Infographics are what’s hot on the streets for SEO these days…at least thats what the kids are all saying. In theory, they’re the perfect way to garner a lot of backlinks with very little effort. You take some of the data you already have, organize it in a halfway pleasing way (a lot of companies skip this step), publish it, and then just wait for the links to come rolling in. Now, this is true to a degree. Infographics are a good source of links, but people are forgetting the stance that Matt Cutts took on them way back in 2012, a stance that undoubtedly has only grown stronger in its conviction during 2013.
Here’s a refresher on what Matt Cutts said and what it means for your infographic SEO strategy.
In an interview between Mr. Cutts and Eric Enge, Matt had the following to say about infographics for SEO:
This is similar to what people do with widgets as you and I have talked about in the past. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree. The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site.
Can you see the problem here?
Matt isn’t wrong about this, no matter how much we’d like him to be. The majority of people who share a picture don’t necessarily understand how embedding or linking works, and this is especially true if it’s a bright and shiny infographic that gets spread all across the web.
Does this mean that you shouldn’t use infographics? Of course not, they’re still a cornerstone in any successful SEO strategy. You just can’t rely on them to carry more than their share of the load. A good SEO strategy is balanced above all else.