Infographics-An Easier Way to Get Backlinks to Your Site

Infographics are trending on the internet. There are used as a backlink bait by many of the popular brands. It serves as a dual advantage as it benefits both the creater and the user. The creator of the infographics is benefitted by getting a backlink to its website and the user of the infographic has an advantage of displaying visual friendly content on the site.

What are Infographics?

Infographics is short form for "Information Graphics". These are image visualization of data or information. It draws inspiration from Pictographs which are used as a picture language. Human mind accepts visual data more accurately and clearly than the raw text data. This concept relies heavily upon the creation of images which are used to convey complex data,graphs,information etc in an easier way before the audience.

Example

by Hot Butter Studio. Learn about infographics software.

How to create Infographics? 

You may create infographics via photoshop or other image editing software. Before creating an image, you must have a comprehensive data about the information which you are going to put in your picture. It is better to prepare a rough copy of the data which you intend to represent. There are special software which may help in getting a quick and easy infographic. These services are mentioned below:-

Some useful Infographic creators

http://visual.ly/

http://creately.com/

http://piktochart.com/

http://www.easel.ly/

http://www.photostatsapp.com/

http://vizualize.me/

http://re.vu/

How Infographics help in getting backlinks?

Infographics are really useful in getting good backlinks to your website. The best way is to publish an infographic with a code to allow further embedding (The embed code contains the source of the image which is your website). People who visit your website would be able to see the embed link and if they like our picture, they would surely use it on their own website thus providing you a backlink. Moreover, you can even distribute your infographic to hundreds of specialized infographic directories thus increasing your chances of getting backlinks.

UPDATE - Google recently suggested that links in infographics must be made no follow, so unless its editorial do not abuse this form of backlink.

Link Building Secrets to Success

Using the tips given below, the first thing to make sure it that your links actually directs to your landing page. On this page, you should have a meta description, keywords and content. Make sure that these three matches up to the sites being linked form.

Your landing page can be your home page where you offer women’s handbags for sale and some tips on choosing the right bag for the occasion. The keywords for your page can be “handbags”, “women’s handbags”, “designer handbags”, etc. Your landing page’s meta description can be “handbags for any occasion”.  Your content must show images and description of your handbags and their corresponding prices, etc. If you linked to a website about baby bottles, this link is referred to as a weak link. If a link comes from a website that manufactures bags, it is then called as a relevant link. If this relevant link has plenty of relevant links on it, then it is called a strong link.

When it comes to searchengine page ranks, plenty of weak links may have the same impact as one relevant link. Your website can simply go to the first search engine results page even if it only has a few but relevant links. Strong links will just make your efforts lighter and may give you faster results.

Link Building Secrets (Image credit:- vectorarts) 

         
          Forum Posting. This technique can work well but you should ensure that the forums rules allow members to post links on your posts or in your signature. There are some forum sites that allow you to post links in your comments and in your signature after you have contributed a number of posts. There are also some that allow you to post links in your signature only after a period of time, say 90 days of membership. Just respect the rules to avoid getting banned on the site. 

          Write articles within your niche. A lot of people write articles related to their services or products. This is one way to build links but a better way to do it is to refer your brand, services or products in your articles. It can’t be considered as advertising as long as you don’t bring up your company name. 

           Write reviews. Write both neutral and positive reviews of your services and products into sites that let users write reviews. Don’t just be content with adding one positive review for each of your items. 

          Post link bait. This is done by posting content on your landing page such that readers would want to link to your page under their own free will. Creating link baits can take plenty of experience because it takes a lot of convincing power to persuade other people to do something on their own. 

         Use social media. Encourage your fans and followers to link to you through forums, comments, chat rooms and their own websites of social media profiles. Persuading your fans and followers to link to your landing page is an effective tactic as long as you don’t do it excessively. Some businesses uses buzz marketing on various social media platforms but this is only effective if your fans truly like you and they will more likely agree to link to you if you just ask them to.

All of these tips will lead you to successful internet marketing of your business.

How to rank in Google (Ranking Factors)

Google rankings can be achieved with the help of a process known as search engine optimization or SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the process through which we increase the quality and quantity of traffic to a website with the help of search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing etc. SEO makes your site more search engine friendly and makes it easier for the search engines to crawl and rank your website. SEO requires a lot of patience and is not a one day task.

Study the various Google ranking factors (Image credit:- Glowscotland)

Google ranking factors

Before we start optimizing a website in order to rank high in Google, we need to consider the points given below:-

     Study the structure of the website. Under the website structure notice :-

a-      The complete navigation of the website. Make sure each and every page is linked well and suitable anchor text is used.

b-      Check for the use of funky JavaScript, flash, frames etc. These should be avoided as the search engines have a hard time looking for the content behind it.

c-       Suitable Title and Meta tags are the key to successful ranking. These should not be overlooked.

d-      Look for the canonicalization issues with the website. Redirect the website to a single url using a 301 redirect in order to get the maximum link juice benefit.

e-      Analyze the website’s content with respect to the keyword density.

f-       Analyze the domain name with respect to the targeted keywords.

g-      Avoid excessive redirects on the site.

h-      Check for duplicate pages.

i-        Examine the code under the robots.txt file.

j-        Create proper sitemap.xml and sitemap.html files.

k-      Watch out for broken links.

l-        Maintain a well balanced site structure in order to receive the full flow of link juice.

m-    Check the crawl errors (if any) and correct them.

n-      Maintain a decent site speed.

o-      Check for the do follow and no follow links.

p-      Maintain the number of outbound links per page.

 Google considers various factors while ranking a website. It is due to the consideration of these factors that Google is able to deliver the bestsearch results.

 Main factors for ranking are:-

Factor 1:- Does that word or phrase exist on the page?

Google looks for the existence of the word on the web page. This is the primary requirement for ranking and almost all the search enginesconsiders this as one of the most important factor for delivering the most appropriate search results.

Conclusion:- If you want to rank for a particular search query then make sure you have that word listed on your web page. Point to note is that, do not create pages consisting of only images. Use text and place your main keyword in the body of your web page.

Factor 2:- How often does that word occurs on the page?

Google analyzes the web page and searches for the number of times the particular search query appears on the web page. In seo terms this factor is known as keyword density. 

Conclusion:- You should have a good keyword density with respect to your main key phrase. We are not asking for keyword spamming! Make sure you do not spam but maintain a good ratio of content to the keyword ratio. Ideal keyword density is between 3-5%. You should have high quality content and you should write content for your audience and not for the search engines. You will automatically have a good content to keyword ratio if you are writing your content keeping in mind your audience.

Factor 3:- Content

     Content should be quality and fresh. Google loves fresh content and this is the reason it shows the last crawl date on the search results. Content summary is given below:-

      Create quality content considering the user in the mind. Do not create content solely for the search engines. Instead of creating 4-5 pages based on the same topic, create only 1 page and merge all the content together in order to get an informative page. Remember, even 1-2 poor quality pages can bring down the rankings of the entire site.

      Try to add fresh content on your site as Google loves fresh content. Content that are updated frequently may get a place in the rankings soon. 

      Use proper grammar and spellings while creating your content.

  Factor 4:- Relevance(w.r.t keyword)

      Relevancy is the most important metric for the ranking of web pages. The more relevant a web page is with respect to the search query, the higher rankings it would get in the search engines. While creating content, you need to keep an eye on the relevancy. Remember Google takes into account local factors for relevancy so if your business is local then make sure you have included local keywords while creating content. This is known as local seo. Do not forget to analyze your relevant content using Latent Semantic Indexing. This should not be ignored. As the time is passing, more semantic results are creeping up. Google is gradually becoming much smarter in understanding the exact relationship between the searched words.

   Factor 5:- Domain popularity

     
      Google considers the popularity of the domain while ranking web pages. The more popular a domain, the more the chances that it would rank high for queries related to its niche. Please make a note , domain popularity and domain age are not the same thing. Even though a site is 5 years old, it may not have achieved enough domain popularity. So , keeping that in mind, promote your website well, without considering the age of the domain because just by having an old domain does not guarantee you good Google rankings. One of the best example of website having excellent reputation is Wikipedia.  

   Factor 6:- Page popularity

       Page popularity is similar to domain popularity in many ways but the  difference is that a web page can become popular even though the domain has less authority. For example, you can be popular for a product and for that particular product you can rank higher. No matter, the site may have dozens of other products but the page displaying that one product could be more popular and hence get the search engine's love.

  Factor 7:- Social Media presence

      A very essential factor for ranking well. Nowadays, every website must have a social presence or else it will miss the love of Google. You can have an effective social media presence by creating a fan page , twitter account, linkedin account, myspace account etc and having many followers on all of these.Remember there are several social media etiquette which you must follow while promoting your brand or services on these websites.

      Disclaimer:- The information given above is my personal opinion based on internet guides and public forums. This information does not comes directly from Google. These are simple predictions and may not hold true at the time of your reading. I do not provide any guarantee whatsoever that the above information is correct  and can positively effect your rankings. 

Link Building

What is Link Building?

The process of creating backlinks to your site is known as linkbuilding.Link building is more essentially “backlink building”. If any other site on the world wide web provides a link to your website then this is termed as a backlink. The more the backlinks, the more the popular is your site. This process of building backlinks to your website is known as “link building”. 

Methods of Link Building

Link building is a continuous effort and must keep going. There are several methods of link building and these are discussed below:-

Directory Submission

The most basic method of building backlinks to your website is directory submission. If your website is new, you should start with directory submission as these are some of the easiest ways to obtain backlinks. But, you must understand most of the directories offer FFA links a.k.a Free for All links and these FFA links are not considered quality backlinks. Hence, the best way is to get backlinks from quality and relevant web directories. You must try to get your site listed on local directories as these are the most effective from Seo point of view.

Article Submission

There are several article directories in the web like ezine, articlesbase,exploreb2b,articlesalley,etc. These are some of the quality article directories where you can submit original articles. The method is simple, you submit a quality article to the article directory and then put a backlink to your site from the article itself or from the author area. In this way you start getting backlinks to your website. Make sure to submit original content for every article you submit or else your account may get closed for spamming. 

Social Bookmarking

After the recent Google updates, this method of creating backlinks has got a new shape. In this method, you submit your site urls on popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Diigo, jump tags, Misterwong etc.

Blogging

One of the most effective ways of getting a backlink is through blogging. There are several websites like blogger, wordpress, blogfa, weebly, sosblog etc which provides you a free blog. You can use these services to create a blog related to your niche and update in on a daily basis. You can put backlinks on the sidebar or take contextual links from your blog. Do not spam the blog by adding duplicate content or rewritten content, make it unique and informative. Use your creativity and provide some useful stuff for your audience. In this way the chances of getting a backlink would increase.

Getting Links from Business Partners

If your business is having a whole lot of business partners who are taking services from you then you can take a backlink from them. In this way you would be able to get relevant links pointing to your site.

Get Links from Squidoo, Hubpages and Wikis

The web has so much to offer to you! There are several websites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Wikispaces etc where you can write informative content and in return link back to your website. These websites share a good reputation with the search engines and your website is definitely going to be benefitted from these. But remember, getting a backlink is not that easy. If you are thinking to paste duplicate content on these sites and get a backlink then you would be disappointed. So please post unique content and make web a better place.

Writing Guest Posts

Guest posts are a great way to get quality and relevant links to your site. Several websites and blogs offer a guest post option where you can submit your own articles and may put links to your website from the author bio.

Sponsor some events

Taking a sponshorship is another useful link building technique. As a good businessman, you may sponsor some events related to your industry and may ask for a backlink in return.

Increase your social media influence

Apart from social media bookmarking, there are a whole lot of stuff which you can do. Getting more likes to your facebook page, getting more twitter followers, sharing useful stuff on these accounts with the backlink to your site. Other website whose power you can use for both backlink and getting direct visitors are scoop.it, createdebate etc.

Create a free widget

You can create a free widget for your audience . Often these widgets are loved by the users and they display them on their website. In this process they link back to your site. This is a thumbs up method of link building.

Buy Backlinks from Directories

This would cost you some money but it is worth spending. Getting a backlink from Yahoo directory is surely going to build trust and authority to your website. Some of the well known directories where you can purchase a backlink are as follows:-

Yahoo Directory

Business.com

Dirbull

Joeant

Etc.

Please note:- Building too many links this way may get your site penalized.

Types of Link Building

The process of link building can be divided into 3 types and these are discussed below:-

One way link building

This is the most important type of link and is the most harder to obtain. If any site on the web is pointing back to your site without asking for any link in return then it is called as one way link building.

Example

Site A points to B, C, D, E etc. 

Two way or Reciprocal link building

Under this type of link building, two similar (websites belonging to the same category) web sites exchange links with each other. The concept is “You point to me and I will point to you”. This type of mutual link building is the most common type of link building and is the most easier to obtain. This method has become outdated and is no longer followed.

Example

Site A points to B and in return Site B points to A.

Three way link building

Under this method, a site links to your website in return for a link that is placed on a third website.

Example

Site A points to B and in return Site B provides a link back to site A from Site C.