Planning and executing a great SEO strategy is critical to any digital marketing campaign.
However, this work requires data to tell a story that resonates with our clients.
But poring over large numbers can be tedious and exhausting. This is where data visualization comes in.
Data visualization takes your data (numbers) and places it in a visual context, such as a chart, graph or map. It also helps create data stories to communicate insights clearly.
Without visualizing data to extract insights, trends and patterns, the chances of getting support from other departments plummet. The best data visualizations break down complex data sets to present concise and clear information.
Read on for more information on data visualization, why it’s important, and how to use it for your SEO campaign.
Types of Data Visualizations
For many years, the easiest way to build data visualizations was to add information to an Excel spreadsheet and turn it into a chart, graph, or table.
While still valid, the method has undergone several updates over the past few decades.
Today’s options allow users to create detailed data visualizationInclude:
- bullet chart.
- Animated infographics.
- radial tree.
- Interactive chart.
- bubble cloud.
- data art.
- Heatmap.
- Dashboard.
- information chart.
There are a lot more.
Above is an example of a data visualization looking at a website crawling hierarchy.
How to choose the right visualization type
Choose the right type of visualization to communicate your message effectively.
before the start:
- Identify the key message you want to convey and summarize it in short sentences.
- Find the data you need to convey the message and consider simplifying it to make the message clearer.
- Consider the types of data you have, such as comparisons, trends, patterns, distributions, and geographic data.
- Consider what type of presentation is simple and will grab the audience’s attention.
- Like all web content, your visualizations should be accessible to all users.
- Readers can understand and interpret the data by considering the information contained in the visualization.
The importance of data visualization
Modern companies are generating massive amounts of data through machine learning.
While great, we have to sort, filter, and interpret information; so it makes sense for stakeholders and business owners.
Use data visualization to easily and quickly identify patterns and trends in your SEO strategy. Visualization makes communicating insights easy and fast. Making data visualization a habit in your business has many benefits.
Create a robust value proposition
It’s easy to express to stakeholders or customers how and why your product is good, but it’s not easy for the same person to understand what you’re talking about.
Visualizing your data is an excellent strategy for adding support for ideas. This strategy also contributes to the success of the business by converting website traffic into sales.
Enable faster and easier communication
All businesses want to advertise their products to the public. But few people take the time to read a lot of words.
Instead, reduce the message to easy-to-present visual content.
More people will focus on visual data than text. Visuals help capture and convince potential clients, clients and investors.
So, this helps drive traffic to your business and thus be successful.
Analyze patterns and trends
Business industries depend on specific patterns and trends. It is your responsibility to make decisions based on market patterns and trends.
Visualizing data summarizes the entire process of identifying current and future opportunities.
The data also helps make business owners prudent decision makers in line with market conditions.
Motivate team members
Business success depends on the effort that team members put into the process. Every member of your organization will be happy when your business has grown significantly.
Data visualization can help identify the initial location and direction of a business.
This process can motivate team members to work harder and take your business to greater heights.
Improve customer experience
Visualizing data plays a key role in improving customer experience. This data makes it easy to ensure that customers are satisfied and their requests are covered.
Data visualization makes it easy to shape, filter, and separate data on demand.
Data Visualization and Search Engine Optimization
SEO data significantly affects search volume for keywords that help your website rank.
Keyword search volume is the number of times visitors searched for a specific keyword within a specific time frame. The term also refers to the number of people who are interested in a keyword.
SEO data is also crucial for organic traffic in different online marketing aspects. The latter is the number of people visiting your website.
Page speed is another key SEO practice that determines the reliability of your website.
Your online visitors don’t have time to wait for the page to load. Also, page speed affects your position on search engines.
Use data visualization to improve SEO
Visualizing data has a major impact on interpretation. Visualizations help represent search volume for different sets of keywords you want to use in your next campaign.
Visualizers can also provide detailed analysis of your website from an SEO perspective.
Presenting your content in the form of charts and graphs helps your audience grasp every aspect of your SEO campaign.
Improve SEO capabilities
Data visualization can help improve your SEO strategy in a number of ways. Here are the most effective areas in visualization to help boost SEO.
competition analysis
Developing your SEO strategy also means evaluating what your competitors are doing. This analysis helps you understand what needs to be done and areas for improvement.
Visualization can help you:
- Determine the social media strength of your competitors.
- Find the key competitors for a keyword.
- Analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles.
Screenshot by author, August 2022
Above is an example of using a bar chart to visualize the keyword difficulty distribution for the current keyword ranking.
Backlink Analysis
Visualization can also help you create effective link building campaigns.
Some items to analyze include:
- Backlink geolocation.
- Quality of backlinks.
- Distribution of backlink anchor text.
wrap it up
Data visualization is an important contribution to the success of any business practice.
What makes visualization critical is its ability to communicate complex data sets visually.
Any method that can condense large amounts of data into infographics, charts, and graphs is a recipe for success.
Obviously, adding visualization to your digital marketing operations can also boost your SEO capabilities.
Also, visualizing your data plays an important role in business development and SEO decisions.
More resources:
Featured image: ra2 studio/Shutterstock