Pinterest For Marketing & SEO

The majority of Pinterest users use the platform to buy stuff. That alone makes it a valuable marketing channel worth pursuing.

The fact that it hasn’t been saturated in the same manner as Facebook and Instagram makes it even more interesting.

A Short Primer On Pinterest

Although many people refer to Pinterest as a social media platform, it’s much more like a visual search engine.

Over100 million active users routinely browse and search for stuff on Pinterest.

Even more interesting is that93 percent of those people use Pinterest to plan or make purchases. It’s no surprise that1 million businesses have signed up for Pinterest; a number that continues to increase daily.

Spending time on Pinterest marketing makes even more sense when you consider that pins can show up in Google search results. This, combined with the way people search on Pinterest itself, opens up some interesting opportunities for SEO optimization.

Optimize Your Pinterest Presence

Optimizing your presence on Pinterest involves three major tactics, optimizing your profile, optimizing your boards and optimizing your pins. But before you do anything make sure you have a Pinterest business account.

Get A Business Account

access to
Pinterest
analytics requires
a business accountThe major benefit to having a Pinterest account for business is access to Pinterest analytics. You can either open up a new account or convert your existing personal Pinterest account to one for business.

Next, confirm your website, so that your profile picture gets added to any pin that comes from your website. Plus you’ll be able to see what people are saving from your website, within Pinterest Analytics.

Optimizing Your Profile

Every Pinterest profile has six fields to work with; the first being your business name. There’s not a lot of room to play here, after all your business name is what it is. But you may be able to squeeze in a keyword at the end like I did with my account; “Stephen Jeske Growth Marketer”

Your picture should be square and either in jpeg or png format with a dimension of 165px X 165px. You can crop the picture when loading to Pinterest, just make sure to meet these minimum dimensions for best results.

Your username will typically be related to your business name, so there’s not much to optimize.

The About you field offer the greatest opportunity for optimizing your profile. There’s lots of room to create a keyword rich description that’s concise and readable. DON’T stuff it with keywords and DO include a call-to-action.

The location field is quite flexible. Local business can use it to indicate their city and country, while nation-wide businesses can just put their country name in this field.

The last field is website. If you haven’t yet filled this in, and confirmed it, now is the time to do so.

One last item on your profile optimization list is board placement. This only becomes an issue when you have a large number of boards. At this point you want to make sure your most popular boards are up at the top “above the fold” so that visitors don’t have to scroll down to find them. You can just drag and drop the boards around into any order you see fit.

Optimizing Your Boards

Like your profile, each board has six fields that need attention; the first is Name. Ideally, you should incorporate a keyword into this field to increase your chance of turning up in a search. Next is the Description field which should be approached in the same manner as that in your profile.

The Category field has 33 possibilities from which to choose. Although you can always change this later, it’s best to spend the effort getting right the first time. Try to avoid choosing “Other” if possible, as it’s the least descriptive of all choices.

Next up is the Cover field. Although you should never judge a board by its cover, many people do. So choose the best looking pin on your board for this very important position. Consider changing this out on a routine basis to keep things looking fresh.

Secret is the fifth field which you can toggle on or off. Secret boards cannot be seen by anyone but yourself and are useful for doing things like competitive research.

Collaborators is the field used to invite additional people to contribute to your board. Group boards can be a useful marketing tactic for customer research and thought leadership, two tactics we’ll discuss in the next section.

Optimizing Your Pins

Pins have four data fields, three of which have potential for optimizing.

Board is the first field and it’s where you can select which of your boards to place your pin. Each board should have a theme with individual pins that strongly support the subject. Not only is it good for SEO, it provides the best user experience.

Like all descriptive fields in Pinterest, the Description field this is your time to shine through the skilful incorporation of keywords in a readable form.

Where appropriate you can also fill in the name and city of your pin. These types of pins have a map where you can find the pin in the real world.

Pinterest Marketing Tasks For Your Routine

The optimization tactics covered so far need to be incorporated into regular practice as part of a routine. Here are seven marketing activities you should perform on a regular basis.

Join Or Start A Group Board

Group boards are those where others have been invited to contribute.

You can use group boards for your customers to either establish social proof or perform customer research. A social proof board could be created to invite people to show off how they use your product.

A customer research board can be used to invite customers to provide input on future or current products.

Group boards can also be used to establish thought leadership primarily among your industry peers. Starting such a board is ideal if one does not already exist, since it gives you the opportunity to take the lead.PinGroupie is a great place to find out what Pinterest boards currently exist.

Pin On A Schedule

Most businesses typically find they get the best results by pinning four to five times a day.

Although it may be efficient to post publish these pins all at once, it’s not very effective.

First it crowds you audience’s stream, resulting in a poor user experience; some may even call it spamming.

Second, you may not be pinning when the majority of your audience is online and available.

It’s best to use a scheduler to ensure your pins are published on a regular basis while providing maximum exposure. (Check out these 10 Essential Pinterest Tools to Drive Brand Engagement)

Update Your Social Sharing Button

Actually this is something you only need to do once, just make sure it gets done.

Not everyone uses the Pinterest “Save” browser plugin, so it makes sense to update your social sharing button to also include Pinterest.

Most of the sharing plugins include Pinterest as an option; you just need to go in and select that alternative.

Remember Your Alt Text

Here’s why it’s important to fill in the alternative text field when uploading images for your WordPress blog post.

Pinterest’s browser plugin grabs that information and puts it into the description of the pin when someone saves it from your site.

Make sure that each image in your post has a descriptive entry in the alternative text field. This is especially important if you have the habit of naming pictures PostTitle1, PostTitle2, etc. Many pinners don’t take the time to update the description field when saving their pins.

Build Relationships With Key Influencers

Since a lot of Pinterest users pin and repin stuff without changing the description, this provides a unique opportunity to build relationships.

Make it part of your routine to pin or repin content from important influencers in your niche.

Make sure to incorporate an insightful comment and over time this practice will gain you some positive notoriety. Currently few people do this, giving you a greater chance to stand out from the crowd.

Take Advantage Of Rich Pins

Rich pins show metadata from marked up pages on your website.

There are 6 types of Rich Pins, each with a specific purpose:

1. app
   
2. article
   
3. movie
   
4. place
   
5. product
   
6. recipe

rich pins support open graph and schema markupFor example, app pins let users to download your app without leaving Pinterest while product pins include availability, real-time pricing and where to buy.

It takes some effort to get things set up at first, but gives you a significant advantage over competitors who don’t use them. Here’s how to set up Rich Pins.

Monitor Pinterest Analytics

There’s an old adage that says “You can’t change what you don’t measure.”

Regular monitoring of your Pinterest analytics helps you to understand what content resonates best with your audience.

The graphs are particularly useful for seeing trends as they establish over time. Plus, you’ll gain insight into where your audience is coming from; where they live, the language they speak and their gender.

Hand-Picked Related Articles:

• Six Ways To Use Pinterest As Part Of Your Online Marketing Plan
  
• 5 Useful Pinterest Analytics Tools
  
• Pinterest Tools For Marketers And Social Media Managers

^{* Adapted images: Public Domain, pixabay.com via getstencil.com}