Infographic for SEO

[bronxpad]

How can an infographic be used for seo purposes? What tools should I use to create one or should I just outsource the work? How much does an infographic cost to make?

[jgower]

I have no idea about outsourcing...but I have no training in graphics and little experience and was able to create a pretty decent infographic.  This was back in March and I'm still seeing tremendous traffic from it today.  It's also the highest pagerank page we have, and it gets about 4x the traffic of our homepage.  However, I'm not sure about your niche, but I have found that nobody is converting to sales.  It drives a lot of traffic which is great, but I'm not sure we've gotten 1 lead from the traffic it has generated.  Not sure how to fix that, but thought I'd put that idea in your head.

Also, you asked about tools...I used Illustrator and Photoshop.  Illustrator is a pain to get started with but look for some tutorials for graphs online and you'll find some pretty easy to make graphs that look really nice.

If you're not at all graphic minded, I'd look for someone on odesk.com to do the work for you.  As it will take quite a bit of time if you want it to look good, and the graphics programs you need will be costly if you don't already have them like I did.

[wrttnwrd]

Infographics done right make information more digestible. That tends to attract a lot of attention - especially if it's about a hot niche topic. For example, I'm a cycling fan - if someone did an infographic on the Giro d' Italia (a big bike race going on now) I'd be all over it. Put it in front of the right audience and it'll get re-shared a lot.

They're also helpful because there are lots of infographic directories/review sites out there. If you can submit your graphic to those, you gain some easy links.

If you then make the infographic embeddable, you can pick up a lot more links and re-shares as folks embed the infographic in their own blogs.

Creating a good infographic requires real expertise in data visualization. I strongly suggest hiring someone else to do it for you. Expect to pay $3,000 or more for a real pro. I've seen them offered for as little as $1,000, but generally those aren't data visualization folks - they may make something pretty, but it'll be hit-and-miss as far as a really great graphic.

If you are a good data person, then you might want to try creating your own infographic first. Use a tool like http://infogr.am/ . The worst case is that you have a sketch you can provide to a graphic designer to guide their final version. Best case, you discover you're an infographics artist at heart

Hope this helps!

[KeriMorgret]

This post from YouMoz also has some helpful advice from someone who has created many infographics. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

[DesignbysoapLtd]

I would outsource it to a pro - but you don't necessarily need to pay a fortune, our agency offers infographic design, research and promotion for around $1,000 and we work with some of the biggest agencies and brands in the world (including Yoast, AOL, European Commission, PayPal, Ford, Experian, Orange, etc. etc).

With that said it's perfectly acceptable to design one yourself, just make sure you put in the proper time, care and effort and that you promote it as hard as you can.

Not only do infographics act as fantastic link bait, but they can facilitate some incredibly strong links via guest blogging - you'd be amazed at the strength of some of the links you can gain if you offer someone an exclusive, well design and well thought out infographic.

Thanks for linking to my post Keri - hopefully that will be of some use to you Joel : )