Do you remember the times when adding an image containing a keyword in the title and a few backlinks was more than enough for a better ranking? Well, the industry is growing and the 411 Locals team is now introducing the art of image link building. You will notice a lot of similarities with the traditional link building, but there is more to that. Keep reading to see what we mean.
Pick your link targets
Just like with the regular link building practices, you need to target popular industry platforms that you really want to acquire a link form. Do your research, learn who’s writing the content, look for other valuable contacts, narrow down the top pages of those platforms/sites.
Update old images
Make sure you update all the old images. There are plenty of tools that allow you to search by industry or topic to see if you can come across anything worth of an update.
Turn your most popular content into images
This is a good practice and a great opportunity in doing that for new statistic reports and data. Just find out your most valuable content and transform it into pictures. This also works great for discount and licensed badges.
Research, research & research
You really want to evaluate just about anything around images. Find out the top results of a keyword or a phrase, read the content carefully, and then get on with your content. Understanding if your pictures have a good search volume is important and you really need to know where you are heading to.
Another great thing to do is evaluate keywords with link intent. Basically find keywords that lead to statistics and facts, something that has link intent baked in the search query. People are searching for references, something to link to – take advantage out of it!
Optimization Process
Before the actual optimization process, you really need to make sure you are providing value. Think of something that will make people bookmark your page. Printouts and curated images always work as well. Now, let’s talk about the actual optimization.
- Title – make sure the title contains your keyword.
- Alt Text – provide a bit more detailed information. Not too long, not too short.
- Compression – pagespeed is always a priority, and you shouldn’t allow large pictures to slow the loading speed down.
- SRCSET – if you are into CSS you will know what this is about. Basically, you can set up if and how big a given image will show for different browser sizes.
- Promotion – share your image on popular platforms, ask your friends to share, it always works!
- Monitoring – as with everything else, you need to monitor and analyze if you are doing well. Reverse image searching with Google works out just great for that. Feel free to try out different tools as well.
We, at 411 Locals, found out these work the best. Just keep the loop and enjoy the results. See you next time!