantastic change of pace for users to take a break from their general online activities. They make it easy to communicate massive amounts of data with almost no effort from the reader. For example, the BP oil spill in 2010, was a disaster so huge that people had difficulty understanding or even comprehending the vastness of its damaging effect worldwide, Finally, infographics are simply different. People spend days on end reading through information in articles in the same black-and-white, endless wall-of-text format. Coming across a visually pleasing display of information can grab a user’s attention and cause the information to stick out in their memory when they’re looking back. When should you use one? Whenever you have a point to make based on the explanation of a set of data and information, use an infographic. So how can we use these to aid our online marketing efforts? Although images have less of an impact than text in terms of search engine rankings, they can still be greatly beneficial as a result of their potential to draw traffic. Sometimes infamously referred to as "link baiting" and often misinterpreted as unethical SEO, it is the practice of using creative, stimulating, or generally “interesting” content to draw links to your site from outer sources—a definite possibility, with “Best Infographic” ranking posts appearing more and more frequently on blogs everywhere. So if you're going to make an infographic, here are some things to remember that will boost your search engine rankings: