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SEO-Optimized Infographics: A Blogger’s Best Friend

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SEO-optimized infographics are a blog post powerhouse.

SEO-Optimized infographics blog headerThey drive massive traffic to your site, get tons of engagement, build your brand, get lots of backlinks and more.

Most of all, they help your blog content land on Google’s first page consistently.

Not by luck, not once in a while, but intentionally and frequently.

Why does that matter? Because the average traffic share of Google’s first page is 91.5 percent (basically everybody).

And if you’re the first result?

You get 32.5 percent of that traffic.

That’s a major leg up on your competitors.

So how do you do that? It’s not by writing a hundred blog posts with a hundred infographics (or even a thousand).

It’s by writing one blog post that features an engaging, SEO-optimized infographic!

The Wire Gif

That’s right, focusing on SEO-optimized infographics is a reliable way to drive traffic and grow your audience.

It’s something all content creators and business owners can do …but don’t!

What you need at your disposal is an understanding of how visual content and blog posts come together to land on Google’s first page of results.

That’s what this post is all about.

Everyone loves a budget-friendly content marketing strategy

You might be wondering why SEO-optimized infographics over other types of content?

Why not run paid ads on your blog to expand their reach? Create cool videos on YouTube? Sponsor conferences and networking events to get your name out there?

Two words: accessibility and scalability.

Learning a few SEO basics is free, and it’s very easy to design SEO-optimized infographics.

There are a lot of online design tools that provide you with easy-to-customize infographic templates, a simple editor and tons of educational design resources to help you out.

You’d be surprised at the kinds of professional designs bloggers can create on their own today.

On the other hand, paid ads get expensive very fast.

You can purchase links on other sites (sometimes for hundreds of dollars per link) at the risk of receiving a Google penalty.

Purchasing links goes against Google’s guidelines and if you get caught, it’ll drastically reduce your organic traffic for months!

Not worth it.

Hiring professional designers or graphic design agencies is not risky. But a single infographic design can cost you a few hundred dollars or a few thousand (and that’s just the design, not the research or SEO-optimization).

That’s not something you can really scale.

Understanding a bit of SEO, creating your own SEO-optimized infographics and getting free links is risk-free and budget-friendly.

Once you see that it’s working, you can also double (or triple, or quadruple) down on it to ramp up your results without any hassle.

Convinced?

Then let’s get to it!

What’s so special about SEO-Optimized infographics?

Convincing Google your post should be on page one is what SEO is all about.

When it comes to SEO, Google and other search engines have specific ranking factors – factors they use to determine the value of online content.

These factors aren’t a secret, and by following best practices, you can easily satisfy Google’s requirements.

Here’s where infographics come in.

In Brian Dean’s latest list of Google’s ranking factors, he shares a ton of factors that infographics easily impact. Here are just a few:

  • Mobile optimized
  • Keyword in description tag
  • Number of backlinks
  • Page loading speed
  • Keyword in title
  • Title tag starts with the keyword
  • Keyword density
  • Image optimization
  • Keyword appears in H1 tag
  • Bounce rate/Dwell time
  • Keyword in the title tag
  • Repeat traffic
  • Keyword in URL

SEO-optimized infographics absolutely impact these ranking factors.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite – backlinks.

Backlinks are just links on other pages pointing back to your content.

A solid, well-researched, informative and original blog post has high chances of being shared as a guest post or linked back to as a reference.

And, guess what?

Infographics are one of the best, cost-effective ways to get quality backlinks.

Infographics are the most shared form of content online for a reason.

Since infographics are so popular and engaging, more publications are willing to syndicate them or share them in their own content without even being asked (over other types of content).

There are also some technical steps you can take to make your infographic SEO-effective.

Focus on a long-tail keyword and make sure you’ve placed it in the H1 tag, the body text of your infographic post, the URL and so on.

Now for the indirect ways SEO-Optimized infographics influence SEO factors.

Infographics are visual and captivating. That’s how they affect dwell time (the length of time people spend viewing your post), along with repeat traffic (how often they return).

The more time people spend viewing your content and coming back to it, the more relevant and valuable it appears in Google’s eyes.

Social media shares don’t directly impact SEO since Google doesn’t factor in shares and likes.

Of course, with more shares and likes, the higher the chances that your content gets viewed and linked back to.

If you’re creating content that has a tendency to get shared more, you have a clear advantage.

That doesn’t mean an infographic about any random topic will work (hence the SEO-optimization).

It also boils down to the actual value of your content. If you’ve got good data and meaningful insights, then your infographic will take off.

That brings us to the process of creating SEO-optimized infographics.

I’m going to show you ways to do a bit of research for your infographic, along with how to format your infographic to make it as effective as possible.

Good research, facts and stats are the heart of SEO-optimized infographics

Cool looking visuals might lure unsuspecting viewers to check out your infographic.

But without any real meat or relevance, people will bounce (bounce rates, also a ranking factor).

Your infographic won’t pick up any steam, publications won’t want to share it or syndicate it and Google won’t care about it.

Insightful and compelling content is how you reward your audience for clicking and encourage them to comment, share, link back to it and more.

My research phase has three essential stages

  1. Choose a topic your audience actually cares about

Why rank for “things cats do” if you sell an online invoicing tool?

Unless there’s a really interesting overlap between small business owners and avid cat lovers, I’d focus on something more relevant.

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent targeting new homeowners. What do homeowners ask questions about? What issues are important to them today? How would you find out?

You can use tools like FaqFox to scrape forums for questions directly related to your topic.

First, enter your topic. Then enter any relevant sites/online forums where people would ask questions about it.

You can even click on one of the tags that appear for a few site suggestions. Then hit search:

FaqFox Instructions Screenshot

FAQFox pulls up popular posts on your topic that you can check out and start brainstorming over.

This is a great way to find out what kind of questions your target audience is asking and what kind of content has been created.

Faqfox Instructions Example Image

I also like Brian Dean’s suggestion of checking out Udemy courses. While he’s talking about choosing blog post topics, it certainly applies to infographics as well.

You can search for courses by keywords or categories and Udemy shows you the most popular ones.

Best of all, people are paying for this content so clearly it’s valuable to them!

Udemy Courses Brian Dean Blog Post Example

He breaks down that process for you in his recently updated blog post.

  1. Select a long-tail keyword

Once you’ve got a topic in mind, you have to choose your angle. More importantly, you’ll need to determine a long-tail keyword for your infographic.

Keyword research is important because it’s the only way people can find your content.

If you use terms that people don’t use for their searches, then Google won’t understand how your content is relevant to what people search for.

  1. Conduct original research on your topic

The whole point of research is to make a new discovery, or put old ideas to the test. To do that, there are tons of research methods for you to use to get your answers:

  • Ask industry professionals
  • Analyze various sources of existing data
  • Survey or poll your users/subscribers
  • Run your own experiment and share your findings

I’ll elaborate on a few of those research methods.

Asking your industry

A great way to add value to your infographic is to get insights from industry experts.

‘People’ is a vague term, but when you can say “300 homeowners share their favorite tools for budgeting” or “300 real estate agents share tips on finding helpful home insurance policies”, then your infographic has some appeal and real validation.

Survey or poll your users

There are a number of tools out there like Survey Anyplace, Survey Monkey or Pollfish that make conducting surveys simple. Even with free versions, you can design and send out a professional-looking survey to collect data.

Running your own experiments

Running your own experiment is a great way to validate yourself as a leader in the industry.

You get to establish yourself as a direct source of new, helpful information.

Plus your unique findings are exclusive to you, which makes promoting your infographic much easier.

You can also check out this in-depth resource on doing online research (including finding reliable stats, sources, quotes and visuals) to find relevant data the old-fashioned way.

Part 2: Format your infographic post for search engines

In a lot of ways, when it comes to SEO, you can treat your infographic like any other blog post.

Using headers, inserting keywords, determining a URL structure are all ways to influence your infographic’s SEO power. Let’s take a look at that list I shared before:

  • Mobile optimized
  • Keyword in the title tag
  • Number of backlinks
  • Keyword in description tag
  • Page loading speed
  • Keyword in title
  • Title tag starts with the keyword
  • Keyword appears in H1 tag
  • Image optimization
  • Keyword density
  • Bounce rate/Dwell time
  • Repeat traffic
  • Keyword in URL

If your blog is already mobile-friendly, then you’re all set. If you’re not sure, run this test to find out and make the necessary changes.

Some of the factors in that list you can directly influence, while others depend on the quality of your content, the topic, how readable it is and so on.

Once your infographic is ready to be shared, here are a few essential tips for posting an SEO-optimized infographic.

Insert your long-tail keyword in the right places

Like any blog post, you want your long-tail keyword to show up where it counts – the introduction, the URL, in the H1 header and so on.

Be sure to write up a brief introduction (100-150 words) explaining what the infographic is all about, too.

This lets you include your long-tail keyword, other relevant terms, and link out to helpful resources. An intro is also helpful to your audience, as well.

Below is an example of a brief intro for one of our infographic posts that has done pretty well.

It shares results of a survey on visual content marketing. I’ll share some data regarding how that infographic post has performed later on:

SEO-optimized infographics long-tail keywords introduction example

Use SEO plugins to help optimize your post

For WordPress, a simple tool like Yoast lets you tweak important sections (the meta description and URL slug) and it also lets you know what could be improved/added.

There are actually a few alternative SEO plugins that you can use. You can also check out Brafton’s roundup of SEO marketing tools to give your content that SEO edge.

You have to optimize the infographic itself – the image file

Your infographic itself also needs to be optimized. Here are a few SEO factors that matter.

Like any image in a blog post, you want to include your alt text. Alt text tells Google what an image is all about so it knows when to pull it up.

Typically, you can just use your long-tail keyword as the alt text.

Page loading speed is another ranking factor. Your page loading speed will be impacted by the size and file format of your infographic.

Your infographic should be a small image file (less than a MB), with a resolution around 72-100 PPI, and an optimal file format (PNG, JPEG or GIF).

Tools like compressor.io let you reduce the size of images. This is helpful if your infographic is a little large.

Promote your awesome, SEO-optimized infographic and get even more backlinks!

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, backlinks are a major contributing factor when it comes to your content ranking.

The more authoritative sites that point to your content, the better. Backlinks tell Google your content is valuable, engaging, and well-liked for that topic.

Beyond just asking people to link to it as a reference, you should pitch your infographic to sites, offer to write a guest post on the topic pointing back to your infographic, or encourage sites to syndicate your piece.

Those are just ideas, but you want a backlink outreach strategy in place for any major pieces of content you publish.

Pro-Tip: If you conducted a survey to create your infographic, then reach out to all your respondents and ask for a backlink. They’ll likely be interested in the results and it’ll provide value for their audiences so they’ll be happy to do it.

Content marketers understand the value of visual content, particularly infographics.

They know that featuring SEO-optimized infographics on their blog or sharing it on their social pages will easily engage their audience.

If your content is relevant to the topics they typically cover, they’ll be receptive to your request.

So how did our visual marketing statistics post do anyway? Great! We secured over 1000 backlinks for the post according to Ahrefs:

Ahrefs Metrics Content Ranking Results

And we’re dominating the first page of Google search results:

Google Search Results SEO-Optimized Infographics First Page

So it does work, in case you were wondering! Now let me know what you think. Have you tried a similar strategy and seen worthwhile results?

Or is there something my approach is missing that would make it even better? Comment and let me know!

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Jeilan Devanesan

Growth Marketer at Venngage
Jeilan Devanesan is a copywriter at Venngage, the online graphic-design tool. He researches and writes on how to design creative content, engaging your audience with visuals, and design trends. He has written for CMI, Outbrain, Clutch, Classy and other publications. You can connect with him on Linkedin.
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Comments

  5. Hello Gail,
    Wow, amazing Infomation!!!

    Firstly, thanks for sharing the article. The title easy & effective of SEO optimized Infographics. Here has clearly explained of more traffic to your site, get tons of engagement, build your brand, get lots of backlinks and more. I’m really surprised because people are busy finding traffic on their site & blog. It tells you that this blog will play a vital role in finding the traffic you want. Here are some tips on how to get more traffic to your website. I am glad to read this article. Now, I have a question. What can I do to get a Google projection of a website? Please, let us know!

    Thank You!!!
    –Nipu

    Reply

  7. Awesome post Jeluan, thanks for the share. This is one of the best strategies to get more shares and quality backlinks to your site. Also, I focus on Infographic outreach to make it reach to potential audience.
    Thanks a lot. Keep up the good work.
    -Rajat Chauhan

    Reply

  9. Very helpful material for SEO. i think content and infographics are most important if u your doing seo and trying to rank site. After-all content is king in seo……..

    thanks for sharing this important info i’m beginner and its very helpful article for me and other beginner’s…
    alex rogers would love you to read ..IFRS 15 – CanadaMy Profile

    Reply

    • Hey Alex, I’m glad you found it useful. Indeed, content is definitely king! Content and SEO go absolutely hand in hand.

      Good luck putting these tips to use!

      Reply

  10. YES, it is very informative but i have a question if you can help me on the blog i have published on my website, infographics is missing i guess your expertise needed?

    Reply

    • Hi David,

      There are two methods for displaying infographics in content. One is to put the embed code in the HTML of the content.

      The creator of the infographics would have to have provided this. It is typically found under the original infographic.

      If you see it on some other site, you can use TinEye.com to find the original.

      In WordPress, that is done by switching from the VISUAL tab to the TEXT tab and pasting it where you want it. Type a word you can search for while you’re still in VISUAL if you have trouble knowing where to put it.

      The other method is to save it as an image, upload that image, and then link it to the infographic so your readers can see the full size version.

      The benefit of that is if the original gets moved or deleted, you still have it in your content. The drawback is that they are typically very large images so you need to resize and compress them first.

      To resize, see How to Reduce Images Using GIMP (Free program for any OS).

      To compress them, use an online tool such as tiny.png, tiny.jpg, compress.jpg, or compress.png.
      Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Identify Search Intent To Fuel The Growth Of Your BusinessMy Profile

      Reply

  11. Very informative article…..

    This gave me a lot of information and ideas that I can definitely implement right away. I spend alot of my time on content but i often miss the importance of optimizing the content that is already there!
    Thanks for sharing such a impressive content with us…
    waiting for many more like that..
    Keep it up.
    God bless you…

    Reply

  12. Very well put ideas. I just always wonder: does long tail keywords help in a long run to get the short keywords. If I sell, let’s say adidas men running boost shoes – that’s my long tail keyword. And if I have many of those, does that help to get better positions for adidas or adidas men?

    Thanks 🙂

    Reply

    • Good question, Aurimas. And yes, those pages would be linked (category->subcategory->sub-sub-category->product), so if a specific product is seeing a lot of traffic, it helps the larger pages rank as well. For example, for Venngage, if some of our long-tail keyword titled templates ranks in search, then the category it’s in can expect to see a lift as well, and it will also rank for different keywords. There’s some residual benefit. Unfortunately, I can’t speak to the degree to which the product page affects the parent pages it’s in.

      Reply

  13. Hello Jeilan,
    I read the article in a flash. It helped me a lot actually.
    I’ve seen many articles related to infographic and seo but yours is one of the best.

    Keep it up brother.

    Thank you!
    Muntasir Mahdi would love you to read ..60 Best Free SEO ToolsMy Profile

    Reply

    • Thanks for the compliment, Muntasir! You’re right, there a lot of posts on the topic. I tried my best to keep it simple, straightforward and actionable. I’m glad you thought it was concise and helpful.

      Reply

  15. Hey Jeilan, its Nice article. I am sure info-graphic submission is one of the best tool to achive SEO in short period. Especially i am getting fruitful result when using Visual.ly, and reddit.

    Thank you once again Jeilan, and you put the whole concept into your single post

    Reply

  16. Awesome article! This gave me a lot of tips that I can definitely implement right away. We spend so much time on content but we often miss the importance of optimizing the content that is already there! Thank you!

    Reply

    • Yes, absolutely. Sometimes there are the easy wins that we overlook! Even updating old content, or repurposing existing content can have significant SEO impacts.

      Reply

    • That’s awesome! Glad you liked it, Matt. Let me know if you ever have any questions about blogging or design process.

      Reply

    • Awesome! That’s great James, glad this was helpful.

      If you ever have any questions, you can use the chat in the editor. Our team is really quick to respond.

      You can also just shoot me a message over linkedin if you’d like.

      Good luck!

      Reply

  22. Hey Jeilan, fantastic article! As a fellow copywriter I’m always looking for ways to create content that will improve my ability to capture the reader’s attention. This is something I plan to try out!

    Reply

    • Hey Shubham,

      I’ll definitely keep writing on topics like these. Content marketing and SEO just go hand-in-hand.

      Thanks for the compliment! Glad you liked the post.

      Reply

  26. i am a blogger this article really helpful for me. this seo optimizes infographics is really useful for my blog to grow. article is nicely explained and easy to understand. thanks for sharing this valuable information with us. keep your good work.

    Reply

  27. kind of article every new blogger need to know and new users are looking for such article. very helpful and your guidelines makes a easy working for any blogger. Thank you so much for sharing such useful knowledge

    Reply

  29. Wow!

    Kind of a post I had been looking for.

    I launched my blog recently and was thinking about building links through infographics.

    Brian Dean has been an advocate for infographics/guest graphics for a very long time now and all his suggestions are truly helpful.

    “If you conducted a survey to create your infographic, then reach out to all your respondents and ask for a backlink. They’ll likely be interested in the results and it’ll provide value for their audiences so they’ll be happy to do it”.

    Great tip!

    Thanks for this amazing post, Jelian. God bless you.
    Zain Malik would love you to read ..13 Tips for a Productive and Stress-Free LifeMy Profile

    Reply

    • Hey Zain,

      Nice, good luck with the blogging. And yeah, Brian Dean is THE man, his blog is pretty much a growth bible haha.

      Happy to hear you saw value in this post, Zain.

      If you ever have any questions, reach out anytime.

      Reply

  30. Hey Jeilan?

    Thank you for the comprehensive coverage of the importance of SEO-Optimized infographics. I have not tried them on my website but your article offers an insightful guide on how to create my first infographic.

    Keep up with the awesome content on your site!

    Reply

  31. Hi Gail,
    It is indeed a great joy to be here again.
    Good to see Jeilan Devanesan on your blog post.
    It is really great to know about various aspects an infographic can bring in, especially in connection with the SEO factors.
    The author brought out lot of important factors in this regard by specifically pointing out the relevant posts with a lot of screenshots. I appreciate his writing style. Good to check the different Infographic template on his space.
    Keep writing.
    Thanks, Gail for dropping by.
    Have a great rest of the day.
    Best Regards
    ~ Philip
    PS: I am so glad to note that this post has been curated on the esteemed platform BizSugar.
    Thanks
    Phil
    Philip Verghese Ariel would love you to read ..Amazing Bloggers Who Feature Me In Their PostsMy Profile

    Reply

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