Over the last few years, Pinterest has evolved into a massive visual search engine.  With a growing 100 million users, Pinterest just might be one of the most underestimated social media platforms when it comes to driving traffic to your site.  While Pinterest isn’t about a quick return-on-investment, there is a green value to it, and it can give your company some face value bringing potential clients to your website.

Here’s a List of 11 Easy Tips to Improve Your Pinterest Presence:

1. Profile Optimization

It’s important to tweak your profile to pick the right username.  By changing it through your settings, you can use one that reflects your business and how you want to be discovered.  This URL will serve as your keyword, so be sure to use one that is clear, direct, and memorable.

2. Board Optimization

Having neatly organized and appealing boards is essential to your Pinterest presence.  Having titles that are relevant and enticing on your boards and images is important to improve your pin ranking.  While clever is always nice, making sure they’ll be discovered is the most important.

3. Pin Optimization

Every pin you make is a direct reflection of your profile.  You must optimize your pins as much as possible, being descriptive and relevant, helping the search engine discover your pins.

4. Descriptions

Even though some readers don’t read the descriptions on pins, Pinterest favors the pins providing a specific and thoughtful description.  Adding details that describe your image ultimately affects the chances of being repinned, expanding your reach. 

5. Avoid Hashtags

Pinterest created a guide on using their platform for business stating:

Don’t just drop in keywords or hashtags. The description is an important part of captivating Pinners. Set a scene that incorporates the right search words, and you’ll help Pinners imagine themselves with your Pin.

While hashtags are not completely useless, they’re also not necessary to increasing the reach of your pins.

6. Keyword Research

Performing extended searches on your own can be the best way to find the right keywords for your audience.  Study how the Pinterest search works, what shows up first and how it’s organized.  It’s also wise to check out the mobile version search results, as this audience is increasing greatly due to convenience. To that point, 80 percent of all online traffic now comes from a mobile device. Here are a couple things to look at when figuring out how Pinterest search works: 

    -Analyzing Keywords

    If you’d like to analyze specific keywords on Pinterest, in Google, use the formula
    site: www.pinterest.com “keyword”.  This assists you in analyzing the most popular pins according to search ranking.
    

    -Who Pins from your Site

    If you’re wanting to understand how your pins have been pinned directly from your site, use the url: http://www.pinterest.com/source/[yoursite]

7. Rich Pins

Rich pins are enhanced versions of regular pins that provide extra information about a pin.  More effective than a regular pin, they can be done via app, YouTube, recipe, article, product, and place.  Pins that provide extra details tend to rank better.

8. Website Verification

Search engine results prioritize verified websites, increasing the pinner’s authority.  With a verified website, you gain further access to your Pinterest accounts analytics.

9. Consistent Pinning

As is most social media, consistency is key.  Keeping an active, but not spammy account with nicely curated content is important to your Pinterest presence.  Also being relative in what you repin is noticeable to your audience.  Remember that a pin can last forever, like nearly everything on the internet. Try taking some time out of each day to pin to a few boards instead of picking one day and flooding your follower's feeds with hundreds of pins (this is what we consider spammy). 

10. Quality

All images you pin need to stand out from the rest, yet keeping their relevance.  Again, like with other social media platforms, Pinterest’s search engine gives higher ranks to images of quality, thus, driving more traffic to your site.  Your pins should be clear, the appropriate size, and have an easy balance of text and imagery.

11. Pinning Vertically

Every image is pinnable on Pinterest, however, vertical images have a greater chance to be noticed as they occupy more space in the Pinterest feed and are easily viewed on mobile devices.  

Are you ready to utilize Pinterest in your social media strategy?  Do you need help optimizing your Pinterest account?  Contact us today and we’ll get you in touch with our social media experts!