The proliferation of online technology is truly awe inspiring, more so if you can manage to grasp the truly immense amount of information flowing across the globe on a daily basis. Imagine this: 140 million tweets, 2 million video uploads, and 1.5 billion units of content – daily. As a business owner and digital marketer, one can’t help but wonder how they could make a difference in the online marketplace and make it possible for their targeted customers to find them online.
Navigating through this overload of information, trying to catch their targeted customers’ attention, would be a next-to-impossible ordeal if they have nothing but plain, old, ordinary content to work with. What they need is something innovative, interesting, and in many cases, exciting stuff like Infographics that can grab their target’s interest long enough to digest the information they are trying to convey to their audiences.
But infographics are not just fancy pieces of visual content that can spice up your blog and website. They are highly effective visual tools that can capture the attention and imagination of your targeted audiences as well as drive a successful digital marketing campaign though Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The following describes some of the primary reasons why infographics can really be an effective SEO tool that can help boost your site rankings, increase visibility and ultimately convert visitors into customers.
1. Interest in Infographics Grows Continuously Over Time
In recent years, Google Trends registered a continuously increasing interest in the term “infographics” which is a clear indication of how online users treat it as a very important piece of content that can be repurposed as an effective digital marketing tool. As visual creatures, people tend to be more attracted by content with graphical or visual elements rather than plain pieces of text-based content.
Business owners and digital marketers can take advantage of this continuously growing interest in infographics, using it as a very effective marketing tool for reaching out to targeted audiences.
2. Targeted Audiences Are More Attracted to Visual Elements in Infographics
90% of information that comes to people’s minds is visual in nature. To process and make sense to all these tangle of information, people will need to activate their optic nerves, allowing online users to comprehend what is being presented to them. Visual elements like graphs, charts, pictures, stylized fonts and other graphical elements can do a lot better should your text content failed to capture your targeted audiences’ attention.
Of course, text and graphics separately and individually may not be as effective as combining the strength of the two to come up with a very powerful communication tool that can make targeted audiences understand even complex concepts. This was what Brooke Barnett and Barbara Miller concluded when they conducted a research which they published in the Newspaper Research Journal Winter 2010.
3. Boost Your Brand Awareness with Infographics
Merely telling people about your brand, products or services using blocks of plain text, no matter how informative they are, may not have the same impact and retention than showing them what you really mean through visual elements and content. There’s a big difference in “telling” than “showing” and infographics, if done correctly and precisely, can combine the strengths of these two elements into a very effective communication tool.
Digital marketing experts conclude that infographics is great for increasing brand awareness, and can be a very effective tool to easily increase your traffic by at least 12 percent. Infographics are designed to include relevant information about the creators which usually include the logo, website address, email or even contact information. This is truly a very effective way to increase your brand awareness and reach out to targeted audiences.
4. Make Your Content Go Viral with Infographics
In a study conducted by MDG Advertising, it was highlighted that content marketing that contain visual elements can generate up to 94% more views than battling it out with plain and simple blocks of text. In a similar manner, the report conducted also highlighted that up to 14% increase in page views can be obtained just by adding photos together with the article or press release.
Aside from that, your content can also enjoy up to 48% increase in viewership if you can combine the power of text, graphics and photos into a compelling infographic. Your targeted audiences who were able to get a clear glimpse of your infographics may like it so much to warrant likes, shares and other social signals that will help make you content go viral.
5. Infographics Provide Good Social Currency
Infographics are basically graphical elements that when standing alone will have little favorable impact on SEO. They will not be an effective factor that can help you rank higher in search engine results. However, Infographics provide good social currency that when used together with other web elements can help facilitate higher rankings.
Usually, backlinks are generated by entities and individuals that link back to your website. An abundance of inbound links will be generated and this can be a very important factor that can really boost your search rankings.
As Infographics go viral, the highly beneficial impact such occurrences can bring to a particular business is better search marketing results. Infographics not only are designed with your contact information, sharing or embedding the material in social media or other online channels can generate important backlinks to you. This is true if your Infographic gets syndicated and used by other websites for their content, which they can do so as long as they link back to the source – you!
You can make this better even more by adding highly targeted keywords as part of the title, description and meta information of your Infographic. This can give your Infographic higher chances of appearing as a relevant image or resource in search engines.
6. Increase Your Subscriber Base with Infographics
Interesting visual elements used in infographics can help generate more likes, comments, shares and other social signals that can be an important factor in boosting your SEO efforts. With each share and with each like, the information you wanted to convey using visual elements can generate even more followers and subscribers.
This is what Heidi Cohen and Dan Zarrela from HubSpot found out when they tried to confirm this trend, highlighting that up to 37% increase in engagement with targeted audiences can occur with the inclusion of interesting visual elements with your infographs. This type of engagement will bode well with your business as up to 60% of consumers will have the most probability of getting in touch with you if they see the visual elements in your infographs that they may find relevant for their needs.
7. Better Understanding of Your Content through Infographics
Studies indicate that up to 67% of consumers put more importance to clear and detailed visual elements than other textual and non-image based content. The key to success in infographics marketing is to provide clear and concise bits of information in easily understandable and graphically appealing way.
As explained in the previous section, what makes Infographics powerful as a visual tool is that its ability to convey relevant information through easily understandable bits of visual information. This will be better understood than long lines of text that will take so much of your time and resources without the expected appeal such content may bring.
8. Position Yourself as an Expert with Infographics
The use of graphical elements like tables, charts, graphs, pics and other visual elements can set you up and establish you as an expert in this niche or field, particularly so if your targeted audiences find your content highly relevant and useful for their needs. You content should always be well-researched from reliable resources and studies backed by experts from the industry or the academe. You can develop yourself as a subject matter expert who has the ability to provide relevant and useful information that you may be willing to share – further increasing your online credibility.
9. Infographics is a Great Linkable Asset
Infographics is really good linkable asset. The characteristics of a good linkable asset is that it is visually satisfying enough to attract attention, and at the same time provide really good and useful information that would make people want to share your work on their social media accounts and ultimately in their website. The key here is to provide high quality and well-researched text and visual content that would make site visitors really want to share your content.
10. Infographics Can Make Targeted Visitors Stay Longer
Infographics are designed not only to attract inbound links but also increase stick rates and make website visitors stay longer and consume more of your content. The higher the stick rates the higher your chances of getting search engines to understand the importance of your content as a reliable source of income. This in turn will help facilitate better search rankings.
Content marketing need not be a very difficult effort as you can leverage on the usefulness and quality of your infographics to deliver high quality content to your targeted audiences in a very innovative, appealing and useful way. On top of that, effective infographics can be really good for SEO, using your content to drive better rankings and better results.
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.