The Pinterest SEO Guide for Businesses

If we had to choose one superstar social media channel right now, it would be Pinterest. Pinterest has grown from its little itty-bitty niche site for gathering crafting and event planning ideas to becoming the biggest referral and content site to date. As much attention has it’s gathered over the last few years, it has gathered just as much attention as a source to take search engine rankings to new heights.

What’s so great about Pinterest for SEO?

• It ranks high and is constantly being crawled by search engines, including Bing, which integrated itself with the social media site earlier this year.
• Every image or video pinned to a board in Pinterest links back to its original source. And these backlinks that can provide valuable referral traffic to your website.
• Pinterest is growing at a higher rate than any other social media site and has attracted over 70 million users as of June 2013 and presents a huge opportunity for businesses in every industry to get noticed.

If you’re wondering how your business can get noticed, have a look below. With your best Pinterest at heart, we have your quick guide of SEO-friendly strategies that can help your website rank higher and drive traffic to your site.

Let’s start with that Pinterest Profile.

• Your Pinterest SEO starts with your profile URL. Keep it simple, if your company name is already taken or is too long, Hubspot suggests choosing a memorable, easy-to-spell, related keyword.

• Next is your About Me section. You have 200 characters to talk about your business, make sure you are including relevant keywords (but try not to go overboard). It’s important to put something in this section than to not put anything at all.

• Local business? Great! You can enter your location in the place on your profile. You can even use some of those 200 characters in the About Me section to include some local keywords.

• Have you verified your profile yet? Pinterest verification can help confirm that you are the owner of your website and Pinterest profile. When you verify, your website address shows up on your Pinterest profile, which can draw attention and boost website traffic.

• BONUS: This is probably the biggest mistake for businesses and can keep them from attaining great SEO. Under the profile settings, there is an option to hide boards from search engines. Make sure this is turned off (gray) in order to help search engines and visitors find you.

Pinterest Boards

• Pinterest provides you with basic board names when you sign up which you can certainly use, but we recommend creating your own. Use keywords relevant to your company or industry and try to create a board that’s one-of-a-kind.

• Each board has 500 characters for descriptions where you can write keyword-rich goodness. Consider topics of interest as a starting point and ask yourself what your customers would search for.

• Place your interesting boards “above the fold”. This is the top half of the page that viewers first see before scrolling down.

• Don’t forget to add categories, which help you organize posts, boost search engine optimization, and enhance user experience. Once your boards are categorized, the pins in the boards will have the opportunity to show up in those category changes, increasing the chance they’ll be seen by users.

Pinterest Pins

• Even though Pinterest gives users 500 characters to describe a pin, most people don’t utilize this, which is a shame. Using long-tail keyword descriptions and hashtags can help you rank better in Pinterest and improve your general SEO.

• As a high authority site to Google and Bing, Pinterest can help you achieve significant SEO improvements for your keywords, just be sure to don’t overdo it. The ideal caption length for Pinterest is between 100-200 characters.

• Don’t forget to optimize images! Search engines not only crawl text, they crawl images as well. Get into the habit of naming photos, images and video using a file name that are descriptive and keyword- rich with your business name.

Website & Social Media

• Make sure that your website pages have links to your Pinterest and social signals. These are those, “like,” “tweet,” and “pin it” buttons you see on a site, profile, or blog. These help increase your social engagement which can give you better SEO.

• Last, but not least, connect your other social profiles (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) to your Pinterest account and don’t be afraid to cross-pollinate (posting a YouTube video, blog post, Slideshare gallery on boards). This will help you integrate your marketing, reach a broader audience, and boost social engagement.

There you have it! These are our favorite tips that we think can greatly improve your search engine rankings, drive traffic to your website, and enhance your overall online engagement.

Have you implemented any of these Pinterest SEO tips yet? Let us know if you’re seeing results! 

About Small Screen Producer

Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.