47% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from Pinterest. (source)
Pinterest has been used for marketing since day one, basically. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this as a marketer or business owner? It opens up so many more opportunities for your website to be visible to new consumers, and potentially influence consumers in your niche.
In this segment, we want to talk about how you can use Pinterest specifically to boost your traffic and SEO. Utilizing these tips will help increase the amount of natural links pointing to your site and help your business Pinterest boards get more visibility.
Think of Pinterest as a Search Engine
With 70 million users, Pinterest is thought of as another search engine for those looking for inspiration and ideas. Don’t be blind to the opportunities that this can potentially bring your business. Users would rather search on Pinterest’s search engine for items such as: DIY, recipes, travel, etc. versus Google because they are looking for that visual inspiration. And what better catches someone’s eye than visuals? See for yourself:
Searching “places to see in Italy” on Google:
You see there’s a lot going on here and you get a little bit of everything. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but check out what you get from Pinterest.
Searching “places to see in Italy” on Pinterest:
It really gives you that beautiful, inspiring photos that are attention grabbing.
Needless to say, users are using Pinterest to search for all kinds of inspiration and ideas, not just travel and recipes. Users trust Pinterest as a source for when they are purchasing products and services. When you think of Pinterest as another search engine to optimize for, it can really enhance your SEO because repins are qualified as natural backlinks to your website.
Make Sure Your Pinterest Business Profile is Optimized for Search Engines
Optimization is important because it lets search engines, such as Google, know that you’re business is directly verified with your Pinterest account. If your Pinterest account takes off, you want it to show in the search results when people search for your brand and related brand keywords, right?
Make Sure Your Profile is Verified
First thing you need to do to optimize is you need to make sure your website is verified with your Pinterest profile. Here’s the steps on how to verify your business account and website.
Make Your Boards Visible to Search Engines
There’s a setting where you can either hide or make your Pinterest boards visible in the search results. You want to make sure your boards are visible. This will open up opportunities for your boards to show up in the search results when they are related to specific key phrases in your niche. You can find this in the settings and make sure it’s set to No.
Optimized About Description
Just like most other social networks, Pinterest allows you to have a small description of what your business is what who you are. This has a 200 character limit, so make sure you utilize this section to include focus keywords that represent your business. Also, make sure this information is always accurate.
Create Boards & Pins That Are Keyword-Friendly
Board names, pins, and board descriptions should contain focus keywords. Don’t stuff your keywords if it doesn’t make sense that would look spammy. In my opinion, the more simple, the better. People don’t read, they’re looking for keywords on Pinterest. Make it easy for end user to scan and find what they want.
Board Names Contain Focus Keywords
When creating Pinterest boards, you want to make sure the names are closely related to focus keywords you are also targeting for SEO. You don’t want to limit your boards to ONLY keywords, I’m just saying you need to include your keywords within your boards along with other related topics. Check out Mashable’s Pinterest:
They keep it straight to the point with the names of their boards, which are also focus keywords related to what they represent as a brand.
Board Descriptions Contain Focus Keywords
Each board allows you space for a brief description of what that board includes. In your description, include your focus keyword for that board in the description. Think like your consumer and how they would be searching for items or services related to your board. Include that in your description.
Pins Should Contain Keywords and Hashtags
Each individual pin should represent something related to your business. This opens up opportunity to use your keywords in the descriptions. Especially when directly pinning your blog posts and other web pages, you want to make sure you utilize the description to have focus keywords. Don’t neglect the use of hashtags either, this will give your pin more opportunities to show in the Pinterest search results when users are searching that keyword.
Pin Your Website Content
This may seem pretty obvious, but so many forget to pin their blog posts and landing pages. Pinterest is full of blog posts and people are using it as a resource to gain knowledge and educate themselves in different niches.
Every time a blog post is written on your site, it should include an image that directly represents what the blog is about, then pinned on your company’s Pinterest board that’s related to the post. This opens up so many opportunities for your content to rank high and here’s why:
Repins Are Considered Natural Nofollow Backlinks
This is a great technique for SEO because again, repins = backlinks. Even though these backlinks are nofollow, Google will still consider them a natural backlink which is needed in your backlink profile. Every time your pin is repined onto other boards, it creates a separate link. Each link will point to your website because your content is the source.
Increased Social Signals
Another SEO benefit, is the fact that this will increase the amount of social signals for your content. Since search engines are using social signals to rank content higher, you want to make sure your content is maximizing this opportunity for going viral. The more repins and other social shares your content has, the higher it will show in search results because search engines feel that your content serves value to others.
Utilize Pinterest Analytics
If you have a verified website on your Pinterest account, you will have access to view analytics. You want to closely watch these metrics to make adjustments to current content marketing efforts. The metrics Pinterest supplies you with are: pins from your website, repins from your website, website visitors, reach, most repined content, and most clicked content.
To analyze this data, look at the content that’s providing the most clicks to your website and most repins. This is a strong indication that this type of content, is providing your website with the most visibility. Customize your content marketing strategy to include more content that’s related. Track it. Did it provide you with the same range of results? If so, it should be included in your on-going content marketing campaign.
Closing Thoughts
Now that you understand what it takes to master Pinterest for SEO, start fulfilling! Pinterest and the content marketing side of SEO go hand in hand and should not be neglected in your overall SEO strategy. Follow this rule: Create, Test, Measure. Create your content, test it by sharing it on Pinterest, and measure the results with Pinterest analytics.
Do you need expert SEO advice? We can help. We provide results driven solutions for marketing and SEO. Give us a call today to speak with one of our specialists: (800) 871.4130
