Visual Content for Quality Backlinks: Examples and Best Practices

Building backlinks isn’t easy. Fortunately, using visual content offers an easier way to attract backlinks.

Keep reading to learn how you can earn more high-quality backlinks using visual content.

First, you’ll discover what visual content is and the different types you can use in your content strategy to build more backlinks.

We’ll also look at how you can add more visual content into your existing content strategy.

Table of contents

• What is visual content?
• Why use visual content for backlinks?
• Visual vs text content for high-quality backlinks
• 7 types of visual content to build backlinks
• How to integrate visual content into your overall content strategy
• How to optimize your visual content for better search engine rankings
• Create engaging, beautiful content that’s worth a hundred backlinks with Piktochart templates

Visual content is content that uses visuals to convey important information. Common examples include images, graphs, charts, infographics, and videos. If you want to start creating visual content right away, you can sign up for a free Piktochart account.

Attention spans are short on the web. 

People don’t have the time (or patience) to read lengthy articles to find what they’re looking for. Creating and sharing visual content can help you present complex information in an easier-to-read format. 

Making your own visuals is also a great way to get backlinks to your website. The more high-quality backlinks you get, the more chances of improving your search engine rankings. 

For example, this infographic about sources of calcium is a great resource for anyone searching for food that is rich in calcium.

Other websites are also more likely to use it as their own content and include a link back to the source as a reference.

Content comes in different forms.

For a start, you can create custom images and share them on your social media profiles. You can also write articles and post them to your blog.

Let’s take a closer look at the differences between these two formats.

Our brains are capable of processing visual information at incredible speeds. Research carried out by MIT neuroscientists has shown that the brain can process entire images in as little as 13 milliseconds.

With visual content, you give your audience something their brains can quickly process and understand. This is becoming increasingly important as we are bombarded with more information than ever.

Visual content isn’t just easier to comprehend. Your audience is also more likely to share it with others. 

Take a look at your social media feed, and there’s a good chance that visual content like images and videos makes up the bulk of what you see.

What’s more, visual content like video testimonials influence purchasing decisions. In fact, 3 in 4 consumers link are more likely to buy a product or service after watching a branded video.

Unlike visual content like images and graphics, text content is easier to produce for many.  

Common examples include:

• Long-form articles
• Product reviews
• How-to guides
• Listicles
• Glossaries

Textual content is one of the most critical aspects to consider if you want to rank higher in search engines. The search engines’ web crawlers will “read” and analyze your content to determine what a page is about.

For example, when you publish and optimize content for SEO, your audience may discover it in the search results. This can help you position your products or services in front of more people.

This is important because 49 percent of shoppers say they’ve used Google to discover or find a new product.

Publishing textual content like blog posts can help raise brand awareness and drive more organic search traffic to your website.

So which one is better for acquiring backlinks: visual or textual content?

It depends on your marketing goals.

Visual content has more potential to go viral on social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, while textual content can help you rank for important keywords in your niche. 

Visual content comes in various shapes and sizes. 

Let’s look at each type and how you can use them in your link-building strategy.

Infographics use a combination of text and visuals to present complex information in a more digestible format. As mentioned earlier, they are one of the tried-and-tested ways to get quality backlinks.

Here’s an example of an infographic showing how to make your office an eco-friendly zone. 

Even if you don’t have any graphic design experience, you can use free infographic maker tools like Piktochart to make high-quality infographics in minutes. 

The video tutorial below shows you how to make your first infographic in 30 minutes.

Brand logos and product images are also visual content to help you earn more links. 

Add your company name or logo within any visual content you create to ensure you receive credit from anyone who references you.

For example, this blog post visual (repurposed for a tweet as seen here) by CoSchedule contains the company’s logo and name, making it impossible to use the image without referencing the company.

Adding your brand name to visual content is also a great way to raise brand awareness. Keep track of where your logo or product images appear on the web and make sure they link back to your site if they don’t already.

With Piktochart for Teams, you can quickly add your company logo, ensuring that your content is always on-brand. You can just drag your logo or a screenshot of your website to automatically extract your brand colors to your visual!

Data visualization presents data in graphical formats, enabling users to gain meaningful insights. Common formats include charts, graphs, scatter plots, and diagrams.

Here’s an example of visual content filled with graphs and charts.

You can create a highly linkable and shareable resource when you create data-driven visuals like the one above. You can also embed it in your content to support your claims or post it on your social media profiles to spread the word (or both).

Even simple tables can help build links as they can be referenced by other sites linking back to you.

Using screenshots is another way to create visual content. 

If you’re a SaaS company, you can add screenshots to your content to showcase how certain features work. You can also add screenshots to blog posts to show your readers how to do something.

As an example, this article includes screenshots on how to choose the best font for your subtitles using Piktochart.

Operating systems like Windows and macOS include built-in tools that let you easily take and annotate screenshots.

If it fits your brand, memes are a fun way to engage your audience. They typically take the form of a static image or a GIF with text laid on top.

Here’s an example of a meme that Running World posted to its Instagram page:

Memes are easy to make and can go viral on social media, which can help you attract a ton of inbound links. However, before using them, be sure that you understand the underlying cultural (and sometimes political) meaning behind a meme.

Videos can often convey more information than articles. They’re also an effective way to generate quality backlinks as you can upload to platforms like YouTube or even embed them within your content.

Piktochart’s guide on engaging Zoom presentations offers an example of an embedded video:

But you don’t have to stop there. You can also repurpose your videos and transform a recording into multiple content pieces that you can post on other platforms.

Recommended reading: Content Repurposing: The Complete Guide for Beginners

Checklists are another type of visual content that can help you attract more links. They’re not that difficult to make either, as you can use basic image editors and pull key points from an existing article to create them.

This checklist on how to prepare for your next Zoom presentation is an example of a linkable resource that you can create:

So far, we’ve looked at different types of visual content and provided examples of each. Now let’s look at how you can integrate them into your content strategy.

Here are several ways that you can use visual content to increase your reach and generate more backlinks in the process.

Guest posting benefits everyone — you get a link back to your site in exchange for your content contribution. It can also help raise brand awareness and build your authority.

Instead of offering an article, pitch publications in your niche with an infographic or custom image. Try to find a unique angle and use credible data sources along with quality visuals to increase your chances of getting your content accepted.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are perfect places to share your infographics, videos, memes, and images.

When you share helpful resources, others are more likely to share and even link to them from their own sites. Be sure to include a link to your visual content and add relevant hashtags to increase its reach.

Struggling with ideas for your visual content?

Look no further than the content you’ve already published. You can easily pull ideas from existing blog posts and turn them into infographics or other visual content.

From this article on graphic design trends, the Piktochart team created an infographic that breaks down each trend as shown below.

The infographics you create from repurposed blog posts can be shared on social media, offered to publications, or submitted to infographic directories.

Broken link building is the practice of finding broken links (pages that lead to a 404 error) and reaching out to webmasters with a resource that you’ve created.

Use tools like Ahrefs’ handy broken link checker to find any broken links.

With Wayback Machine, you can quickly check the broken link to get an idea of what it was about. Afterward, reach out to the content manager or editor and suggest replacing it with your resource.

Content curation is when you find and collect content from various sources that your audience will find useful.

When creating your visual content, always keep in mind that others may add it to their own curated lists and earn you quality links in the process. For example, a publication may include your infographic in a listicle or embed your video in a blog post.

Creating visual content like infographics and videos can help with your link-building strategy. But don’t forget to optimize them for search engines. 

Here’s how to do just that.

Adding captions to your images provides more context to your readers. It also helps search engines understand the content on your page.

Be sure to add descriptive alt text to your images with relevant keywords to improve their rankings as 27.6% of Google’s SERPs show images. This practice is also beneficial for your visitors, as the alt text will appear if your images fail to load.

Recommended reading: Image Alt Text: What It Is, How to Write It, and Why It Matters to SEO by HubSpot

Don’t forget to optimize your image file names. Include relevant keywords to help Google understand what the image is about.

Visual content like images and videos use more bandwidth than text, which can lead to long loading times for your visitors. Consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to provide a faster browsing experience.

To quickly recap, visual content uses engaging visuals to convey information. It includes images, infographics, videos, and more.

Using visual content can help you engage your audience and build quality backlinks. For example, you can pitch publications with infographics, share memes to your social media profiles, repurpose blog posts into videos, and much more.

If you’re not already leveraging visual content into your marketing strategy, you’re missing out on opportunities to increase your reach and improve your search engine rankings.