When it comes to link building tactics, one of the first ones that come to mind is guest blogging but what if you could do it with a twist? Learn what’s guestographics and how it helps to attract traffic and get backlinks.

With visual content marketing on the rise, it’s no surprise that visuals speak louder than words. People are increasingly using original graphics to communicate their message. One such type of visual that has become hugely popular is infographics. They’re appealing, easy to digest, shareable and beneficial for SEO, giving you all the reasons to include them in your content marketing and link building strategies.

Now they are also presented with guestographics. Guestographics are infographics that are pitched to other websites as guest posts with an objective to earn backlinks. Let’s take a look at how you can use guestographics to attract traffic and earn links in six simple steps.

Find the right topic

Creating a share-worthy infographic begins with a great topic. It needs to be fresh, focused and relevant to your target audience.

Start with thinking about your target audience’s interests, needs, pain points, and challenges. Browse through the comments on your blog and social media platforms to identify patterns. Alternatively, you can also send your readers a questionnaire to understand where their interests lie.

Once you’ve narrowed down on the broad topics, do keyword research to assess what people are searching for in your niche. You can also get ideas by leveraging Google’s autocomplete feature and looking at the ‘People also ask’ section on the search results page.

The topic you choose needs to give you enough scope to create an informative infographic that resonates with your target audience.

For the sake of this example, let’s say you decide to create an infographic on ‘how to deal with exam stress in college’.

Create an engaging infographic

The first step is to work on the outline of your infographics. It needs to have an attention-grabbing headline and a logical flow that conveys the message seamlessly.

Keep the text minimal and avoid cramming up long sentences. The key is to keep it simple and focus on one topic.

Once the content is finalized, you can use an infographic maker to create the infographic. From the design and layout to the graphics, colors, and typography, all the elements need to support your storytelling and engage the reader.

Here’s an example of an infographic we at Venngage created, in collaboration with SurveyMonkey to present a research study on the impact of logo designs on brand trust.

Source: Venngage

We created the infographic for them to publish, free of charge. In return, we earned mentions and links to our website within the body copy.

Find websites and influencers in your niche

The infographic is published on your website. Now you move to the stage of finding websites and influencers in your niche that speak to a similar target audience. You can use a tool such as Buzzsumo to identify prospects to pitch to.

In the case of our example on ‘how to deal with exam stress in college’, as your target audience is college students, you can probably look for motivational, education and productivity blogs who have written about the same topic on their website so it gets easier for them to share it on their page.

Send a personalized pitch

Outreach emails are tricky and not everyone gets it right. You want them to consider your offer without being too pushy. The first email needs to be about assessing the editor or influencer’s interest in your infographic. Personalize the pitch email by referring to a recent post they published or praising their content, in general. You can then go on to mention the infographic you created and ask if they’d be willing to take a look.

Here’s the example what your first pitch email could look like:

Hi [name of editor/website owner],

I noticed that you’ve written an article on dealing with exam stress. Interestingly, I’ve worked on an infographic that I believe would be a great addition to your piece. It consists of some interesting data and tips that would be of interest to your readers.

Let me know if you want to check it out.

Cheers.

You need to sell your infographic – tell them why would it be beneficial for their readers without being too pushy.

Offer additional and unique value

Of all the people you write to, there will be a few who will respond positively. Now how do you lure them to accept the offer? You offer something additional that would be unique to their website.

You can offer to write an introduction for the infographic and strategically include a link to your website. If your guestographic has been accepted by a couple of websites, make sure you write original and unique introductions tailor-made to each of their website and target audience.

Ultimately, the website gets an infographic with a unique introduction (free of cost) and you get a link to your website. That’s a win-win situation.

Here’s a success story of Perrin using guestographics to earn backlinks and attract traffic. His infographic ‘22 Ways Dogs Make Humans Healthier’ was published by several lifestyle and pet websites, resulting in a 963% increase in organic traffic in just 6 weeks.

So, the next time you’re planning a link building strategy, go beyond finding guest posting sites and give guestographics a shot.

Considering how popular infographics are, they’re sure to strengthen your link building efforts and help you attract quality, relevant traffic to your website.

About the author: this is the guest post by Simki Dutta, a content marketer at Venngage, a free infographic maker and design platform. 

Title image from Abstract Pack on Ouch, the library of free vectors

Read more about types of infographics, check the top content marketing trends and SMM trends this year, and try free Vector Creator to make the custom illustrations for infographics, slides, and articles