Pinterest seems to have taken the internet community by storm in recent months and the tech news websites have been reporting on the website on practically a daily basis. Any website that gets that amount of attention is definitely worth having a look at, especially a website that has been developed with social networking in mind.
Pinterest gained more than 10 million new users in record time. It is a great tool for grouping and bookmarking interesting images that you come across online and more and more people are starting to use the website as a type of mood board tool for projects that they're working on.
I thought it would be useful to take a look at how Pinterest can be used to enhance search engine optimization for company websites and blogs and how best to do this.
- The first task is to link Pinterest to Facebook - in fact, once you've registered a Pinterest account you get the options to sign in with either Facebook or Twitter. Its easy to link your Pinterest account to both Facebook and Twitter under the settings option on the website " just use the radio buttons to set up the links. This means that all your Pins will show up on your Facebook Timeline and you can use both Twitter and Flickr to promote your pins.
- The next thing you need to do is to add Pin It buttons to your blog or website " this will allow your readers to share your content via Pinterest. This is easy to do without any plug-ins needed " you just log in to Pinterest and then go to About > Pin it button or use this link to access the button code. Just scroll down the page until you come to the section titled Pin It Button for Web Sites. Copy and paste the code to your page exactly where you want the Pin It button to appear (near any other social sharing buttons you have would be the best place for it).
- Link back to your website from Pinterest. If you showcase any images and include a link back to your website you're likely to gain much more traffic than when you share an image on Facebook.
- With Google indexing peoples personal Pinterest profiles and boards, adding keywords to your pinboards can push them up the search rankings. You need to go for commonly searched keywords that people are likely to use when searching for stuff online.
- Pinterests domain authority is growing rapidly which means that your pins will have high visibility in search engine results. This means that you need to build links that point back to your website from Pinterest to increase traffic to your blog or website.
These are just a few tips for using Pinterest as part of your SEO strategy - the website itself has some useful information on this subject. Have you come up with any ideas of your own on this that you'd like to share with me - please use the comments below!
If you liked this post, you might like these too:
I have no doubt that this will all work fine in terms of SEO but I wonder if and how you have to change your content to attract Pins for your pages especially for a business. I think it is getting harder and harder every week for a business to have people “Like” your webpages on Facebook or tweet about it when it isn’t something funny or cool. People tend to shy away from promoting businesses. Most things I see on Pinterest is still fun stuff or “cool” aka expensive consumer products which in many cases are not even linked (or is it pinned now) to the company’s website but somebody else’s webpage.
Adrian,
That’s a really good point, however looking more at pinterest people do happily pin products and “ordinary” pictures. I think its more about educating people to pin things! But of course if you can make the image more viral that it obviously becomes easier!
Jonny
Nice post Jonny !
I started adding images on pinterest (and currently is the only site apart from my own which can hotlink images)around 2 months ago, and now gives me almost a 1000 links (WMT) !! Its amazing how people can build links for you by sharing your images.
Jasjot,
Thats great news! worth spending more time on it!!
Jonny
I tried pinterest but the hazy copyright terms and conditions made me wary of sharing other people’s pins. Not sure how things have developed on that front, I guess if you are just uploading your own content then it clearly is something that can work for you.
I am unaware of issues with sharing other peoples pins, i believe the issue is pining people images… but the issue is with pinterest the the website not yourselves… or can someone else comment on this and clarify?
It look likes Pinterest is going to be sticking around, so I’ll be seeing how it can fit into my social media world. The trouble is putting enough effort into each arm of SEO strategy. Not enough hours in the day!
Walter,
Very true! you just need to add it to one of your routines! A bit like commenting, when you read an article, if it interests you comment… same thing… if you see an image pin it!
Jonny
Apparently I’ve been a little slow to jump on the bandwagon. I hadn’t considered giving Pinterest much of a look, but now you have me reconsidering that. Thanks for the new perspective!
I’ll just like to add this tip: Don’t change board-name on Pinterest. If you do, will the URL change, and the old URL will 404: See screenshot: http://www.trovatten.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Dont-change-board-name-on-pinterest.png
Frederik,
What a great tip! thanks for adding it!
Jonny