Timothy Carter

You already know that content is important for search engine optimization (SEO). It’s an opportunity to create new pages, optimize for specific keyword terms, and cater to your users. Creating new, better optimized pieces of content can help you achieve higher rankings and take advantage of new ranking opportunities. Unfortunately, many optimizers take this as a reason to exclusively focus on new content creation. They want to create as many onsite blog posts as possible, viewing each one as a new opportunity and a way to reach new people. There’s certainly nothing wrong with creating new content, and you should do it on a regular basis. But if you want to see better SEO results, you also need to focus on improving, updating – or tuning – the content you already have. How exactly do you “tune” your content for SEO? And why is it so valuable? What Is Content Tuning? There are many different ways to think about optimization of content for search engines. During the content development and on-page SEO process, you’ll likely choose one or more keywords to serve as the target for the new content you create; this is a form of optimization. You may also optimize your content by including certain sections, peppering in semantic variations of your target keyword phrase, adding more descriptive sections, and including links to authoritative sources. But content tuning is a bit different. Think of it this way. If you pluck a guitar string on a guitar that hasn’t been properly tuned, it will probably ring out with a note that isn’t in tune, but it’s close to the note it’s supposed to be. On a tuner, it might register as E, but it might be so flat that any song you attempted to play on the instrument will sound horrible. To correct this issue, we have to tune the string. If it’s flat, we must tighten the string gradually, checking the note with each incremental change. And if we tune it too far in one direction, we might end up with a sharp string that we then need to tune back down. Content tuning is similar. We already have a piece of content in place. It’s already close to performing as we need it to perform. We just need to make small, incremental adjustments until it falls in line with our vision for the content. When we practice content tuning, we’re interested in improving the overall performance of a piece of content. That means we need to think about how the piece of content is ranking, what types of users it’s attracting, the organic traffic it generates, and even the behavior of users who visit the page. Ultimately, even a few small changes could be enough to take a mediocre page seated deeply in your blog and make it a total star on the SERPs. The Core Principles of Content Tuning for SEO If we want a piece of content to be successful in an SEO campaign, we need to tune it with the following core principles in mind: Optimize for user intent. User intent is a way to determine the goals and mindset of an individual user searching for a specific keyword term. For example, a person searching for “bike tune-up near me” is probably searching for a bike shop where they can take their bicycle for a seasonal tune-up. In contrast, a person searching for “bike tune-up tutorial” is probably more interested in learning how to do a bike tune-up by themselves. These are simple and easily understood examples, but user intent gets far more complicated. One of your goals in content tuning is optimizing for user intent. Instead of optimizing for one or a handful of specific keyword phrases, you’ll be optimizing your piece of content to fulfill user desires, according to their intent when searching. This is valuable for several reasons. For starters, user intent is arguably Google’s biggest priority; if you can satisfy user intentions with your content, it’s likely to rank higher. Additionally, optimizing for user intent increases dwell time on your page, while increasing the likelihood that each user will take action on your website. Develop content with users in mind. Next, we need to develop our content with users in mind – and that means human users, not search bots. Too often, content developers and search engine optimizers develop their content with algorithms in mind. They try to include just the right number of keywords, just the right structure, and just the right semantic patterns to trick search engines into ranking their content favorably. Ironically, this is usually counterproductive. It’s usually much better to write for human beings, serve them well, and capitalize on the benefits of providing a good user experience. Increase page relevancy. Another goal of content tuning is to increase page relevancy. In other words, we want to make our existing piece of content more relevant for more queries. Historically, SEO professionals have recommended creating content with a singular keyword focus; you create one piece of content (and one page) for each target keyword or phrase in your strategy. But in today’s era of semantic complexity and advanced machine learning algorithms, such a narrow focus is problematic. Instead, it’s often better to have monumental pieces of content that can address many different keywords and many different user intents simultaneously. Revisit ranking factors. This is also an opportunity to revisit ranking factors as they apply to this individual page. As you add new content sections, delete sections of content that aren’t working for your strategy, and optimize for conversions, see if there are any technical tweaks you can make to increase the likelihood of this page ranking in SERPs. With those core principles in mind, what steps do you need to take to tune your content for SEO? Step One: Look for Opportunities to Tune Your Content for SEO First, you need to decide which pieces of content or pages of your website you want to tune for

Content length is a matter of concern for both SEO and user experience. You need enough content to register in major search engines, but not so much that you alienate your users or appear to be over-optimizing your pages. Writing too much is a pitfall of some search marketers obsessed with achieving a higher rank; they believe that more content is always better, when in reality, that’s hardly ever the case. But content length for SEO DOES matter! While certain best practices should be followed to maximize homepage SEO potential, quality is always better than quantity. The home page is a unique SEO animal for two reasons: The homepage carries the most weight in representing your site to major search engines It’s usually the first (and many times the only) chance you have to capture your users’ attentions long enough to lead them to conversion. From hundreds of iterations and client tests, we have found that the best length for homepage content is a range between 100 and 1,000 words, with the optimal falling somewhere in the middle (400 to 600 words). Homepage content is dependent on the industry, individual user, customer need, search intent, homepage purpose and the homepage content length of the competition. Let’s explore a bit more why word count is important for your home page, and what number of words strikes the right balance between user-friendly and SEO-optimized. General Homepage Text Guidelines for SEO First, it’s important to establish a baseline for SEO. Your homepage text needs to be optimized for search engines if you want to stand a chance of ranking highly for competitive keywords. However, the requirements for search engines are less strict and less demanding than you might think. In terms of onsite text, there are only a handful of guidelines you’ll need to follow in order to get the best results. Aside from your title tags, meta descriptions, and physical site structure, you’ll only need to pay attention to these features in your home page content: Crawlable Text In order to be seen as existing by the robots of major search engines like Google, you will need a minimum amount of “crawlable” text. Robots will scour your site, including your company name, title tag, meta information, and of course, onsite content. In the old days of SEO, that meant including keyword-rich content, so Google search bots would be able to understand what your site is about. Today, Google’s robots are highly advanced, and can detect the meaning and intent of your site without you spoon-feeding it content. So, aside from optimized meta data, you only need to include enough text to convey the main purpose and category of your website to a search engine crawler. Focus on Users, Not on An Arbitrary Word Count It’s also important to structure your home page content appropriately for search engine robots. It’s not enough to simply list a series of power words that describe your business; you need to write in a natural, logical, and appropriate form. That means your content needs to be error-free, straightforward, and written clearly. Google can detect not only grammatical and semantic errors, but also unnatural instances of language that could indicate a non-native speaker or an intention of keyword stuffing. If you write in a natural voice, you have nothing to worry about, but extending your onsite content for the sole purpose of hitting a word count could lead you to write unnatural sentences. In addition, homepage content should favor more toward your brand, your services and your company values, rather than random lists or extended long-form content. In short, you want to rank for your brand, not attempt to create content that, when featured on a blog post, may be displayed as a featured snippet. Best Practices for Conversion That 100 to 1,000 word range is only for search engines’ benefits; remember that your home page is also the first impression most visitors will have of your company. Your word count also needs to cater to your users’ expectations and desires. Your onsite content will need to immediately convey your company’s description to your users, and also catch their attention long enough for them to want to venture deeper into the site. It isn’t the place for long-winded elaborations, nor is it the place for vague descriptions. Concise, Readable Text Instead of focusing on how much text you have on the web page, focus on what messages and ideas you want to convey to your visitor. Then, find a way to convey that information to your visitor in the most concise way possible. Don’t truncate or compromise your message, but cut out any unnecessary or “fluffy” content. Your users don’t want to read excessive material that has no relevance; they want the shortest path available. In most cases, that means decreasing your word count to avoid tiring your audience. You’ll also want to make sure your content is easily readable, with a clear font and appealing design that complements the content’s form. That means it’s not enough to have a paragraph of excellent content squished together in a lump on your page—your words need to be spaced enough to engage your readers. Direction to Fuller Pages & Calls to Action Remember that your home page alone isn’t going to convert readers, and therefore, you don’t need to cram information on it. Let your interior web pages do the bulk of the work. You can have as much content as you want on your About page, your Services page, and of course, your blog and news pages. Keep your word count on the home page appropriate for its primary purpose: capturing immediate attention and directing users to relevant interior pages for further brand engagement. Most important is the need for your homepage to include relevant calls to action. As the most important page on your site (and likely the most heavily trafficked), the homepage should work to convert visitors into leads and customers with the right hook. It’s

The same old digital marketing methods won’t work any longer. Drawing up a well-rounded campaign now requires digital marketers to be more agile and customer-centric when promoting their brand’s offerings online. You need to know which marketing channels work for your business. According to Forrester, customer service interactions via digital avenues are projected to increase by 40%. Forrester also anticipates that, on average, the digital brand channels numbers will surge from 8 to 11. This makes it practically indispensable for companies to incorporate digital marketing in their marketing strategy. Here are some of the must-follow digital marketing trends to look out this year and beyond. Conversational Marketing With all that hype about chatbots, modern digital marketing trends have become all about clear and engaging conversations. Customers want it, and leading brands that deliver it win. When customers have a question or concern, 82% of them expect an “instant” response. Essentially, conversational digital marketing enables real-time, one-to-one, between customers and marketers. Unlike conventional tactics, this type of marketing is now leveraged by many brands and across multiple platforms. It allows them to interact with customers conveniently: on media, devices, and time schedules preferred by the customers and are best suited to them. Today, customers expect to instantly find their preferred products and want their queries to get answered quickly. And as businesses prepare for a digitalized future, they must find ways to be available and accessible and communicate the way their audience prefers to. Ultimately, the primary purpose of conversational marketing is to improve and enhance the overall user experience with a feedback-driven approach that fosters greater loyalty and higher engagement. ChatGPT and Other AI-Powered Chatbots and Large Language Models Chatbots, a software program, interact with site visitors and customers and a naturally sounding way in real time. This strategy can help businesses save significant recruiting people from communicating and engaging with the visitors on your website on an ad hoc basis. A chatbot is personable, unbiased, and informative. This, in turn, enables buyers to make faster and more informed decisions and ensures that users feel heard and are treated as individuals. If you are not leveraging chatbot applications, it’s well-advised to get onto it as the artificial intelligence trend will likely continue to rise in the future. 67% of the companies stated that deploying AI-enabled technology helped them create a better and unique experience for their customers. While the decision is also contingent on different factors, the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence will lead more companies to incorporate this digital marketing strategy trend. AI-powered software applications practically facilitate brands with a unique voice and enhance their interaction with customers. Companies like Swiggy and Amazon have levelled up their digital marketing game and, ultimately, their customer service by leveraging customized AI-powered chatbots. In addition to responding to the FAQs, these chatbots keep track of previous conversations and naturally interact with visitors. So, upgrading to AI-enabled chatbots is a requisite to ace your overall marketing game in 2021. Tangentially, and detrimentally for many digital marketers is the fact that link building for SEO will continue to diminish as AI becomes more prominently weighted in search algorithms as well. ChatGPT’s Impact on Digital Marketing The rise of ChatGPT has been legendary and it’s impact as a digital marketing trend cannot be understated. It is the fastest digital application to reach one million users. Content Generation: Automated Content Creation: ChatGPT can be utilized to generate high-quality and engaging content for websites, blogs, social media, and other marketing channels. This helps marketers save time and resources in content creation. Product Descriptions and Reviews: E-commerce businesses can use ChatGPT to generate product descriptions, reviews, and other content to enhance their online product listings. Customer Support: Chatbots: ChatGPT can power more advanced and natural language chatbots for customer support on websites. These chatbots can handle customer queries, provide information, and assist in problem resolution, improving overall customer experience. Social Media Engagement: Automated Social Media Posts: Marketers can employ ChatGPT to create social media posts, tweets, and other updates. This can help maintain a consistent posting schedule and engage with the audience on various platforms. Email Marketing: Content Creation for Email Campaigns: ChatGPT can be used to draft email content for marketing campaigns, newsletters, and promotional messages. This can aid in personalization and crafting compelling messages. Market Research: Data Analysis and Insights: ChatGPT can assist in analyzing large sets of data to extract valuable insights. This information can be used for market research, understanding consumer behavior, and refining marketing strategies. Personalization: Personalized Recommendations: By understanding user preferences and behaviors, ChatGPT can contribute to creating personalized recommendations for products or content, leading to more targeted marketing efforts. SEO Optimization: Content Optimization: ChatGPT can help marketers optimize website content for search engines by generating relevant and keyword-rich content, improving SEO performance. Training and Onboarding: Employee Training: ChatGPT can be used in training programs for marketing professionals, helping them stay updated on industry trends, learn new strategies, and enhance their skills. To help navigate this ever-changing landscape, I thought it would prove helpful to weave in the following graphic, which helps showcase best practices for using ChatGPT to ride the wave of LLMs (large language models) in all digital marketing trends: Video Marketing Video marketings is one of the most effective ways to inform customers about your products and services. And interestingly, it is by far the most preferred way customers wish to learn about a brand’s offerings. This is not merely restricted to YouTube. You can leverage the power of video marketings in several other ways to increase a higher engagement level. For example, you can make an entire video post or conduct a live broadcast session on social media. Additionally, if your website has more video contents, it will drive higher site traffic than text. This is because the audience finds video contents more compelling and visually appealing than simple text. As a result, Google push sites that comprise videos. Videos marketing is relatively more straightforward, too, as it just

Keyword stemming is a sub-strategy of keyword research. Keyword research remains one of the most fundamental SEO practices. Keyword stemming allows businesses and marketers to seek the best and most appropriate keyword (KW) sets, enabling their websites to increase organic search engine traffic. But, what is keyword stemming? How does it relate to keyword research? How can you use keyword stemming to optimize your site and pages for SEO dominance? With this in mind, here’s your ultimate guide to Keyword Stemming and how you can use it to enhance ranking on SERPs and traffic. Before jumping ahead, let’s find out what the term “Keyword Stemming” exactly means! What Is Keyword Stemming? To put it simply, keyword stemming refers to the strategy or practice of modifying various keywords using variations. The variations might be in the shape of a suffix or a prefix attached to the base (root) keyword. You can also utilize pluralization of the word as it’s treated as altogether a different keyword. Google recognizes semantic meanings, i.e., context and user intents behind search queries. This technology has been present for a while and has improved considerably. It allows Google to determine KWs and their variations, understanding if they are utilized in the same context in the content. Benefits of Keyword Stemming The advantages of stemming in articles and blog posts are plenty. To begin with, it can enable you to rank higher for several related and unrelated keywords. KW stemming helps you seek synonyms for your targeted keyword, enabling you to draw organic traffic to the website. In addition to that, while adequately utilizing stemming, you can avoid: Keyword repetition Keyword stuffing Both things may get your website blacklisted on Google. Keyword stemming is critical when a single page is not quite ranking for the head or money term you want. In such cases, webmasters can use keyword stemming as a means of search engine optimization for a specific search query or phrase that may be a bit more long-tail. Apart from the brand’s services and products, keywords are also essential for a range of other things such as: Content formulation Social media marketing campaigns Link building Remember, when choosing and tracking keywords for Google or other search engines, context is key. This is because variations to keywords (KWs) are treated as entirely different keywords. This is where keyword stemming is critical for ranking success for a given, specific search query. For instance, you may turn the KW into plural. In that case, you’ve generated another keyword for the search engine to monitor. While it can cause adverse effects on keyword rankings, utilizing these variations increases the chances of people finding your content quickly and smoothly. This unique strategy is popularly known as “Keyword Stemming,” a practice present for quite a while. How Does Traffic Arrive At Your Site? Let’s assume your targeted keyword is ‘Study tips for pupils.’ The variants can be like: studied, studying, and studies for the base word ‘study,’ and for pupils, the variant pupil can be used. Search engines typically rank single pages for more than one specific keyword. Some pages and posts rank for thousands of words. How that traffic from search engines comes to your website is helpful to understand, so you can optimize your pages to get more organic traffic from more than just the same keyword. Now that you know how crucial keyword stemming is, how will you implement it? How To Perform Keyword Stemming To Enhance Web Traffic? Keyword stemming transpires in two ways, i.e., from “Inflicted form” to “Stem form” and from “Stem form” to potential “Root form.” Let’s revert to the example mentioned above: ‘Study tips for pupils.’ There’s an excellent chance that you’ll utilize the words ‘studied,’ ‘studies,’ ‘studying,’ etc., in your article wherever they are relevant and make sense contextually. Suppose you have written a blog post on the topic ‘Study tips,’ where you’ve employed the word ‘studies’ approximately three times, ‘studying’ five times, and ‘studied’ just one time during the entire piece of content. Here’s the benefit you’ll gain from keyword stemming: You’ll drive immense organic traffic from phrases including keywords such as ‘studies,’ ‘studying,’ etc. Of course, inflectional phrases must be related to the blog post/article. Remember, you can’t force inflectional phrases into your article; they must be: Contextually natural Significant Relevant For instance, in the article ‘Study tips’, you’ve utilized the word ‘studied’ just one time. Wondering why? That’s because ‘studied’ (past participle and past of study) is less pertinent in this type of blog post or article unless you state some anecdotes. Examples Of Inflected Forms in Keyword Stemming Are you having trouble incorporating inflected forms in the article? If so, here are some simple examples to help clarify the concept: To add ‘studying’ for your targeted base word ‘study,’ write in the following manner: “Use your marks and grades to see how good you’re at studying.” Rather than using this sentence: “Your grades and marks can determine how good you study.” Here’s another example: To add ‘studies’ for your targeted base word ‘study,’ try writing sentences in the following way: “If you’re into studies excessively, it’s best to take a break to give the brain some rest.” Rather than using sentences like this: “Consider giving your brain some rest in case you study excessively without taking offs.” Nevertheless, here are a few things you should consider above all to gain higher traffic: Don’t force yourself to spam inflected forms to attract organic traffic from various search engines. Doing this will destroy all your on-page optimization (also known as on-page SEO) efforts, eventually Be natural and organic and utilize different forms of stem words wherever it contextually makes sense and adds up to the meaning When Should Businesses And Marketers Utilize Keyword Stemming? When appropriately utilized, stemming allows content to become more and easily searchable while using the variations of original KWs. Although keyword stemming can help you generate higher traffic, it can seriously affect your organic traffic when

For busy Internet marketers, blogs long ago replaced any static news or information sources such as newsletters or books. With a blog you can access the latest information quickly, compare ideas and news from different sources, and ask questions and get answers directly from the source. This list of the top 50 Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) blogs, websites, and social media accounts is in no particular order. It would be impossible to make an exact ranking when each resource offers its own brand of information, interaction, and general awesomeness. Suffice it to say every resource on this list rocks. Let’s dive in: Search Engine Land Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan was one of the first experts in SEO and is still widely considered to be among the best. He founded the website 11 years ago and has scaled the blog into one of the more successful resources on the web today. Now published by Third Door Media, Search Engine Land features news and opinions on SEO, search engine marketing (SEM), social media, local marketing, and other pertinent industry topics. It’s a great first stop for anything related to SEO, SEM or internet marketing. Social Media Examiner Social Media Examiner is the largest online social media magazine in the world. In addition to providing the latest news, information, and ideas on social media and social marketing, Social Media Examiner hosts the Social Media Marketing podcast and a couple of different industry-leading events/conferences throughout the year. Seth’s Blog Seth Godin is not strictly an online marketer and his blog not strictly about digital marketing. However, it’s arguably one of the single greatest resources for internet marketers like yourself. Godin is an incredibly talented writer with an extraordinary grasp of the psychology of marketing. You should read his blog on a regular basis. Most posts are fairly short, but they’ll make you think. Copyblogger When Brian Clark started Copyblogger, his intent was simply to start a blog for marketers that wasn’t like every other blog on the interent. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Copyblogger is not just for copywriters, nor is it exclusively for bloggers. Rather it is a blog on how to use copywriting techniques to create amazing content. Any blogger who wants to increase traffic and earnings from one or more blogs can learn a great deal from this powerful resource. Likeable Blog Likeable Media is a marketing agency dedicated to helping clients develop stories and become “likeable.” The Likeable blog is filled with useful tips and information on social media marketing, digital content, and other related topics. It’s a refreshing blog that’s less focused on technical aspects and more dedicated to the creative side of the industry. The Moz Blog Moz, once SEOMoz, began as a consulting firm in 2004 and now provides SEO tools to millions of marketers. The Moz Blog offers information, valuable tips, and cutting-edge ideas to readers on a daily basis. Like Moz the company, The Moz Blog seeks to reflect the core values of the company: Transparent and authentic, generous, fun, empathetic and exceptional. Chris Brogan Chris Brogan is one of the most highly sought after keynote speakers in the industry. He’s a New York Times bestselling author with nine books to his name. He’s consulted with companies like Disney, Google, Microsoft, Sony, GM, and Coca-Cola – to name a few. His website is a powerful resource for anyone who wants to take a deep dive into content creation, storytelling, and the future of digital marketing. HubSpot Blog In addition to offering industry-leading digital marketing software, HubSpot’s blog is known for being one of the most innovative and resourceful in the industry. They publish practical content, rich case studies, interviews with thought leaders, and timely posts about topics covering a wide-range of topics, including marketing, sales, and customer service. Social Media Today Sometimes you need more than the latest news. You need analysis of that news. Social Media Today gives you that analysis for social media and social marketing. With columns on various topics from “the world’s best thinkers on social media,” Social Media Today tells you what’s happening, what you should know, and what you can do about it. TopRank Marketing Blog TopRank is a renowned online marketing consulting firm. Their blog is a widely-respected source of information related to digital marketing strategy, online public relations, social media marketing, business blogging, content marketing, and SEO. Buffer Blog The Buffer blog provides a constant stream of ideas from industry leading marketers and social thought leaders. It’s one of the most approachable marketing blogs on the internet and is helpful for generating new ideas and implementing practical tactics. The website, as a whole, is a fantastic resource for webinars and downloads. Duct Tape Marketing Blog As the name suggests, the Duct Tape Marketing blog prides itself on being able to provide small businesses with quick marketing solutions. It’s aimed at business owners and marketers who are short on time and don’t have formal backgrounds in digital marketing, social media, or content creation. There’s also a fantastic podcast by the same name. Cassandra Daily Whereas most digital marketing blogs touch on larger trends and broad topics, Cassandra Daily zooms in and focuses on precisely what’s happening in the moment. It’s an extremely relevant and timey blog – putting an emphasis on cultural trends, viral topics, and newsworthy moments. It focuses on everything from technology and media to food and entertainment, which makes it an awesome read for anyone who wants to stay current. Hootsuite Blog Hootsuite is known for being one of the foremost leaders in social media and digital marketing tools – but it has a pretty fantastic blog, too. The bulk of the content focuses on how to properly leverage networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube, but it’s also a good place to learn about productivity and big-picture digital strategy. Think With Google The Think With Google blog is one of the more unique resources on this list.

The infographic is certainly not a new tool for those looking to boost search engine optimization. In fact, the popular infographic is close to celebrating its 10th birthday as a useful and meaningful way to provide readers with new knowledge and real value while boosting a website’s overall profile in the process. This leads many people to simply assume that the infographic is yesterday’s news, last year’s tool, and no longer a valuable part of SEO strategy and planning. That simply could not be further from the truth. While many tried and true methods of search engine optimization have fallen by the wayside during the infographic’s rise and reign, the graphic itself still contributes meaningfully to user experiences, website SEO performance, and backend processes for website owners. Consider the following key reasons to keep researching, assembling, and publishing these engaging visual masterpieces. 1. Infographics Contribute to Other SEO Resources To create an effective infographic, today’s website owners need to conduct a large amount of research so that they can present new and quirky information in an engaging way. That research is not a one-off thing. In fact, good research can pay dividends when creating an infographic and it can actually lay the foundation for further publications that draw even more users in. Consider that this information could also be published in the form of a valuable blog entry, a useful and authoritative whitepaper, or a series of social media posts that help the website build its engagement levels and create a viral following on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and other networks. Working on infographic research is a long-term commitment to publishing valuable content on a given topic. For this reason, the process should be considered an investment in SEO that can extend to social publishing, blog use, paid whitepaper marketing, and much more. 2. Infographics Typically Become “Evergreen” Content After Publishing A blog entry that breaks controversial news or discusses quirky statistics tends to explode in popularity upon publishing but fizzle out soon thereafter. Users read the content, comment on it, and perhaps share it with a friend or two. The process that ensues after publication of a popular infographic is somewhat different. While there’s certainly a burst of initial publicity and interaction, infographics tend to be shared for far longer periods of time than their blog post counterparts. In fact, infographics whose basic statistics and factoids remain current can be shared for years at a time. Since the company’s logo or URL is included in the infographic, this acts as a long-term promotional material that increases visits from social media and external websites. That’s exactly what search engines like Google are looking for, and it’s a fantastic way to commit to a long-term elevation in a site’s search rankings and total performance. 3. An Infographic is a Visual Representation of a Website’s Brand The great thing about an infographic is that it can be built by designers to deliberately reflect a company’s visual aesthetic and overall tone. Does the website typically engage in sarcastic references and quirky jokes? An infographic can reflect this very well. Does the site have a given color scheme or attractive logo? These things can also be worked into a great infographic by the most highly skilled designers currently honing their craft. Think of an infographic not just as a way to virally communicate with outside users and websites, but also as a way to engage in product placement. With the right design philosophy, the image can serve as a source for natural link building to share or as a more compact version of the site’s message, mission, tone of voice, and branding decisions. Combined with its evergreen content tendencies, this gives the creator a great deal of virtual staying power after publication. 4. A Great Graphic Can Gain Traction Where Other Methods Fail One of the biggest hurdles facing upstart websites is their inability to connect with more seasoned resources and draw users who feel that their needs are already being met by an established online content hub. Infographics, with their visual appeal and alluring way of presenting information, can change all that. In some cases, they might serve as impromptu guest posts on other blogs with a great deal more authority. Some companies might “steal” the infographic and publish it as part of their own social media feeds. They’ll give appropriate credit, of course, but this action is largely seen as an endorsement of the publishing website’s authority and legitimacy. Increased user visits may follow and, with consistent publishing of new content that exudes the same level of information and attitude, those users will likely stick around and be proud to have found a new resource. It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the online world, where text is common and “Too Long Did Not Read” is a popular acronym, infographics break through the noise and cause both users and other publishers to take notice. Traction is important online, and this is one of the best ways to gain some. 5. In Studies, Users Overwhelmingly Responded More to Visual Content Ever notice that a newspaper’s biggest element above the fold is an image and not the headline? There’s a reason for that: In study after study, over multiple decades and several generations, researchers have found that people are up to 40 percent more likely to respond to visual content than they are to respond in the same way to the written word. Sure, people like to read when it concerns their interests or the way they do things on a daily basis. They need to be enticed, however, and the best way to do that is with useful and informative visuals. It is this tendency to respond with greater frequency to visual stimuli that makes infographics such an appealing part of a broader SEO strategy. As mentioned above, a photo can be worth a thousand words. An infographic that sits above the “noise” of written blog content