The Ultimate Mini Guide to Pinterest SEO

June 30, 2017
48 Comments

Last Updated on July 3, 2017 by NandiNN

Today we are happy to have our guest blogger Claire from StartACraftBlog. Pinterest is the hot topic on blog currently and she is to help us understand the importance of SEO specifically when it comes to Pinterest. She will be sharing her top Pinterest secret – The Ultimate mini guide to Pinterest SEO!Stick around…

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The Ultimate Mini Guide To Pinterest SEO

I’ve always been a very visual person and for as long as I can remember (I’m talking AOL days here) and I have rarely used a search engine as a normal person would. I would always search for something and click on the ‘images’ tab to find what I want and judge the content. That’s exactly how you should be treating Pinterest. It is and always has been a visual search engine. I’ve never considered it an actual social network, and I’m still not convinced by the comments aspect, but that’s another story, I’m here to talk about getting visible on Pinterest by using keywords. This mini guide to Pinterest SEO should help you get started.

Who am I to tell you about Pinterest Keywords?

Hi! My name is Claire; I run StartACraftBlog and a craft blog that has over 1 million followers and gets 7.9 million monthly views on my Pinterest profile. Within two months I’ve had over 635.3k views on my StartACraftBlog Pinterest Profile, and it’s all down to how I use keywords.

In a former life (a decade ago), I worked as an image researcher for a stock photography company; that meant that a business or advertising agency would provide a brief to their account manager within the business that I worked for, who would pass that on to me and I would find appropriate images.

I must make it clear that these briefs were not detailed, they provided random words and feelings that they wanted Joe public (people like you and me) to feel when they saw the ad or campaign.

Sometimes I would get “need a woman, white background, on a laptop to make people purchase ‘X, Y, Z’”. Several months on, I then received an unofficial promotion where I spent my entire day adding keywords to metadata in the stock photo library. Sounds exciting and fun right?!

Back to being an image researcher.

Sometimes the searches would be easy, but that was maybe 1 out of 10 searches. On a daily basis, I was doing my keyword exercise at least ten times a day, and I promise that the more you practice, the easier it is and the quicker you can do it.

Here is one weeks stats from Pinterest:

What is an Alt Tag?

An important note about alt tags: they’re not JUST a Pinterest description. Alt tags are for those with sight impairments and are read aloud, so people know what image is placed there. I feel sorry for anyone trying to read my alt tags aloud because I do use them with Pinterest descriptions and SEO in mind.

Google Use Alt Tags

Alt tags are also used by Google to identify what your image is. It’s a good idea to include your blog SEO keywords that you chose using the Adwords Planner for your post. If you don’t know how to do that, it’s not as scary as you think. I share how to do it including screen shots in this post: 6 steps to super 6 steps to super shareable blog posts.

There are times I’ve seen people (including myself) accidentally just add the title to the alt tags, which is pointless if you have rich pins enabled. It’s highly recommended that you have rich pins enabled because that means, even more, keyword juice. You have the title, and then an extra 500 characters to add a keyword filled description.

You might also like: How one blog went from zero to 200K Page views Per Month!

Why is it important to add a description with keywords?

I put this to you; if someone typed the words ‘make money online’ into a search engine, and it just so happened that Marie had the perfect post about Making Money blogging , what if Marie had no keywords attached? You would never find it. If you had the appropriate keywords that people were looking for (and a kick ass image) the search engine would find you, it would find your Pinterest pin, your blog and BAM – there is a potential customer or blog reader.

Pinterest Is Awesome

The beauty of sites such as Pinterest is that the Tags and descriptions are married with the search engines. Tags are especially important if you have a specific theme you want to look for.

There have been so many wonderful pieces of art I have found by trawling through boards that have ZERO descriptions or just say “Added by such and such a pinner.”

That’s frustrating to me because I think how will anyone know how awesome you are unless they go and trawl boards within the niche?

*ain’t nobody got time for that meme*

You might like this: 5 Pinterest Tools I am using to increase my blog traffic

The Keyword Exercise

You will need a pen and a piece of paper. Sure, it involves brain power, and it’s a bit of a pain but the traffic it generates to my craft blog on a monthly basis and the ad revenue? Worth it.

Why a pen and paper? Well, when you write you are much slower than when you type, which is perfect to allow creative ideas to evolve. It’s also much easier to concentrate on one task.

Tip For Pinterest Success:

I highly recommend creating Portrait/Vertical images to share.

First, you need to ask yourself some questions.

What is the ultimate goal of your pin? Getting that Pin it shared? Or getting click throughs to your site? Both?

What is the content that is linked? Does it contain anything free or extra? Are there any exclusive tips or ideas?

With the initial words that you write down, you will now need to brainstorm associated words. It’s a straightforward task. I didn’t know how to do this properly until I was taught at sixteen years of age and it blew my tiny mind.

When I do this exercise, I like to take a deep breath and relax.

Don’t limit yourself.

Grab a piece of paper.

Using this Pin from Marie’s site as an example:

If you were searching for an article about making money online, how you can make money online or how bloggers make money online, what keywords would you be searching for?

Some examples:

Make money online, Make money online as a blogger, Making money online, Work at home.

Who would benefit from this article?

A stay at home mom

Women with chronic illnesses who can’t work a regular job

Bloggers Freelancers.

Think of more people

How is Marie going to make that money?

List Building

Generating Traffic

Digital Products

Affiliate Marketing

This exercise is essential before you move onto the next step.

Using PinterestKeywordTool.com to find some keywords, by using the keywords you just thought of.

Plugging in the keywords you just thought of will validate them and let you know if people are actually searching for them.

You can also use the Pinterest Smart Search function, but PKT is faster.

Try a mixture of using the Pinterest Smart Search and the Pinterest Keyword Tool to A/B split test some of your pins.

Keep in mind that when you are writing descriptions, you need to recognize that Americans and English folks spell words differently.

I don’t know why Americans do this, but it’s weird for me and makes a game of Anglo-American scrabble an absolute nightmare. Colour to those in Britain is Color in the states. This is important.

When describing your content ask yourself – where is your target audience based?

Mine is split 50/50 UK and USA, so I like to jazz it up.

I go crazy and would describe individual pins with both variations of the same word which helps to make the pins go viral.

If you’re struggling use WordAssociations.net and Thesaurus.com

Now, bring it all together!

This is how I would describe this pin; it’s not perfect. In fact, I’m certain you will be able to come up with something better.

“have you been searching for guides to help you make money online? Do you know how much you want to make money from home or how you will do it? This guide will help everyone from bloggers, to freelancers to stay at home moms figure out how they can work at home making money online. WAHMs are killing it with affiliate marketing, selling digital products & being awesome bloggers. Find out how you can do the same as a blogger by doing these 5 things” =450 characters

Tips:

Use WordCounter.net to count the characters as you have 500 on Pinterest to describe your pin, or just write straight onto the Pinterest pin.

And remember, it’s boring to add descriptions to every pin, trust me, I KNOW! However, it’s completely worth it.

I don’t mean to sound braggadocious but have over 1.1 Million followers on Pinterest as I speak. I know it can be hard for your brain to think of descriptions. After about 4 or 5 it’s like my skull is full of mashed potatoes. That’s how I know it’s time for a break and a cuppa.

Show me your examples please and tell me if you have any amazing tricks I could employ that would help me deal with having to write so many flipping descriptions! I’m open to anything that will help me streamline my work.

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