Amid the normal litany of online marketing experts decrying
that Pinterest’s newfound popularity will be short-lived, it’s probably worth
saying at the outset of this post that I don’t think that using Pinterest for
SEO is necessarily any more of a panacea than Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
is. These are all just tools that can help you build a following and target your
audience. With that said, there are some particularly attractive things about
Pinterest that make it worth jumping on the bandwagon for.
Pinterest is a Short-form Medium
This might seem weird, but because most pins on the site are
short, bite-sized things, Pinterest visitors stick around longer than on similar sites, like Tumblr. The culture of
Pinterest is that of do-it-yourselfers, makers and seekers. Everyone is looking
for cool ideas, products and images that they can then curate and share. A site
like Facebook is trying to be everything to everyone. Pinterest has distilled
itself down to an image sharing and curating platform, much like Twitter has
refined itself as a purely short-form medium.
Pins Give you More Control
You don’t just have to settle for anchor text, you actually
get to post an image from your site. You have more control over what’s getting
shared. You get to highlight images from areas on your site where you want
people to go. Sure, you can do similar things on Facebook and Twitter, but the
fact that your Pinboards are just a giant visual menu means that there are
fewer things to distract somebody, like an article to read. They’re going to
click on something, and soon, and if they don’t find another photo that leads
where they want, your Pinboard or your site might be the one to hold their
attention.
Outreach is Painfully Easy
Reaching out to a high-profile curator is easy on Pinterest,
because they don’t have to bother with a whole blog posts; they just re-pin
whatever you’re suggesting if they like it. That’s an easy link. As long as you
have a compelling image, you’re likely to get them to say yes if you’re nice
about it. It takes so little energy to re-pin that it’s ridiculously easy to
get connected to established users and the people that follow them.
How to Use Pinterest for SEO
Now that I’ve convinced you, how are you to make use of this
simple social media tool to develop traffic? Well, there are definitely a lot
of different strategies you could take. Let’s start with some dos and don’ts:
DO connect with Facebook so that your pins all show up in your timeline. You’ve already spent all that time building up social connections and content on Facebook, and now it’s time for you to maybe spur some of those people to greater activity by funneling them to your Pinterest page. It’s a more visual site that may just help get them on to your site and increase your conversion rate.
DO optimize every pin. If you’re not commenting on your own pins, filling them with (natural!) keyword-rich text, you’re missing an opportunity. Pinterest is a site for curating collections of images, not just posting them en masse. Remember, quality over quantity.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a female dominated social space. The gender demographics have started to even out as the audience has grown rapidly. Competing sites like Gentlemint aren’t likely to compete, and their users are probably already on Pinterest, anyway.
Don’t try to shoehorn your existing comment into a form that will get pinned. Sure, you can slap a ‘Pin It’ button onto every article and photo on your site, but are you actively developing content that makes it conducive to pinning?
Don’t spam your Pinboard with an unrelated jumble of pictures. Just pinning photos from your own website with links pointing back to it isn’t enough. You need to be actively cultivating your own Pinboards, and commenting on others to get into the conversation and connect with other people. Just like any other social network, you have to be engaged for it to pay off.
DO connect with Facebook so that your pins all show up in your timeline. You’ve already spent all that time building up social connections and content on Facebook, and now it’s time for you to maybe spur some of those people to greater activity by funneling them to your Pinterest page. It’s a more visual site that may just help get them on to your site and increase your conversion rate.
DO optimize every pin. If you’re not commenting on your own pins, filling them with (natural!) keyword-rich text, you’re missing an opportunity. Pinterest is a site for curating collections of images, not just posting them en masse. Remember, quality over quantity.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a female dominated social space. The gender demographics have started to even out as the audience has grown rapidly. Competing sites like Gentlemint aren’t likely to compete, and their users are probably already on Pinterest, anyway.
Don’t try to shoehorn your existing comment into a form that will get pinned. Sure, you can slap a ‘Pin It’ button onto every article and photo on your site, but are you actively developing content that makes it conducive to pinning?
Don’t spam your Pinboard with an unrelated jumble of pictures. Just pinning photos from your own website with links pointing back to it isn’t enough. You need to be actively cultivating your own Pinboards, and commenting on others to get into the conversation and connect with other people. Just like any other social network, you have to be engaged for it to pay off.
Those of you who are already on Pinterest, what are your
strategies? Has the service been mediocre at driving traffic, or has it
fulfilled your wildest dreams?
Also read: Getting to Third Base with Pinterest – How to Maximise Your Links and Conversions
Also read: Getting to Third Base with Pinterest – How to Maximise Your Links and Conversions