How Visualization Can Impact Your SEO
Data visualization is a powerful tool of the mind that can come up with a story behind a row of digits. How does this reflect on the world of SEO? When used as a part of a content marketing strategy, choosing the right data visualization improves the potential and reach of the content that we create. This is what makes SEO essential.
In the world of content marketing, we want to be certain that our data visualizations are SEO-worthy, and helping the content reach the heights that it should. Furthermore, we want to be certain that our visuals don’t have a detrimental effect on how prominent our pages are. So, how great is the impact of data visualizations on SEO?
What is the goal of SEO?
We need to understand what the goal of SEO is to begin with. It’s not some long-lasting prank by people at Google with the aim to play at innocent webmasters. It’s in fact, a genuine attempt to provide the users with what they want. The whole purpose of search engine optimisation is that the information is directly fed to the user when they look for it. And this means that it’s pure information, without any spam, clickbait headlines, and poorly researched content. In other words, quality is the key.
When looked at from this perspective, we can tell that data visualization certainly does have an effect on our website’s SEO. It is, however, of the essence that our visualizations are relevant, that they have genuine value, and provide the user with valuable insight. With our upright understanding of data visualization, it goes without saying that this is our goal – amazing visuals that provide a valuable narrative to our users. Aim for quality, and at the same time, stay on the good side of Google’s search engine algorithms.
Authority is of an essence
Long gone are the times when SEO was just a practice that implied keywords and meta-data. It’s continually evolving, and including a wide variety of factors that search engines take into account. One of them is authority. For good performance, content simply needs to have authority. In other words, the website needs to be a place that is trusted and respected. In truth, this is more measurable than you may originally think.
What search engines do is that they compile data such as authorial associations with other powerful websites, social media buzz, and inbound links, in order to tell what the authority of a website is. Link building might have got a bad rep thanks to some dirty tricks in the past, but organic link building, which includes links from respected sources are still an important part of SEO efforts. What you need to do is create amazing visuals, implement embedded codes which make them linkable via other websites, and include social media share buttons, in order to reach the desired authority.
Content that varies
Another important factor to watch out for is the bounce rate. If someone comes to your website, and leaves quickly, without going through your content any further, then one of three things are going on:
- Your content isn’t good enough
- Your website is hard to navigate
- You are ranking for irrelevant search terms
Your ranking is certainly going to suffer if any of these is the case. That is why you need to pay close attention to the bounce rate.
According to the advice of GWM, renowned SEO experts, There should be little problem if your sitemap is well designed and you are offering genuine information to your users. This is one of the essential aspects of good data visualization – a good visual entices the user, holds their attention, and draws them into the narrative. You need to have a content that varies so that your bounce rate remains low. It just shows how important visualization is for SEO.
The power of infographics
You might be one of those people who post an infographic on their site and then feel anxious about it, thinking that they should have gone for strong textual content. But the truth is that infographics are a powerful asset. We have already ascertained that good visualization matters a lot. Still, in order to make sure that you don’t miss out on keyword and indexing, there are some things that you can do:
- Implement meta data into your page
- Place relevant keywords in the URL
- Attach alt text to the infographic
All these things provide Google’s spiders with what they need to recognize how valuable your content is, and index it properly. Throw in a few contextual paragraphs to make the data clearer too.
In summation
If the question is whether data visualization is essential to your SEO game, then the answer is a resounding “yes”. If your visuals are strong and enticing, they are bound to have an effect on your SEO efforts.
