How to use your photos in your link building strategy

Images are an essential element in online marketing. Today, on the blog, we are going to discuss how to use a very specific type of image, photographs, within our link building strategy to get quality links to our pages.

Brief introduction: Photos and other types of images for link building

The list of types of images that can be used in a link building strategy is tremendously extensive. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that they do not have to be just photographs. For example, infographics are one of the most shared types of images on social networks, as they are both attractive and informative. If you have the resources to create a spectacular design that empowers interesting data, you’re halfway there. In the same sense, creating a successful meme will ensure us a good handful of possible links, since these images are shared virally.

For this time, we are going to put aside these images that are so popular on the current internet and we are going to focus on photographs and their possibilities in the development of a link building strategy.

The photographs are original and quality content

Why focus on photos? Surely you have read and heard the following maxim a million times: “content is king” (or its English version, “content is king”). Applied to the topic that concerns us today, we can translate that phrase into two characteristics. Originality and quality. The ideal photographs for link building must be original, unique, attractive and well done.

When it comes to finding images that serve to illustrate our articles or our pages, it is common for us to find ourselves in an apparent dead end: when the photographs are of quality, we have to pay for them or perhaps they are protected by copyright; when we can use them freely, sometimes they are not exactly what we are looking for or, directly, they do not have enough quality to consider their use. How to fix this problem? Create our own original and quality photographs. They will not only serve you, but you will have a lot of people wanting to use them on their own pages.If you manage to create quality content in photographic format, you already have half the job done. Now for the links.

Share your own photos (in exchange for a link)

Imagine that you have a travel blog (perhaps you do and you don’t need to imagine it) and that you have a lot of unique photographs of places as spectacular as the streets of Istanbul, the Victoria Falls or the Daimiel Tables. Why not share it with the world… and get links from it? A few years ago, I traveled to the United States with my family. The photograph you have under these lines corresponds to the Colorado Canyon. If you want, you can use it. You just have to refer to this article with a link in return, attributing its authorship to me.

Imagine that instead of a travel blog what you have is a culinary blog, where you illustrate your original recipes with snapshots that you take with your own phone. Why not offer them to other blogs in the same niche, in exchange for them referring to your website through a link? Don’t you have a travel or gastronomy blog? Surely from these two examples you can find ideas for your own sector.

We must not forget the possibilities offered by the guest posting, also to use our own photographs. If you have an opportunity to publish as a guest author on a blog, take advantage and use an image of your own to accompany your text. Claim your authorship through a link to your website (there is no better practice than recognizing someone’s work, whether your own or someone else’s) and think that if, in addition to a spectacular article, you accompany it with a unique image, it is much more likely that you will be invited to publish with them again, increasing the possibility of getting new links.

Reactive method: tracking your photos and requesting links

Once you’ve taken a killer photo or brilliant infographic and managed to get it distributed, hopefully, virally, Keep in mind that many people can share it on their blog or website without attributing their authorship to you.. Do not be angry! We are going to suppose that it has been an oversight that we will use in our favor.

The first thing you should do to locate your photos is perform a reverse image search on google. To do this, you will need the original URL of your image. In Google Images, tap the little camera that appears on the right and paste the address. Analyze the results and locate those pages where your content has been shared without attributing authorship. Now, find the contact email or form on those pages and send them a message asking for attribution. Do it nicely; after all, they will probably listen to you and you will easily get a link.

These are just a few answers to how to use your photos in your link building strategy, but surely you can think of many more. Share them with us in the comments of this post, which we have opened to generate debate and new ideas.