If you’re a pro blogger, or if you sell products online, Pinterest is one of the most important marketing tools you’ll need. You can’t be inactive on Pinterest if you want to grow your business!
Knowing how to promote a business on Pinterest takes a lot of research and practice, and I’ve written tons of best-practice tips here for you to check out.
Even if your blog is new, and doesn’t have any first page rankings yet in Google, you can drive thousands and thousands of viewers to your blog posts and affiliate marketing links just through Pinterest. 100% free.
But just like any other search engine, it has to be optimized to be found in search results. You need to know how to use Pinterest SEO.
1. Keywords
Just like optimizing blog posts for Google, Yahoo, and Bing, keywords matter in Pinterest. It’s essential for you to have your keywords in at least:
a. Your Pin’s title
b. The html title or alt text of the image that you’re using. Don’t just name the file, Image.1234, that doesn’t help Pinterest find you.
It also helps to include keywords in the description that you write for each original pin that you post, as well as the text that you put on the image itself. The more solid and clear your keywords are attached to each Pin, the better they’ll rank.
When I finally adjusted to using strong keywords in all of these areas on my own Pinterest, I quickly started getting repins and website clicks/visitors every single day.
To find great Pinterest keywords you can start by using a simple, free tool like pinterestkeywordtool.com to get started. It’s very basic, and clunky, but it can help you find some common search times.
To gather powerful and more strategic keywords I use a keyword research tool called Jaaxy. It not only informs me how many searches each term gets, but it tells me how much competition I would have, so I can target high traffic, low competition keywords.
It’s an awesome combination.
2. SEO Optimized Images
Believe it or not, Pinterest is pretty picky when it comes to which pins they really like. An SEO friendly Pinterest pin needs to be tall, vertically shaped, with warm colors, and bold, clear words. This not only makes Pinterest like your pins more, it also makes your pins more clickable. People will save and click pins that look nice, and stand out.
Here are some examples of recent pins of mine that have had repins and engagements this week (both pins are 7 days old at time of publishing):
I use a popular free app called Canva (the app that most avid Pinterest users use), to format these. You can easily build and customize pins right in the app to be perfectly fitted for Pinterest.
3. Optimize Your Profile
Not only should you be using keywords in your pins, but they should be a huge focus in your profile. Your Pinterest profile should be a very clear representation of your brand, and what you’re about.
These are the 4 essentials:
a. Use a profile picture with your face. Get someone to snap a nice picture of you, make it look cool with a SnapSeed filter, and upload it. This increases your chances of getting followers, because it adds a human level of connection and relatability.
b. Your board titles matter. Use keywords in them, and make it very clear what the board topic is.
c. Post frequency. 3 per day is a must. You should be saving or pinning 3 pins per day to be deemed active and notable in the eyes of Pinterest. Most profitable bloggers will use a post-scheduler like TailWind or Buffer to schedule these pins ahead of time. These are both solid services – TailWind costs $15/month, and Buffer costs $10 (though with less features). They allow you to make a bunch of pins when you have the chance, and then schedule for them to pin automatically, 3 times a day, so that your systems can run on autopilot. Sustainability is key, so that you don’t burn out.
d. Your bio. This is the introduction that welcomes your profile visitors to follow you. Optimize this by using the correct keywords. Don’t keyword stuff it, because you don’t have much room in the brief bio. Choose searchable words.
Plan Of Action
When I applied these SEO practices to my own Pinterest my account jumped in viewership and engagements. This is what you need to do to grow your blog, especially in its youngest stages! Many of my first affiliate sales were through Pinterest clicks!
If you aren’t applying these SEO practices to your Pinterest, your efforts on Pinterest will largely go to waste. Though posting on group boards can get you fast attention no matter what (and this is why I highly recommend starting out on group boards), the long-lasting power of your Pinterest marketing will rely on your SEO habits. Just like your blog.
Good SEO needs to be the groundwork that all of your other Pinterest marketing strategies grow from. Once you have a solid base of optimization that will help viewers find your boards, THEN it’s time for Pinterest strategies and tricks. Prioritize your SEO.
If you’re looking for other ways to market and grow your Pinterest, check out this post of Pinterest tips.
I really didn’t realise how much SEO effort there was to put into a successful Pinterest campaign – no wonder I haven’t seen much luck through it!
I notice that you mention optimizing your profile with keywords – something I haven’t yet done. How many keywords do you recommend putting in your profile blurb?
Hello! Yes, Pinterest takes a lot of consistency to succeed. At least 3 pins a day, actually.
Don’t sweat it! The bio is good to have keywords in, and possibly even hashtags, but I wouldn’t stuff it. If there are one or two keywords that are extremely relevant to your niche, I would just use those in the bio, but make it as natural and conversational as possible, not just a string of keywords.
You’ve got this!
Hello Jordan,
Social media has become an integral part in our daily lives and learning to leverage this to build an online business is as important as the business itself.
I have recently registered on Pinterest to assist in highlighting my website to those interested in travel and gadgets for travel. Do you know if there are any tools that we can use to measure the effectiveness of traffic flow from these platforms to websites?
Rich
Hello Richard,
That’s a GREAT niche to promote on Pinterest as a blogger! As long as you’re using the right SEO and Pinterest strategies I think you’ll do really well with it.
If you have a business Pinterest account, instead of a personal Pinterest account, it will actually come with some analytics already. A business account on Pinterest (which is free) will tell you how many views you get, how many saves (repins), how many clicks, which pins are your most popular, etc. If you’re looking for more advanced analytics SEMRush and TailWind will have some options for you.
That’s a great article. Thanks a lot for this guide on utilizing Pinterest SEO for blogs!
I have been using it for my e-commerce dropshipping store and I gained some traction, but not a reliable one. Now I understand that it wasn’t effective because I wasn’t pinning regularly and I’m usually using the square images and not rectangular one.
However, I have also two blogs, one of them in the internet marketing niche, and one in the engineering niche.
From your experience, is it worth the time and effort to try to use Pinterest to support blogs of these niches? Should I expect good amount of traffic to them, or should I only consider Pinterest as a place to get some backlinks and not expect much traffic.
What’s your opinion on that?
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Amjad
Hello Amjad!
I also have an e-commerce store through Shopify, and I definitely agree, it can be a great place to promote but it takes a lot of time and consistency. I’m not nearly as consistent with posting to my brand’s Pinterest because Instagram is so central for my business.
But with blogging, Pinterest is one of the most important things you can possibly do. It’s crucial, especially in the early days when you don’t have 1st page rankings yet. It will work well for both of the niches you described.
Definitely use the app Canva to create your pins. It’s totally free, and they have pre-fitted templates to match Pinterest’s preferences.
Hey Jordan,
as I have no experience with Pinterest myself – my kids do though 🙂 – and as I want to expand my own rech online I got enticed my your article.
For a non-Pinterester like me, to keep it simple enough to follow along easily and not lose interest in applying. But you also share detailed insider information I haven’t had before.
I’ll pin your article to my To-Do List. Thanks for sharing.
Veit
Hello sir! I’m glad you found it helpful.
Yes, besides Quora, Pinterest is the #1 to expand reach with a blog. You can promote your posts completely for free, in a totally public setting. I’ve had single blog posts that were viewed over 2,000 times before they were even indexed in Google, because I drove traffic to it from Pinterest.
It’s the key for a new blogger.
Hey Jordan,
as I have no experience with Pinterest myself – my kids do though 🙂 – and as I want to expand my own rech online I got enticed my your article.
For a non-Pinterester like me, to keep it simple enough to follow along easily and not lose interest in applying. But you also share detailed insider information I haven’t had before.
I’ll pin your article to my To-Do List. Thanks for sharing.
Veit
My website is already more than 1 year old but I only started using Pinterest lately. And quite honestly, I still do not understand much how to leverage this social media platform. I thought pinning and saving a couple of images once a day is good enough. And did you say keywords? This is my first time hearing this.
By the way, I read somewhere something about the 80-20 rule on your boards and pins. If you can elaborate more on this for me, I will be grateful. And thank you for this loads of information and tips on how to use Pinterest SEO. I will also be checking out Pinterest keyword tool.
Hey Alice! If you’re a blog writer, I would 100%, deeply recommend that you use Pinterest as your #1 platform to get started. Just like a physical products brand relies on Instagram and Facebook, a blog completely needs PInterest. Other than Quora, it’s the fastest and most efficient way to start driving traffic to your blog, long before you have any 1st page rankings in Google.
I have a number of 1st page rankings on my posts, on all search engines, but I still get more traffic from Pinterest. It’s free to use. I recommend pinning at least 3 times per day. It’s better to produce more original pins than saved pins, but if you’re busy, or not using TailWind, it’s okay to save pins to keep up with your pinning quota.
The 80/20 rule refers to how 80% of the effects or successes will usually come from just 20% of the work. So in other words, if you can narrow down the exact things that are working best for you, you can reduce the amount of work you do by 80% and still get the same positive results. That’s why analytics are so important. So you can know what’s working, what’s not, and focus your valuable time on just the things that work.
Funny how I should come upon this blog today. Just this morning I asked my wife to go to the library for me to get some books on twitter, Instagram and pinterest. I have absolutely book marked your site to see what other great advice I can find on there.
Thank you for taking the time to share such great info.
Hey Dale, I’m glad you found it helpful! Awesome idea to get out books and start reading up on these things.
Just one year ago I had no idea how much money and business growth could happen through Pinterest, but it’s totally changed the game for me. I actually had an account for months, but never used it because I didn’t know how, and it intimidated me. Once you get the hang of it, and stay consistent, you’ll become unstoppable.
Let me know if you have any questions!