Dive summary:
- Infographics are getting increased scrutiny from the SEO community, and Google has said they may need to change the way they deal with them.
- Often the creators of infographics conduct minimal fact checking and lack sources, and for those on their phone, infographics can be difficult to read.
- There are two more issues: Search engines can't read images as well as text, and your high quality content is hosted on another site as opposed to your own. The latter issue may be rationalized when generating linkbacks is more important than driving traffic to your site.
- Make sure that infographics aren't your content strategy, but rather are a piece of content you use strategically.
From the article:
Infographics have been a bit of a hot topic in SEO recently. Matt Cutts said that Google could one day put them under the spotlight, Branded3’s Director of Search, Patrick Altoft, said that they may have 12 months until they become ‘grey hat’, while a recent survey suggested that they are the fastest-growing content marketing strategy in SEO.
There is concern among the SEO community around the phenomenon of the infographic, and it stems primarily from the fact that infographics are making bloggers unwittingly endorse sites that they – nor their readerships – have any interest in, which is a pretty unsavoury way to generate links.