Still think Pinterest is just another social channel to throw into your marketing mix? It’s probably time to adjust your marketing strategy.
Pinterest may be the only channel you need in your mix.
For starters, it’s not really a social channel. It’s a visual search engine, much like Google, only with pretty pictures. And it gets a whopping 2 billion searches a month, most of which is for products and services.
When users search, they’re searching to buy. This makes it a goldmine opportunity to attract new customers to your business.
Pinterest SEO Tips For More Traffic
Here are some strategies to help you get more traffic and sales from Pinterest:
1) Create multiple pins
Pinterest is all about creating great content and making sure that content can be found. Pin images should reflect your brand and niche so that people (and Pinterest) know what your pin is about.
The visual search engine can “see” pin images and will rank them accordingly. This means that if your post or page is about gardening, your pin should show an image of plants, not a stroller.
All pins should include a title, description, and keywords (among other things) to help Pinterest rank them appropriately.
2) Grow your followers
The beauty of Pinterest is that you don’t need thousands of followers. You can drive traffic simply by sharing a lot of content to the right boards and optimizing it for search.
But having more followers doesn’t hurt.
Pinterest places content into a pool based on followers, related pins, and interests. Your followers will be the first to see your pins, followed by others with related interests and previous searches.
The more followers you have, the more people who will see your content. Don’t go after any ol’ followers. Make sure they reflect your audience and represent potential customers.
3. Use relevant keywords
Keywords are a must for Pinterest SEO. Make sure you include them in these places:
- Pin title
- Pin description
- Board title
- Board description
- image text and alt text
- Your profile
To research keywords, type a search term in PInterest. You’ll see a list of keywords that the site auto-suggests based on terms that pinners have used to look for similar content.
It helps to refer back to a keyword spreadsheet. Your goal is to sprinkle multiple keywords into both pin and board descriptions. Be careful here, though.
Don’t keyword stuff for the sake of keyword stuffing. Descriptions should sound like real sentences and include a call to action to encourage pinners to click through.
4. Target niche boards
The first board you pin to is critical for traffic. It should be niched-down and relevant to your topic so that Pinterest can identify what your pin is about.
Whatever you do, don’t share new pins to brand new boards. Make sure they’ve had enough time to be indexed by Pinterest so that when your content is added, it “inherits” high rankings.
A targeted group with 1,000 followers can yield better results than a generic board with 50,000 followers. Remember, search performance always trumps audience size on Pinterest.
5. Join group boards
Group boards can be a powerful way to reach new audiences and drive traffic to your business. They’re collaborative boards with multiple contributors who know how to “work” groups, which is why they typically attract large audiences.
When you join the right group boards, there’s this snowball effect that happens. People start clicking and repinning your content to their boards and followers, who share it to their boards and followers, and so on.
Pinterest has a close eye on groups these days. And while groups aren’t dead just yet, they don’t pull as much weight as they used to.
Wrapping it up
Pinterest often ties, and surpasses, SEO as the leading source of organic traffic. And you don’t need to spend hours writing long-form content or being “social” to see the rewards.
Just follow the steps above and experiment with SEO strategies of your own. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your traffic increases.
