Like most online marketing, it’s important to understand how to maximize search engine optimization so that you can get the most out of your time using the channel for marketing purposes. You can pin all day long, but if you’re not optimizing for keywords and using an effective keywords strategy, you might be wasting your time.
1) Develop a Keyword Strategy for Pinterest
Before you make your first pinboard, think about what your goals are for Pinterest and how you want to appear to the world. You’ve likely already researched keywords and hopefully have hundreds to choose from. Set out your keyword strategy on Pinterest to match what you’re doing on your website and with other social media.
2) Optimize Your Username
On Pinterest you can choose a username that is a keyword. This will help a lot because if your username is a keyword for your niche, whenever someone inputs that term into the search bar, your pinboards will come up in the search. You’ll get a lot more followers without even trying if you put a keyword in as your username.
3) Create a Full Keyword-Rich About Section
Pinterest gives a generous-sized about section that you can use to fill with information, tell your story and use keywords within the text to do so. Don’t keyword stuff or force it, but using keywords within the about section is a smart idea as it will help your customers to find you when they search for those keywords.
4) Create Optimized Pin Descriptions
One of the best ways to improve SEO is to make use of the description area for your pins. You have a pretty big space to work with. Make them readable, but also include relevant keywords and URLs when appropriate.
5) Always Link Back to Your Website
You can link each pin that you create back to your site and back to specific pages of your site. Always take advantage of this and make sure they don’t always just go to the home page. Make pins link back to specific landing pages on your website that are relevant to the pin.
6) Watermark Your Images
No matter what you do, someone might take your picture and try to use it as their own. But you can watermark it with your logo and URL. Try to do so as unobtrusively as possible, but watermarking will help with SEO too.
7) Don’t Forget the ALT Text on Images
When you upload an image, or put an image on your website, you have something called an ALT tag or text. This is an area where you should use keywords to describe the image. Don’t just say “butterfly” – say something like “This is a picture of a monarch butterfly that I took using my Nikon D700.” This type of ALT tag would be relevant to a pinboard devoted to photography.
8) Make Your Website the Home for All Images
Everything starts and ends with your website. When you want to create pins and pinboards, first create a blog post with the image, infographic and post, then pin to the board from your website so that visitors always link back to your site.
9) Create Themes for Pinboards
Don’t just randomly post pins. Instead, create themed pinboards where the theme fits with your niche and is a keyword for your niche. This gives you more areas to include keywords and more in-depth information about your niche for your followers. You can think of pinboards as categories like you have on your blog if that helps.
10) Use Appropriate Hashtags
Like most social media today, Pinterest also supports hashtags. Use them well and they will pay off. Really give thought to what the hashtags should be and how they relate to your niche before including them.
11) Re-Pin Items That Carry Your Keywords
Look up your keywords, maybe one or two a day, and re-pin other people’s pinboards and pins that carry your keywords. In addition, follow them and their followers – just a few each day to help build your own following and interaction.
Using these tips to make your Pinterest SEO friendly will go far in helping you make the most of Pinterest as a marketing channel for your business.
