Pinterest SEO: Growing Your Business Using Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual search engine which relies on the information you provide it with to rank your pins, just as it does for website pages. Pinterest SEO is easy to learn and do, though it is time consuming. However, it is one of the most overlooked and ignored forms of social media as it can provide your business with a lot of web traffic regardless of your business industry.

Basic Pinterest SEO

Let's go through the basics of SEO for Pinterest:

Use a Pinterest business account - like other social media platforms, you have the option of having both a personal and business account. By having a business account, firstly Pinterest and Google will know that the pins you post are business related and the account will provide you with features not available to personal account holders.
Choose an appropriate username - this is the part of your name which appears in your profile URL. Just like your website, it should contain your business name as this makes it easier for users to find.
Complete your About section - this is the public facing page that users will see when they click on your Pinterest profile picture. Here you'll also have a cover photo and room for you to add a paragraph of text and your website URL.
Set up your Pinterest boards - Pinterest boards are like giant files. You put your pins in the most suitable board based on the board and pin topic. Then when people search for that topic, it is your board that will hopefully be presented to them among many others.

You also have the opportunity to optimise your website for Pinterest. Firstly you select the social media widget that includes Pinterest and add your Pinterest URL within your Contact page details. Next you add the Pinterest Tag. This can be found in your Pinterest account and is the equivalent of Facebook's pixel. Your tag has the ability to help you manage your campaigns and track users to and from your account. This tag is added in the SEO tracking section of your website. It can also be used to claim or verify your site, which is also important.

Tips on Boosting Your Pinterest SEO

Just as you would for your website, there are specific SEO jobs you'll need to do within your Pinterest account. These tasks include:

Keyword research - here you spend time searching for and testing out specific keywords and phrases that Pinterest users are using to find pin topics like yours.
Organise and optimise your boards - you'll need to use your researched keywords in the best places, such as in the headings, the descriptions, board titles and on the pin graphics themselves.
Creating pins - pins are the rectangular shaped graphics seen on Pinterest. Predominately image based, they also do use text highly relevant to the pin. Use eye catching colours to help your pins stand out amongst others.
Using detailed descriptions - pin descriptions are like meta descriptions and are used by both the Pinterest and Google search engines to find appropriate content.
Using hashtags - hashtags help people to find pins on your pin topics. Use between 2-8 hashtags at the end of your pin description.
About section - your about section should contain keyword rich descriptions and your website address.
Pin titles - pin titles or headings should contain your keywords and have the most important wording in the first 30 characters, though Pinterest will use up to 100 characters.
Pin image file names - just as on your website, image files that have a filename which represents the pin itself is better than a nonsensical one.