Latest Info-graphic Best Practices

[DanielFreedman]

This is a good "problem" to have.

My client is a consortium of web companies. It has just produced a terrific info-graphic on the the latest European data policies. The author is a leading lawyer in the field and the content is outstanding, authoritative, and current.

The issue is how to best use the info-graphic for both SEO and general marketing purposes.

We will publish the info-grahic on our own site. But what else should we do?

(1) The info-graphic already contains the website name. Should we make this a hyperlink on our own site, with or without keyword rich text?

(2) We can certainly do handcrafted outreach to likely sites, who might republish. Should we just ask them for backlinks and hope for the best? Or should we embed?

(3) We can also send the info graphic as an Eblast to a wider list. Same questio:n Should we just ask them for backlinks and hope for the best? Or should we embed?

The site already high DA and a diversified link portfolio. There is no need for risky tactics or "Hail Mary" passes. OTOH, it seems a pity not to make the most of this.

Ideas on the above? Other thoughts?

[EGOL]

But what else should we do?

This is a bit of a rant, but I am confident that infographics are better accepted by certain types of people.  If you are offering it as publishable content to people who run carefully curated websites, they might be more receptive to an article, or an article with an infographic.

I am offered lots of articles and lots of infographics.    So far, without exception, I've found that infographics are poorly-done work sent out by linkbuilders who want me to link to their manipulative website.  I have not published one yet.  However, 20% of the articles that I receive are from enthusiastic people who have interesting ideas that they would like to share with a relevant audience.  They are not asking me to link to a landing page where they are thumping their chest and calling out like Tarzan.  Their website is often full of wonderful content.

Another thing is that publishing an infographic gives you a thin content page. The only thing that the creator gives you is an image and a link.  These might cause Panda or unnatural links problems.  On the other hand, an article gives search engines lots of text to index, those types of pages generally rank well and pull in traffic from the diversity of keywords in the article.

An infographic is like half a pair of pants.

So, I would tell the attorney that you need a full-scale article.  An article that spares none of the details and does not hold back any of his expertise.  An article will rank in the SERPs better than an infographic.  An article will be crawled and present to Google all of the juicy phrases, words and details.  Those are what you need to pull in lots of long tail search traffic.

Most infographics are thin on details.  When highly interested people view them, they go away with more questions than answers.  The real gold is in the details.  Anybody in your space who is influential and expert wants nitty-gritty details.  That's what they will talk about, point to, start conversations about.  That's why I would want the article - or at minimum, text commentary to go with and be referenced to each frame or scene in the infographic.  Lots of people will appreciate that.

All of the above was kind of a rant... but if you have a real expert, who knows what he is talking about, and creates an infographic that displays well when I shrink it to fill my website, doesn't require me to link to a spammy manipulative website, and is accompanied by a expert article that covers all of the details..... then you know that your client has brought a rare constellation into alignment.

I would be hesitant to contact influential people with "infographic" in the subject line....  They might have a bad opinion of them like I have developed.   A provocative quote by the authoritative author might hit their ear pleasantly... and a sample of the article's content might entice them to read it... and you can let them know that an infographic is available if they would like to use share it.

That's my biased two cents.  You can get more from  people at moz talking about infographics.

[EGOL]

Some additional thoughts....

If I was going to do this myself, I would put the detailed article on my own site.

Then, if I have ten top quality sites who will accept the infographic with a short article, I would write ten unique introductions that will appear above the infographics on these other websites.  And, I would write ten unique conclusions to the infographic that will also appear on these other websites.  The conclusion would be followed by an invitation to visit my site where more detailed information can be obtained.

Another way to do this, which I believe is superior, is to give the full article with infographic to the ten top-quality websites and have them implement rel=canonical back to the full article page on my site.