Pinterest SEO Tips For High Traffic Success - Semalt Expert
If you've never considered creating a presence for your business on Pinterest, now is the time to do so. This article will be showing you how you can optimize your Pinterest profile, increase your engagement, and drive more traffic to your website.
Using Pinterest for your Website's SEO
Pinterest has proven to be a powerful tool for SEO. However, it remains one of the most underrated platforms used in generating traffic for bloggers and businesses alike. Although it is often associated with recipe articles, DIY posts, and travel blogs, Pinterest covers a wide range of topics and can serve as a significant contributor to the traffic your website receives.
Pinterest currently has a record of over 442 million active users every month. Currently, these users present an untapped opportunity for business owners as well as SEO companies looking to boost their traffic numbers.
Serving as a refreshing alternative to other popular traffic sources such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, Pinterest provides sufficient space for creativity and writing. Pinterest prides itself on being a unique platform where its members (Pinners) can discover new ideas, businesses, and blogs. In this guide, we will be showing you some tried and proven Pinterest SEO tips as well as some future-oriented moves you can make to help you benefit the most from this dynamic system.
What is Pinterest SEO?
Pinterest SEO refers to optimizing your Pinterest profile and website in order to generate more traffic from Pinterest. This process can be either organic or paid methods.
There are several ways in which Pinterest SEO differs from google SEO. However, the main difference is how Pinterest and Google identify target keywords and how they optimize a profile. Another main difference is that the ranking factors on Pinterest are more hinged on engagement metrics and social shares, unlike Google, which depends more on backlinks and technical SEO.
In the end, every other ranking element naturally falls into place as a byproduct of the great content featured on your Pinterest profile. Now that we've established the basics let's get started with tips for optimizing your Pinterest profile.
Get started with the basics
Before we go into more intricate details, it is wise to do some housekeeping first. Before you start optimizing your Pinterest account for SEO, here are some aspects you must put in place:
- Create a business account
You cannot optimize your Pinterest account when you do not have a Pinterest account. Logically, your first step will be to create a Pinterest business account. For users who already have a personal account, you can simply convert that into a business account. Whatever works best for you. Once you have a Pinterest business account, you will have access to Pinterest Analytics and Pinterest Ads Manager.
- Use an SEO friendly Username
Having a favorable name goes a long way. Your username will be included in your profile URL, so ensure you consider your audience when choosing your username.
- Optimize your profile
Provide relevant and interesting details all the way. Fill in the "about you" section with the relevant details as well as a high-resolution company logo. You must fill out this section appropriately to assist your audience in locating and saving your Pins. You should also use relevant keywords in this section.
- Create at least one board
As you're getting started, you will need at least one board. You will have to consider the nature of your business and the type of content you will be posting as you decide the name you give your board.
Prepare your website
Pinterest is just like many other platforms. It allows you to take data or content from your website to design a more targeted Pinterest campaign. The primary objective of your Pinterest account is to send people to your website. Therefore, your Pinterest account and your website must be linked.
In doing this, there are a few but fundamental steps to follow.
Add the Pinterest tag
The Pinterest tag is an essential part of setting up an organic or paid Pinterest campaign. Essentially, Pinterest's tag is a small piece of Javascript which will allow you to:
- Set up conversion events on your website
- Categorize your audience
- Report reliability on your profile's performance
Add the save button
With a short piece of HTML code, you can increase the reach of your campaigns beyond Pinterest. Once you've installed this feature, users will be able to save images on your site or app to their boards. Having a Pinterest Chrome extension also allows visitors on your site to convert your images into Pins.
Verify your site
With a few steps, you can verify your website. This adds your profile picture or company logo to all your Pins. Like the other additions mentioned above, to do this, you only have to add a few lines of HTML code.
Set the traffic and conversion goals for your business
This is another area where Pinterest deviates from the standard SEO norms on google. The lead time on Pinterest can be much longer than what you may be conversant with when using Google or Facebook. Nevertheless, Pinterest still proves itself to be an effective lead generating tool.
In succeeding on Pinterest, you must first determine the value Pinterest has to your business and set your goals accordingly.
You should ask yourself the following questions:
- How will Pinterest fit into my wider market strategy?
- Is my target audience actively use Pinterest to find the content I publish?
Once you've been able to determine that Pinterest is where you want to be in, you can now use your Pinterest tags to set up a wide variety of conversion events on your site.
On the Pinterest website, you will find a pretty detailed guide on creating conversion campaigns that can help your lead generation efforts.
We advise you to start with metrics like impression, traffic, and re-Pins and then layer your conversion goals on these metrics. By following your traffic number, you can gather a significant amount of data. You can see what methods or strategies are already working for your profile.
It is also important that you do not overdo it with your commercial messages. From experience, we've learned that you should hold on until you've earned the trust of both Pinterest and your audience before you feed them with such messages.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Conduct keyword research
On Pinterest, you wouldn't be able to use your usual keyword research tools; however, it is still important that you conduct your keyword research.
Pinterest is still indeed a search engine, and it curates its feeds based on what words a user inputs in the search box. To get accurate results, it uses key terms to find similar key terms in the Pins that have been shared by content creators.
Here are some tips to uncover the right keywords for your Pins and boards:
- Use guided search
Guided searches help users narrow their search radius, providing more relevant results by Pinterest. After searching for your target term, Pinterest will assist you by suggesting semantically related modifiers.
- Test out promoted Pins
Here you can use an approach similar to how SEO professionals use Google Ads to try out certain keywords to see their performance before they get featured on the real articles. Here you can use your best performing keywords on google and try them out on Promoted Pins to see how well they will perform on Pinterest.
- Explore Niche Topics
Pinterest already allows for categorized and sub-categorized topics. This makes it easy to find the appropriate keywords for your particular niche. Keep an adventurous mindset. Your goal should be to explore all relevant topics for your brand and see how these topics can be categorized and sub-categorized. During your exploration, you should also look out for how competitors are targeting specific keywords.
Organize and optimize your Boards
Keywords and consumer research for Pinterest are the core in determining your boards. Having a board is so awesome because it provides your brand with a great opportunity to tell the Pinterest search engine how it should categorize your products and organize your content.
Your board is also the first thing users see when they come to your profile. You want to make sure your board titles are super clean and the images you use are eye-catching.
Understanding your Pins
To create the perfect Pin, you will need skills and a keen eye for observing what's trending on your platform and your entire industry. It is important that you carefully decide your pin structure, fonts, sizes, wording, and image changes. In a nutshell, you need to be at the top of your game.
There are still some clear rules that we should follow as you create SEO friendly Pins:
- Aim for long images
- Use eye-catching colors
- Use enticing keyword-rich titles
Conclusion
Pinterest has the potential to get you the extra traffic you need on your website. Like Google SEO, Pinterest SEO changes and gets modified all the time if you want to stay on top of the current trends of Pinterest. Once you've got your Pinterest efforts on the way, you should monitor your analytics to fine-tune your personalized SEO strategy.
Interested in SEO? Check out our other articles on the Semalt blog.