Pinterest SEO Guide

by | Jan 16, 2018

Pinterest SEO Guide

Most people are familiar with talking about SEO as it relates to websites and Google searches. But the principles of SEO can also apply to non-traditional websites such as Pinterest, the project and idea sharing platform.

Pinterest is a great way to find ideas for creative projects like home decorating, clothing making and crafts. If you are a project maker, however, you can post your ideas on Pinterest to inspire other people.

But Pinterest boards don’t only live on the Pinterest website. They can also be found through Google searches by people who don’t even have a Pinterest account .That is why it is important to understand SEO best practices in relation to Pinterest if you want to promote your boards online.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest has two main functions: To show off ideas and to find ideas. If you are searching for ideas, you are probably combing through other people’s Pinterest boards. If you have ideas and crafts to share, you can create tutorials and post them on Pinterest.

Pinterest is a great way for people to explore their interests and discover new crafts and projects to try. It is also an organizational system. You can arrange all the ideas you find as “pins” and sort them to keep them organized.

The simple goal of Pinterest is to convey short bursts of information such as GIFs, videos and images in a way that is easy to organize and save. It is a “catalogue of ideas” that is meant to inspire people to go out and try crafts and DIY projects for themselves.

What is SEO? Definition and Meaning of Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a means of optimizing content such that the content and the website it is hosted on shows up prominently in Google searches.

SEO is still relevant today because the overwhelming majority of searches online are still run through Google. Google is the way people organically find information, stores, crafts, hobbies and nearly everything else they are looking for online. When it comes to Pinterest, many people may be searching Google without even thinking about Pinterest. But Pinterest boards and pins can show up as results in a Google search. So even someone who has never used Pinterest or doesn’t have an account can wind up on Pinterest through an ordinary Google search.

SEO can be a type of internet marketing when it is done well. Businesses who are smart about their SEO can dramatically increase how much website traffic they see. A portion of this traffic is likely to convert into customers and sales.

Below, we’ll see how various types of popular content on Pinterest can benefit from SEO strategies. Contact us today to see how we can help you improve your SEO on your business website.

Pinterest Crafts

Crafts are one of the top categories on Pinterest. Crafters love sharing their ideas and projects on Pinterest, and finding new inspiration. Pinterest crafts range from art projects to home decor to bath bombs.

If you are a crafter on Pinterest or run a store related to crafting you can benefit by getting your projects featured prominently on Pinterest and Google. Part of doing that is having excellent crafts that people are genuinely interested in. We can’t help you with that. But once you have started posting some of your awesome craft ideas, we can help you with branding and SEO.

Part of the trick will be creating an appropriate and compelling title. The title should have keyword rich language in it in order to get onto Google. For example, if you make candles, you will want to try to get words like “candle,” “candles,” “DIY,” “make your own” and “home decor” into the title of your project. Of course, you need to do this without spamming the title too much, otherwise you will look inauthentic.

The tags and description are places where you can put more tags and phrases. Focus on making a natural-sounding title, then put all those extra keywords into the description and tags.

Pinterest Recipes

Pinterest recipes are a little simpler. You can easily and organically put the entire name of the recipe into the title of the pin. There is less concern about spamming up the title in this situation where people actually want to see the entire name of the recipe right there in the title. If you can, distinguish your recipe from other similar ones. For example, “cake recipe” would be a pretty weak title. Even “birthday cake recipe” isn’t going to distinguish you much from the thousands of other similar pins. But something like “video game birthday cake recipe” can set you apart. You have the extra keyword of “video game” that makes your cake recipe stand out from the crowd.

It isn’t a strict SEO necessity, but when you’re working with Pinterest images are required. You’re going to have a hard time selling a recipe if people can’t get a look at the finished result. When it comes to recipes, or even arts and crafts, Pinterest users place a high value on the associated images. Often, the image is the first thing they see – only after finding an image of something that looks tasty to them will they bother reading even just the title. So make sure you have strong images to go along with your recipes on Pinterest.

Pinterest Food

Food is similar to recipes on Pinterest, but encompasses a broader array of topics. On Pinterest, the category “food” can also mean diet plans or even arts and crafts (you’d be surprised by how many people make art about food!).

If you are a fitness guru trying to promote yourself on Pinterest, you will need to understand the right keywords. Keyword research is a crucial component of what we do at Logic Inbound when working on SEO for any of our clients. Keyword research means finding the terms that resonate with your customers, the search terms they are already using to find businesses similar to your own. Then, we work to connect people who want your products and services with you to create benefits for both parties.  

Keyword research is an early step in that process. People don’t always search the way we expect them to. It’s easy to forget that you are an expert in your field and on the particulars of your business, whether you run a cake shop or a craft store. But other people who aren’t experts might search for your products and services in ways that don’t make sense to you. That’s why keyword research that analyzes how searchers are running across the internet and in various regions is crucial to targeting the right customers and honing your keyword usage to the ones that will actually work. Just as it’s bad to miss customers from not being aware of keywords, it’s also not helpful to use keywords that aren’t relevant to your customers or business.

Pinterest Home

Home is one of the most searched topics on Pinterest. Sometimes it’s home decor, but it can also be images of homes in beautiful locations, storage ideas, home decorating trends and even home sales. The home section of Pinterest is incredibly broad.

Even so, if you are an interior decorator or home designer, you can benefit from using Pinterest to promote your business. People often start a search broadly, so make sure to grab their attention early on with far-ranging keywords that can attract a broad audience.

We apply this principle to most of the SEO work we do with our clients. We believe in starting at the “top of the funnel” when it comes to searches and SEO. This means attracting the most searchers when they are just beginning their queries. While many of these people are probably just passing through, by getting a wide audience right from the start you will get more website views, more clicks and ultimately more customers.

Pinterest Search

People might find your pins through a Google search, but they could also find them through Pinterest’s own search engine that is built into the website. This type of search only returns Pinterest pins, but it’s still important to make sure your pins are at the top of that list. Today, there are so many thousands and millions of pins that there’s a ton of competition for attention when someone searches for things on Pinterest.

There are some easy ways to get your pins featured more prominently though:

  • Make a great profile: Your profile will be your URL on Pinterest as well as your public face. Make sure it truly reflects you and your business the way you want customers to see you on Pinterest.
  • Organize your boards: If someone clicks through to your profile, they’re going to be put off quickly if they can’t parse through your boards easily. Make sure your boards are optimized and organized so that customers can quickly navigate to what they want.
  • Organize the pins: Take is a level deeper and organize the pins as well This sounds like a lot of extra work – and it is – but it’s crucial for presenting a professional public face with your business.
  • Write good descriptions: As mentioned above, descriptions are where you can put SEO best practices to use. Make sure you are using descriptions as a place to layer in keywords that are meaningful to potential customers.
  • Don’t use hashtags: While hashtags are useful on many other places on the internet, such as Facebook and Twitter, they’re not appropriate for Pinterest and will just look clumsy and awkward. Avoid them altogether.
  • Post high-quality pins regularly: This is a combo deal. You can’t only post good content or only post regularly. You must do both. If you post great content but super infrequently, you won’t gather a strong following. Likewise, if you spam constantly but the quality of the content is low, no one will care. You have to put in the time and effort to make sure your content is excellent and rolls out frequently enough to capture people’s interest and keep it in the long term.
  • Understand keywords: We’ve said it before but it can’t be stressed enough how important keyword research is. Your description needs to be filled with the right keywords if you want to attract customers. Otherwise you will show up in searches by people who really aren’t interested in your business, which is a waste of time for both you and them.

Pinterest SEO Analytics

So just how do you know if your pins are performing well? You might see it play out via sales, but you can also use Pinterest’s built-in analytics program to see how pins are performing. Pinterest Analytics can do the following:

  • Help with creating profiles: With Pinterest Analytics you can see metrics about your profile that can help you create better pins and boards.
  • See website insights: You can see statistics about how people use the save button to add your pins to their profiles.
  • See platform metrics: You can find data about how people interest with your pins no matter which device they are using the view them.
  • View data on your pins’ performance: Pinterest Analytics allows you to see which of your pins is getting the most interest and pins from users so you can see what content is performing best.

Pinterest SEO Services Company

At Logic Inbound, we are a full service SEO company. Our comprehensive approach to SEO includes extensive keyword research so that we know we are tailoring our approach to the right customers for your business.

We also do research on your business so that we understand the full context of the SEO work we are performing. We want to be experts on not just SEO but on SEO for you. That requires interaction with you and your business so that we can craft an SEO strategy that is specifically suited to your business’s needs, voices and customers.

To get started improving your SEO for your Pinterest business, contact us here.  

 

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