Published on December 31st, 2020
We prefer to see the world and all the things around us with our eyes. You know that the picture is worth a thousand words. Hence, visual perception plays one of the key factors in information sensing.
Link building follows the same way.
SEO specialists have already focused on acquiring backlinks using images. Therefore, you should keep your eyes on this tendency as well.
In this guide, you will get familiar with three actionable strategies to build links with images.
Shall we begin?
Why Do Images Attract Backlinks?
Let’s start with obvious stuff – you publish content on different websites. You like to blend it with various images taken from third-party sources. And if you follow the guidelines, you always point out the source the image has been taken from.
The source you’re pointing out is the backlink that you build for the owner of the image you used.
From the example above, you can see that there is a reference to the source. The source contains a backlink. Thus, the owner of the image has acquired a link without doing any actions for this.
You might wonder – what images are good for building links?
To answer this question, you should understand that link building using images is not simple. You can’t expect to get a backlink to whatever image you want.
In other words, don’t you hope to get a backlink using a photo of your cat. To acquire backlinks with the images, you must suggest the images that people would like to use in their content.
So, what types of images attract links?
Types of Images That Would Attract Backlinks
There are a few major types of images that attract links like a charm. Let’s review them one-by-one:
Graphs
If you like to create images that would illustrate some stats, you should focus on graphs. First of all, people always want to share visual information that provides data. Secondly, graphs can attract many backlinks. Like this example:
As you can see, this graph has been used in the posts published across 302 blogs.
The only problem that might appear with creating graphs is that you will have to hire a graphic designer.
Photos
Nowadays, we tend to post photos on Instagram. It is a modern-day trend that the majority of people like to follow. However, it is not something that you can use in terms of link building. Instead, you can use stock images that could be taken from Unsplash.
Maps
Pay your attention to this example of the map:
For the record, this image of the map has gained 990 backlinks.
Infographics
Infographics are widely used for numerous reasons. But we are talking about link building in this post. Thus, you can be sure that infographics build links perfectly (even though infographics are less popular today). Likely, if you know how to make infographics, you will have a wonderful opportunity to build backlinks.
Have some doubts?
Review this example:
According to the stats, this infographic on influencer marketing has acquired 572 backlinks.
Three Actionable Strategies to Build Links With Images
As has been stated before, there are some link building challenges that you will face building backlinks with images. Fortunately, if you know the strategies to avoid these challenges, you will be able to gain backlinks easily.
Therefore, let’s review three link building strategies for images:
1.Search the links with the incorrect attribution – fix them
Assume that you’ve created images and host them on your blog. These images illustrate information related to your business niche specifically.
Maybe you paid money to get the images created. Or you used free graphic design software. It does matter. The matter is that these images are freely available on the web. Anyone can use them without asking for permission.
You start exploring if there is a source pointed out to your website. It seems that everything looks fine. However, if you check the details of the link, you will see that it redirects to the file of the image instead of your page. Such links won’t drive traffic to your website.
This link makes no sense in terms of ranking your page. Remember, if someone points out the link in the source, it should redirect to the page but not to the image file.
It would be rather difficult to find these incorrect attributes manually. That’s why you need a specific tool that could help you with this. You can choose whatever tool you like. In this very case, it is Site Explorer. Everything you will have to do is to review a report called “Backlinks”. Then, filter down the results by implementing the following metrics – link type “dofollow”, show only “URLs of backlinks” + include “.jpg” or “.png”.
According to the results, there are 357 links that redirect to image files. Explore all these opportunities and ask to fix them.
2. Find the images that have no source
It should be taken into account that lots of newbies don’t credit the image owners with the link when using images in the content. This guide could be an example of how the source to each image used must be featured.
However, if you see that your images haven’t been credited, you can turn the tables.
The very first step you must take is to find all the web-resources that use your images with no credits. And Google reverse image search will help you here. Upload the image itself or insert the image URL to Google and you will see all web-pages where it has been used.
Later on, skim through the pages and find those ones that haven’t included the source. When the pages in question are found, reach out to website editors and ask to refer to the source.
This is a smart link building strategy that will boost the number of backlinks drastically. You should repeat this process one time per month. The downside of this link building way is that it would be quite difficult to analyze all images from your website. To make the process automated, you can use a tool called Image Raider. It should be admitted that the tool is paid. However, it allows you to analyze 10,000 images for a monthly fee.
3. More Images – More Backlinks
So, how to create more images that would bring you more backlinks?
To create images, you need a source of inspiration. It can be whatever you want, starting from the tenth Muse ending with some trends you can find across social media channels.
For instance, you can review what style ideas are trending on Pinterest. However, if you just want to browse the ideas manually, it would be time-consuming. Thus, you can save your time and get more of this platform using special Pinterest tools. Believe it or not but you won’t wait too long to get fresh ideas in that way.
But is there any step-by-step guide to follow in particular?
Sure.
Let’s see what it suggest to do:
A. Review the topic trends
One of the most straightforward ways to find what is trending right now – use Google News. Let’s say you want to create an infographic that would show advanced link building strategies for 2021. You type a query “link building strategies” and see what topics are in trend today.
The diversity of the topics are impressive. You can focus on link building hacks, a set of SEO sources for link building, or the strategies that would help climb the SERPs.
B. Brainstorm the ideas that would help you diversify the topic
For example, you want to combine video content and SEO under one topic idea. Sounds a bit challenging, isn’t it?
Fortunately, SEO is a huge source of ideas that you can mix with video content. You can highlight how video content impacts SEO. You can illustrate YouTube ranking factors. You can visualize tips to boost a website’s SEO with the help of video content. Check out this awesome chart.
To sum up, don’t be afraid of adding creativity to the topic. Your visual content will benefit from it and reward you with tons of backlinks.
C. Work on creating your image
The final stage is to create the image. Start with thinking about the name you’re going to give your image. It should include your target keyword. And when the image is ready, you should promote it with the help of outreach.
To Sum Up
By reading this guide you realized that it is possible to build links using images solely. This type of content is more appealing and it can attract lots of backlinks.
The only thing you should do is to follow the pieces of advice. And your image link building will rock.
Author’s bio: Sergey Aliokhin is a community outreach manager at Visme. When not at work, he likes to spend his time with family, read books on science-fiction, practice playing the bass, and visit the gym.
