Is this you?  You signed up for Pinterest, created a board, and started pinning from the home page.  Maybe you have a few pins from your own website, but you are not updating the description for Pinterest.  You have one board for your business, a board for business tips, a board for inspiration for your office, and a board for recipes.  Sound familiar? Then this post is for you!

Pinterest is a massive search engine.  So, it is time we start optimizing our content on Pinterest.  I promise, it is not that hard! It will only take you a few hours to update your profile and an extra minute per pin!  These few changes will literally skyrocket your monthly views and engagement on Pinterest.

Your Profile

The easiest place to start is your profile.  First things first, if you don’t have a business account, get one!  Pinterest is one of the few, amazing, social platforms that does not limit your engagement because you have a business profile.  So do it! You get rich pins, analytics, and the ability for ads. I will let Pinterest tell you how to get a business account.  

Next, you want to optimize your profile.

• Photo: Use a photo of yourself, not your logo.  Preferably the photo you have on all other social media accounts.
• Display Name: Your business name.  You can add your business type to the end of your name.  Example: “PMA Photography | Wedding and Brand Photographer”
• About Your Profile:  Here is where it gets tricky.  You only have 160 characters for this one.  I suggest using your one-liner/positioning statement.  If you have extra characters, throw in one or two of your top keywords.
• Location: Simple enough, your location.  If you live in a suburb or in a rural area, put the main city name you want to rank for.

 

Board Optimization

Depending on how many boards you have, this may take you a few minutes or an hour or two.  Either way, it will be totally worth it. There are really only two things to optimize in this section.

• Board Title: You want your board title to be simple and to the point.  I know cute titles are fun, but they do not help you with SEO, so keep them for your personal boards.  Here are some examples for great board titles:
  • PMA Weddings | Arizona Wedding Photographer
  • Men’s Summer Fashion
  • Wedding Inspo – Garden Weddings
  • France Travel Ideas
  • LA Wedding Venues
  • Small Business Branding
• Board Description: Go all out for this one.  You have a lot of space to write out your board description.  I suggest starting with a few sentences of what your board is about.  Then add keywords not mentioned in the main description. Also, if this is a board of just your content, say so in the description!  

 

Pin Optimization

This is my favorite part, but also the most time consuming.  How you optimize your pins is key. This is the information you put in the description part of the Pin.  You are limited to 500 characters, but you can do so much with those 500 characters.

My description always starts with my alt text by default.  If you are not optimizing your alt text, start there. That way, anyone who pins directly from your website will be adding a pin with some SEO juice.  (If you don’t know about alt text or want to know more about blog optimization, check out my post on SEO for Photography Blog Posts.)  

Hashtags/Keywords

Next are the hashtags.  There are a few different schools of thought on this.  You can do actual #hastags on Pinterest, but it is not necessary.  Some people say to only include conversational (read: full sentence) keywords.  I like to sit somewhere in the middle and add a handful of keywords to the end of the description like this:

Phoenix Arizona Wedding Photographer | AZ Wedding Photography | Outdoor Wedding | Desert Wedding Inspo | Navy and Lavender Wedding Colors |

For the actual hashtags/keywords you use, you want two different types:

• Location Keywords – These will be the keywords that show your location and business type.  If you have an online business, you can skip this part. But if you serve specific areas, this is a must!  In the example above, Phoenix Arizona Wedding Photographer and AZ Wedding Photography. Also, for wedding photographers, make sure to keyword the venue!
• Inspo Keywords – These will skyrocket your monthly views.  These keywords will be what people use when they are trying to find inspiration.  In the example above: Outdoor Wedding, Desert Wedding Inspo, and Navy and Lavender Wedding Colors.

Keyword Tips

To find the best Inspo keywords, you will need to get in the head of your ideal client.  What are they looking for on Pinterest? Search those keywords and see what the other suggest keywords are.  I like to save my fav keywords in a word document to reference when scheduling my Pins.

I also suggest varying your keywords.  Use Inspo and Inspiration. Photographer, photography, and photographers.  Your states full name and abbreviation. You get the idea.

Also, make sure that you are only using relevant keywords to your Pin.  For example, don’t use “birthday cake” in every pin from a birthday party, only the pins with a cake in them.

 

Rich Pins

Now this is the secret sauce for your Pinterest SEO.  Set up rich pins! Rich pins give you the bold description under the image in searches.  This gives you a bit more real estate on the page and, I believe, makes people more likely to click the post when they know a bit more about it.  When the pin is clicked on, Pinterest will pull your SEO title and description. Which, if you are optimizing your blog SEO, should encourage people to click through.  See Below:

Clicked Pins:

 

 

But the most important piece to rich pins, the secret sauce, is that Pinterest will also use the content of you blog post to determine which searches you should rank for.  I have not seen this explicitly stated anywhere, but I have seen it happen with my Pins. It also increases your chances of being delivered in any Pinterest search. Try it.  Search any phrase in Pinterest and see how many rich pins vs regular pins are delivered.

To set up rich pins, follow these directions from Pinterest.