Building Links with Visual Content

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video…well, you get the idea. What many webmasters still don’t take into account is what a valuable resource links can be that come into your sites by way of a teaser photo or video.

Pictures are easy to get out there and disseminate on the web, and the duplicate content problem is not so much of an issue; spiders crawl the text surrounding the video and you can alter this easily for different postings. Make sure you search engine optimize all your content for better traffic, and this includes the text accompanying any pics or vids.

If my pet clothing website needs more links and publicity, I might consider taking photos of dogs or cats wearing my products and posting them in a variety of places where they will get extra visibility – an online pet show comes to mind as the perfect venue.

The surrounding text could read “clothing provided by PetStyles”, with a clickable link. Then I can sit back and watch as people link in from all kinds of places as they pass the adorable photo of a Dachshund in a turtleneck around.

Another good place could be photo contests, especially if I find one with a theme of ‘pets’ or better yet ‘pets wearing adorable outfits’. The Siamese in the baby bonnet is always good for a laugh, and how about that dashing pirate sash on the parrot?

Making sure you have keyword rich text surrounding your photos and videos will ensure that you get the appropriate traffic from these types of links. You can also get into different venues if you use your head; for example, a blog for motorcycle enthusiasts could possibly be a good place to post if your photo had a motorcycle slant.

I could whip up a little black leather vest with silver studs, add a red bandana and set my pooch up in a sidecar with surrounding text reading “Biker Dawg : Ready for Road Trip” or some such nonsense.

People eat visual aids up. They laugh at them, and share them much more readily than text alone, and this can be a powerful tool to utilize when it comes to hard core SEO.

Add information to the text around your photos and videos when you post them in directories as well: making sure your URL, meta description and H1 tags contain your optimum performance keywords is a must. You can encode your video with Meta data if you do the work yourself, and this is just one more plus for when the spiders pay a visit.

Don’t ignore visuals as a potential traffic tool for your site; these are only a few ways that you can utilize such options to increase linking and promote traffic. Once you learn how to use these items to help optimize your site, you will always have fresh content that you can disperse as needed and watch the links come pouring in!

Happy Linking!