Backlink building is one of the most popular SEO tactics to increase traffic and SERP rankings. However, there are other methods to drive traffic and increase website exposure which will work as efficiently. One such way is using images to build backlinks and create new points of connection. Doing this can drive more traffic to your website, increase your SERP rankings and ultimately draw in a newer audience. Here are four ways to use images to build links to your site.

1. Make Your Website the Go-To Place for Stock Photos for Your Business Niche

The social media of today’s world is a model of sharing.  Sometimes it may seem to be extreme, but when you consider the popularity of the sites, it is apparently working.   So, having stock photos at your disposal gives you the opportunity to let others use them in exchange for linking back to your site.

Some ways to accomplish being the go-to place for photos:
• Prepare a file or index of keywords for the subject of your site and check for images related to them by using a Google search to check the availability of quality images.
• Generate illustrations that well represent the keywords as well as the themes related to them.
• Use photographs that you own.
• Create infographics that are charts and diagrams that express information or data.
• Use your photo or infographics as the theme of your blog and make it convenient for others to use the image with acknowledgment back to you. There are “embed code generator” tools available the assist you in creating codes that are embedded.
• Dedicate a page on your website for storing all of your photos with the embed codes.  Give the page a name that uses keywords and phrases that bloggers will use as they seek out images.  Some commonly used phrases would be, “free stock photos,” creative commons images,” or “public domain images.” Of course, there could be a plethora of others specifically related to the topic. It is important that one include, “image alts,” and “image labels” as part of the wording for the keywords that are more specific to the topic.

2. Pinpoint Keywords for Illustrations that Bloggers Will Seel

It is essential to explicitly find keywords that not just used by your consumers, but also words that are used by others in your industry, as well as bloggers and related websites that are seeking images to which they can establish a link.

Begin by searching out some outstanding websites in your topic and identifying recurring templates or patterns. One way to accomplish this is to use an SEO spider such as Screaming Frog to crawl a high ranking website similar to yours.

If the web developer has not displayed images with external links, you will find that they have hosted them on their website, and there is no simple way to find the credit links of the images.  However, you can use an SEO spider to crawl the site looking for the internal images. You won’t be able to determine whether they are from external or internal sources, you will be able to tell the themes and topics they tend to utilize.

3. Make Contact with Others Who Are Using Your Images

If you are creating original graphics and using them on your website, you should be getting some exposure in Google Images.  It is possible that others are utilizing your material and not linking back to you.

Take advantage of the situation by making contact with the users of your material and respectfully request reciprocation by crediting you with a link.

4. Establish an Acceptable Graphic-to-Word Ratio

A recent study conducted on this topic revealed that the blog posts that shared the most on social media contain one graphic for approximately 75-100 words.  Since we know that there is a substantial relationship between sharing on social media and receipt of earned inbound links, it is vital to get the right combination of graphics and words to create a “smart link-earning strategy.”

As with any statistics, there always exceptions. Perhaps this isn’t the case in your industry, or your fan base is more interested in text.

Ultimately, it is essential to understand that building links doesn’t have to be all text and nothing else. In fact, people like to click on pictures a lot more than they do basic text links. Using this information, you should easily be able to drive more traffic to your website and create useful, trustworthy links to your site. Sometimes it is better to look at what people aren’t doing than it is to stick with what everyone else is doing.