Google Discounting infographic links. So What? Infographic promotion isn’t about links!

by Geno Thampi - 7/10/2012 8900 Views

Who said links?

“Infographic links might get discounted in the future” says Matt Cutts. So what? You already know that infographics are not about the links they carry, but they are information carriers which are read and loved by real people. In fact real infographics do not carry links from anchor texts; instead, they are images which are attributed to the original author. Like any other type of content available today, spammers and black hat guys make use of the infographic strategy against the guidelines. So, Matt, you should have told, “links embedded in irrelevant HTML infographics”. Matt said “The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site”. So what if the infographic doesn’t carry any links? Again Matt says “The infographic may be neat, but if the information it’s based on is simply wrong, then it’s misleading people”, come on Matt, when there is a collection of information, there would be fair share of misleading information. It is not just the infographics, but the whole internet. For example, Google in any of your health symptoms “the top results would suggest you may have cancer.” Isn’t that misleading? But people know what authentic information is; they don’t want Google to say “hey this infographic is not good for you!” In fact it is a good move to discount hidden / embedded links in an infographic but it is impossible for Google to verify the authenticity of publicly available information and decide what is good for people to see. I have posted a video at the end of this article which comes to my mind when Google tries to decide what is right for people. Be sure to check that out... it's really funny

Hidden links within infographics? What are they?
hidden-links

You would be one among the many who think infographics are just images with no possibility to include hyperlinks to the text. For your information, what you see as an image is usually a HTML version of the original infographic. Though this is not a standard practice, savvy SEO experts do this to make the infographic more SEO friendly. According to them, Google doesn’t index the text in the images so a HTML version of the image would carry indexable text. Obviously, that HTML version could carry anchor text links too. While it is not spamming to include relevant links from the infographics, black hat SEO pros saw an opportunity to trick the search engine. They simply create any infographic based on the current trends and link irrelevant text or images back to the target websites. For example, the infographic would be about Euro 2012 but the image of some footballer would link back to a payday loan website. The intention is not to get as many clicks as possible but to generate as many links as possible. So this is how links are hidden behind irrelevant images or text. The links grow as the infographic is shared by real users without noticing the hidden link. While it is no harm for the people sharing the infographic because they find the information good to be shared, for Google a spammy link is being spread which confuses the bots and may make it rank the payday website in the example high based on this.

People love it no matter what Google thinks
crowd-loves

The real fact about infographics is that people love to read them and share it to their social circle through facebook, twitter and even Google’s own Google plus. As already said, the search engine bots and the people have different views on the infographics. For people, all infographics are the same no matter if there resides a hidden link or not. If the infographic is catchy, well designed along with carrying authentic information, people would share it more than any type of content. However, for the search engine, if you are still using the hidden infographic link strategy or have used the strategy sometime back, you may be in trouble.

How does the infographic help without links?
No-links

The real infographics were never about links. You should research extensively, double check the statistics and facts and design the infographics as an attention grabber. Attribute the infographic to your brand. Include your logo, company name, website url or whatever you like in the design and there is no harm in doing so. In fact you can even create an infographic about Euro 2012 even if you are in no way associated with it. But instead of dropping a hidden url, just create an image infographic and attribute it to your brand by including your logo, company name and website in the footer, clearly visible to the audience. Just publish it within your website, blog and within your social circle. If your infographic is good enough, people would share it in the social media, syndicate it in their blogs and even provide you referral links from their articles. All these would happen naturally and guess what; your branding is still there in the infographic and you would get several natural backlinks to the original source (which would be either your website or blog or your facebook page etc). Isn’t this natural link building? Yes, it is and Google loves natural links to a website doesn’t it? The answer is yes, unless you are hiding the links within the infographics.

Google may discount infographic links! So What? Nothing!
nothing

Almost all the promotional strategies are modified and made use for black hat techniques. This doesn’t mean that you need to stay away from the strategy. Honest infographic promotion is not about links. It is about pleasing people (not the search engine bots) and spreading the brand as a wildfire. Alright, time for a pop quiz:

- What is the most shared content in Facebook and the entire social media?
- Compared to images and text what claims more attention at the first glance?
- What is the top referral traffic generating site Pinterest based on?
- What was instagram all about?
- Twitter added the feature to upload a new media along with tweets. What is it?

All these have only one answer “Images”. Infographics are even more advanced form of images which has the power to grab attention, spread virally and get maximum exposure to the attributed brand.

So what would happen to the infographic promotion if Google discounts Infographic links? You said it “Nothing”. Because real infographics don’t even carry links!

Cast your vote

The video I have been talking about:

Category :

Google

Tags :

infographic promotion, infographic design

About Geno Thampi

Not a born Shakespeare! But I still write articles and blogs to share my ideas and thoughts on SEO and SMO. Being a part of SEO research team of SubmitINme, I keep my ears and eyes open, and the pen ready to grab, write and share trending topics in search engine .... more info about the author