In many ways, good-quality backlinks are the holy grail of SEO. Their value to small and established websites is no doubt extreme. The question is not whether to get them but how to get them.
One of the more popular strategies to get backlinks is guest blogging, but this can be expensive and time-consuming. Another effective method is to use infographics. They can be relatively quick and affordable to create, and it doesn’t take vast resources to make them.
Another advantage is that people love to share infographics, and the more yours is shared, the more backlinks you get. And not only can infographics generate backlinks in quantity, but also in quality, as they are likely to be shared on high-authority, relevant sites.
As valuable as quality backlinks are, they are not the only reason to create infographics. They also make it easier for you to explain your products and services to your audience. Infographics can help you educate your prospects, nurture them, build their trust, and prepare them to buy something from you.
However, not all infographics will be effective. For an infographic to hit the right spot and be shared, it must be shareworthy. In this article, we’ll provide some pointers on how to create an infographic that will help build more high-value links, so your website gets a boost on Google.
Image by Rawpixel.com from Shutterstock
1. Do Your Research
Research is half the battle with designing the perfect infographic.
For an infographic to be shareable, it needs to be useful to people in some way. It needs to help answer your audience’s questions and help them solve a problem. The infographic must also appeal to your audience’s needs and wants and be on their wavelength.
Understanding what appeals to your target audience can take time and money. Thankfully, there are some very effective shortcuts. You can be sure that your biggest competitors will create infographics and other marketing material, and this creates an opportunity for you to research how they use infographics successfully.
Your biggest competitors will likely have large, well-funded marketing departments that have researched all they can about their core audience. And considering you’re competing with each other, their target audience is likely your target audience.
You can ride the coattails of research undertaken by your competitors by having a look at the content they have created and by paying attention to certain details. When you are checking out your competitors’ content, you should look for information like:
- What type of language do they use?
- What types of images do they use?
- What aesthetics have they opted for in their infographics?
- Are they focusing on specific people? If so, who and why?
- Which channels are they using to publish their content?
It may also be easy to see how well certain content worked for your competitors. All you need to do is go to their social media accounts and see how their followers responded to content that’s been posted. If a particular infographic received a poor response, it’s best to look at other options. On the other hand, an infographic that does well should be used as inspiration for your content creation.
Checking out the oppositions’ content can give you other valuable information, such as how your target audience consumes content. This information will help guide your infographic creation because certain types of content tend to suit particular platforms.
Remember that while it’s fine to use the other companies’ content for ideas and inspiration, it is not okay to copy it outright. Doing so will likely not go down well with your target audience, and you could find yourself having to answer copyright claim issues.
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2. Create a Content Outline
Before you start working on visuals, you need to create a content outline. Your outline should include information, like the headline of your infographic, that will help guide the rest of the content.
When creating your outline, remember that it’s important that your infographic takes your audience on a journey. It needs to lead them from the beginning and guide them through the narrative until they reach the conclusion. This need to steer your audience through your infographic is one of the most important reasons for creating an outline.
Ideally, your outline should cover around four sections, each of which you should break down into bite-sized chunks for ease of digestion. Text should also be kept to a minimum and used only where necessary to help explain sections.
And don’t forget your call to action (CTA). Using a call to action can help make your infographic much more effective. Not only can a CTA encourage people to share your content, but you can also have CTAs that encourage potential customers to call you or take other positive actions.
3. Create a Wireframe Mockup
While your outline will focus on the narrative and flow of your infographic, a wireframe mockup will help you start putting the pieces together physically.
Creating a wireframe gives you the opportunity to ensure that your infographic isn’t cluttered, making it easy to read. The wireframe is not supposed to go into the finer details of the design but is a rough blueprint that the finished piece will follow.
During the wireframe stage, you should ensure that readers take a logical path through the infographic so everything makes sense. Make sure that readers go through the content step by step so they can absorb everything in order and accurately follow your message.
4. Use a Mood Board
A mood board will help you get the aesthetics right for your infographic, including the colours. The importance of colours should not be underestimated because colour psychology can significantly impact how your audience feels about your content.
Your infographic is also an opportunity to make your brand more visible. Therefore, it is good to use a colour palette that people will recognize as being from your brand.
A mood board should also be used to help you choose the right fonts. Some people are tempted to use ‘fancy’ fonts that look cool, but such fonts are often not easy to read and should be avoided.
When choosing your font, it’s also important to remember who your target audience is. For example, while a ‘fun’ font might be ideal for a younger audience, it’s probably not the best choice if you’re appealing to professionals.
At this stage, you should also be giving examples of images, icons, and other imagery to use in the design. It’s not necessary to add the completed images for now because you’re still only trying to create the overall blueprint for your design. You can add images in full detail during the final stage.
5. Design the Infographic
When it comes to designing the infographic itself, it’s important to include all the work you’ve done so far. This means ensuring you use all your research, that the infographic follows the correct narrative, and that you use the right colours.
Make sure your final design uses a font hierarchy that helps make it easy for readers to navigate your infographic. Using the appropriate font hierarchy means using headers, sub-headers, and text accordingly so they’re easy to differentiate from each other. Using headers wisely can help draw people into the text you want them to read.
The aesthetic appeal of your infographic is also essential. If content doesn’t look appealing to somebody browsing the internet or their social media feeds, they’re likely to overlook it. However, if the content is more visually appealing, people are more likely to take notice.
Remember that typos and other errors can look bad, potentially turning people off, so it’s a good idea to check your text thoroughly to help ensure there are no mistakes. Using grammar check software will make it easier for you to spot errors that you could easily miss otherwise.
People will also typically scan content first before choosing whether to read it, and infographics are no exception. One way to help draw people in is to ensure there is plenty of breathing room between items to avoid clutter. White or negative space is your friend. Balance and an easy-to-follow sense of order will also help make an infographic more appealing.
Create Your Own Killer Infographics
One of the advantages of using infographics is that just about any small business can afford to have them created. Furthermore, with computer literacy and some basic design skills, you can create them yourself.
However, effort is still required if your infographic is to have the desired effect. You will need to do adequate research so your infographic resonates with your audience, and you will need to spend time on your design before creating the final piece.
The final step is publishing your infographics. There are numerous channels available for publishing infographics, such as social media accounts or guest blogging on websites. You may want to consider outsourcing link building services to help get your infographic published on other sites and expand your reach.