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You know how marketers stress on word-of-mouth? Well, backlinks is a kind of marketing technique based around the same concept. You need backlinks from relevant websites with a high domain authority to rank you better on renowned search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The task to get inbound links has become ever so difficult for the following main reasons:

Search engines are constantly refining their algorithms, such as Google just released the Penguin 4.0 Real-time update and according to this you need credible backlinks almost every day to stay up-to-the-mark on SERPs and in online authority. Crooked webmasters get inbound links using deceptive methods like automatically generated web pages, also known as link farms, which only exist to provide links to a target page. This is a malpractice and could get you banned so don’t even think about it. Content with visuals boost your SEO. It gets you “valuable” backlinks from well-known content sharing websites such as Business Insider, NYTimes, Design Taxi and Digital Synopsis.

As a content developer and marketer you need to keep yourself updated about what’s happening and what you shouldn’t do in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). The number of valuable backlinks determine a websites ranking on search engines so work strategically and cleverly.

Now that we’re clear on three most important things, this is how you can do link building using your custom visual content.

Visual Content Tips For Backlinks

Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, shares that visual assets give people the opportunity to garner links and references by different media outlets because “they’re simple to consume, to understand, and they’re useful and usable” in various ways.

Super Tip 1 – Guestographics

Although Fishkin isn’t a fan of infographics, this visual data representation practice is used extensively by businesses and individuals to grab rewarding inbound links to improve the popularity of their website and/or blog.

Guestographics, as described by Brian Dean of Backlinko, is a great way to get online media and influencers talk about you.

But hold on a minute.

You may make the infographic yourself or take the help of a professional, the core idea is to share worthwhile content not something crappy and cliché.

Here are ways to use infographics to foster your search rankings:

Develop Content Users Will Love To Read And Share.

90% of the success of your infographic depends on the topic you choose. Just another day my colleague was shocked over an infographic to have over hundred thousand pins. It was an ultra-minimal design with nothing spectacular but it worked! It is because of the content. So make sure the title and text you write is well-researched, trending, and aims to solve people’s problems.

Takeaway: A catchy title, problem-solving information and industry facts trigger audience interest.

Use Graphic Elements And Layout Techniques To Design.

Structure the content in a harmonizing and creative way. The composition of information on an infographic helps audience easily follow the hierarchy of design and understand the content. This makes your infographic viral and top publishers pick your creation for their websites to pull traffic for them of course, and for you by providing links leading to mostly your blog or social media accounts.

Takeaway: Make an interactive infographic design but make sure the file size is shareable.

Create An Embed Code And Get Your Infographic Cited On Websites.

Embed code lets people pick your infographic from your website and put it on theirs. The best part is that the infographic will be always be linked to your web page as it includes post URL, image URL, and image alt text with the appropriate keyword. It is a powerful and helpful link building code that anyone can easily paste in their web page’s HTML.

Takeaway: Keywords enhance the embed code so make sure you use them wisely.

Submit Your Infographic To Media Outlets Online For Valuable Backlinks.

In case you’ve done everything to make your infographic shareable yet you’re not getting enough valuable backlinks, then pitch your infographic to top content sharing blogs and websites (SlideShare and Visually) that cater to your niche. Adrienne Erin’s advice on pitching is similar to Dean’s: define the value proposition of your infographic to fit the needs of the blogger, marketer or editor.

Takeaway: Personalize your pitch! Make it sound humanizing and not an automatic robotic action.

Super Tip 2 – Video Marketing

It is important to have a variety of backlinks from article directory and RSS to social and video. Google loves such diversity. According to a whitepaper by Cisco, “video traffic will be 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 70% in 2015.” Undoubtedly, video is a type of content with the highest return on investment in terms of online success via inlinks to increase organic search traffic.

Types Of Viral Video Content For Businesses

Viral content is catchy and spreads like fire on the internet. From a music video like Gangnam Style to an infographic about graphic design, anything can become viral as long as you create content people want to share. These are the types of things that people on the internet enjoy reading and referring to others.

Tutorials

Tutorial, i.e. “how to” or “explainer” videos are high in demand, which is why businesses are investing in designing videos that solve a problem. You can either make videos using illustrations or humanize it with voice-over or real people. Such videos have a chance to be picked by writers and marketers to add value to the content and in return they add the source of the video to their posts, which is your web page.

Webinars

Several marketing agencies and startup support organizations use webinars to engage audience and invite people to their content. This is great when you want to build public relations. The presentation, lecture or workshop you conduct is often covered by news publishers online and this way you can get credible backlinks. In fact, journalists and bloggers are always on the look for current events (stories) for coverage.

Case Studies

Technically websites with high domain authorities pick content that is very famous or that has the potential to become popular among users. 72 percent of B2B buyers cherish case studies because they’re an account of brand, business or individual experiences and target audiences can relate to it. Visual storytelling is an empathetic and powerful way to attract views and get noticed by bloggers for backlinks.

Video Sharing Platforms

Vinay Patankar, CEO of Process Street, suggests that marketers have an added advantage uploading their videos on YouTube since the platform is owned by the search engine giant Google.

When you set up an account on YouTube and upload videos, you get plenty of options to optimize your video.

You can include buttons linking to your social media and landing page on your “My Channel” page.

You can add as many links as you like in the “description” section of each video.

In the “About” tab, you can yet again add links to your web pages and give business email address.

In fact, commenting on other’s video with a link is a common practice but it’s spammy.

Other great video sharing websites that can get you inward links include Vimeo, Reddit, Tumblr, Instructables and of course Facebook. However, I feel YouTube wins the race when you want to build backlinks.

Super Tip 3 – Optimized Images

All kinds of images speak a thousand words but some hit the right spot, especially when it comes to backlinks. FYI, I’m not referring to the gazillion cat, dog and panda images that went viral. Nope. I am talking about images that add value to a blog post or a social media post.

These include:

custom statistical graphs and charts

screen shots of video games or tutorials

quotes with minimal design approach

diagrams that define a process

animated and fast loading GIFs

before and after images or sliders

Ways To Get Backlinks With Images

An award-winning digital marketing consultant, Mathew Barby describes three ways to get backlinks with images. He calls images an “SEO goldmine” and says they’re the best “as far as linkable content goes”. So let’s dig in to some of his strategies for inbound links I find useful.

Image Credits In Guest Post

Write guest posts for authoritative websites and add linkable images. Be careful! Some sites don’t allow you to link images directly to your sales page. In this scenario, you can add links leading to your relevant blog posts.

Reverse Image Search

This is a productive task as Barby defines. You look for websites that used your custom and copyrighted images and ask the site to give you credit with a link. You may assume this to be a painstaking challenge but it isn’t. You can use this reverse image search tool for Google. I’ve tried and it isn’t bad.

Custom Badge Trick

You could run “blog awards” or a resource page where you list the top companies or blogs that fall under your niche. Then you create custom badges for each of them and send them with a link to your blog post. This is almost like a souvenir web masters can add on their web pages with a link to your source where you’ve bragged about them.

Image Sharing

If you make custom images then you can pitch them to bloggers asking to give you credit with a link for it. Explore different industries that relate to your business, find their top writers or marketers and type them an e-mail. Don’t advertise instead tell them how your image will work for them.

Also Explore: Why SEO Is Important For Bringing Traffic To Your Website

Super Tip 4 – Social Bookmarking

I think this is perhaps the most basic and easiest way to get valuable and targeted backlinks. Loren Baker explains why social bookmarking is an awesome way to generate traffic and garner valuable inbound links to your website. Services like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Flikr, Reddit, Digg help search engines in many ways:

Measuring the quality of a web page becomes easier when a number of users bookmark a specific page. Another way is to look at the votes, likes and comments a page has received.

when a number of users bookmark a specific page. Another way is to look at the votes, likes and comments a page has received. Users enter customized external meta data for a web page when bookmarking it. It’s almost like a review except with keywords.

for a web page when bookmarking it. It’s almost like a review except with keywords. Social bookmarking websites organize bookmarked pages into categories and tags. This makes it easier for search engine bots to provide users with relevant results.

This is a great news for your visual content. If your blog posts with infographics, videos and images get bookmarked then your traffic will definitely boost and the chance to rank higher in SERPs will increase.

Super Tip 5 – Engagement

The breaking point is you need engagement for all the above tips to work for you! You have to constantly be in the thread of social media platforms interacting with content sharing websites, bloggers and reporters. Make sure you never forget to constantly stay in touch with your industry influencers and thought leaders. So when you publish anything, share content or submit it – you have relationships that can benefit you.

At the end, I’d just like to point, getting inbound links is a gradual process. It is both time and effort intensive because you take your audience somewhere else and redirect them to your landing pages or blog through a well-planned journey.

Which super tip will you use first?