How to Use Pinterest for SEO

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In recent years, Pinterest has evolved considerably as a trendy social network, but also as a powerful visual search engine. As with all other search engines, you can implement an optimization strategy, improving the visibility of your company on the web and driving traffic directly to your website (starting right from Pinterest).

You may hold the belief that Pinterest is a platform (only for women) to share their latest recipe or DIY idea?

Indeed, a good percentage of users on Pinterest are women (about 60%).

But not all of them.

Pinterest has turned out to be an important social media in which users of both genders, navigate to discover new brands and products and most of them are professionals such as architects, interior designers, lighting designers and the like.

In the same way, Pinterest is useful for brands that want to make their products known through videos and photos.

Pinterest is a highly visual platform and stands out for this as one of the best social channels to carry out visual content marketing. Therefore, brands that know how to optimize their content for Pinterest are in a better position to take advantage of the platform’s benefits and, as a result, can increase their visibility.

With over 200 million users searching for and publishing new content based on their interests, Pinterest is probably a platform that is still undervalued in terms of its ability to drive to your website.

For this reason, optimizing your bulletin boards on Pinterest becomes essential, and I want to help you do that.


Currently, Pinterest is one of the biggest quality traffic drivers (in the social network area) to websites in the design and furniture sector.


But traffic is not the only reason to use Pinterest. This platform is effective for the entire business sales process.

Pinterest is also a huge opportunity to defeat the competition, as many online businesses use Pinterest underestimating it, or not using it consistently or correctly.

With a good SEO optimization on Pinterest your company / brand can get a virtually unlimited amount of free traffic on your website.

Pinterest offers ample space for creativity and storytelling and can be considered as a “discovery” platform where the Pinner can find inspiration and new ideas.

Some data on this platform

• 80% of Pinterest’s traffic comes from mobile devices
• More than 2 billion searches on Pinterest take place every month
• Visual research represents over 250 million monthly searches on Pinterest

Like other search engines, Pinterest has its own algorithm called “Smart Feed”. Specifying that with the word “Feed” on Pinterest means the homepage, we can say that this algorithm helps Pinterest to show you on the homepage the Pin most relevant to your search.

So it is the algorithm “Smart Feed” that determines the type of Pin that appears to the user based on a series of criteria, such as the quality of the domain, the quality of the Pinner and the Pinner and the choice of the keywords.


Pinterest is a very powerful tool to drive traffic and generate contacts on your website. From some case studies that I follow in the design and furnishing sector, Pinterest was the second social network after Facebook for traffic quality. Not to mention a better return on investment compared to the time and money spent on Facebook and Instagram.


To activate an effective Pinterest marketing activity it is necessary to:

Create an information profile: Provide all relevant information about your company and products to encourage your audience to visit your website and learn more.

Build well-organized boards: Make sure that your followers can easily find the specific content they need by neatly grouping thematic board pins.

Create engaging pins: Integrate to your Pins representative images of the product and interesting descriptions to effectively provide the information you want to make known to your audience and to direct them to your web page.

Consider that high quality content needs to be optimized to get the most visibility possible on the platform.

Better SEO optimization on Pinterest means more views, more interaction, more engagement, more traffic, more contacts and potentially more sales.

So, are you looking for ways to improve your Pinterest strategy?

Would you like to increase the traffic of your website?

To generate leads, conversions and sales from Pinterest, like and Repin are not enough,  you also have to be able to encourage your audience to take action.

Do not worry, it’s not as complex as it sounds.

6 Useful tips for your business profile on Pinterest

Here are some useful strategies to drive more traffic from Pinterest to your website pages by optimizing your profile, board, pin and ads.

1. Set up your business profile to drive traffic from Pinterest to your website

First of all, all you have to do is create an interesting profile that captures the attention of your audience.

So, if you have not already done so, sign up for Pinterest with your business account.

A company account must have some precise characteristics:

Custom Name: First set the brand name in full instead of a personal name on the company account. During registration, if you click on “Continue with Facebook”, make sure you are connected to the company’s Facebook page, otherwise Pinterest will refer to your personal Facebook account. Or directly connected with your company email and select the main category you belong to.
Company logo as a profile image: it is advisable to use the logo of the brand as an image of the Pinterest profile, so as to be more recognizable to users and be credible as an official account.
In addition, a company account allows you to have access to some very useful tools:

Access to Rich Pin: This is a useful tool to further promote your Pin and attract traffic to your website. Rich Pins provide more contextual information about the Pin object. There are several Rich Pins that you can use depending on the type of content you want to post.

Access to Sponsored Pin and Affordable Pin: Sponsored Pins are ads displayed at the top of searches with the goal of increasing the ability to be seen by users. Affordable Pins, on the other hand, allow users to purchase directly on Pinterest.

Access to Pinterest Analytics: thanks to this tool you can monitor the progress of each of your Pin and evaluate its effectiveness, so you can better plan your marketing strategy.

These features will play a key role in driving Pinterest traffic to your company’s website.

2. Optimize your Pinterest profile

Before you begin to publish your Pins, optimize your Pinterest profile by following some tips:

• Make sure the name of your company is present in the account name and in the username.

• When you create your profile, try to highlight as much relevant information as possible to help users get to know you better. Write a detailed description of everything your brand takes care of, explaining why your company is unique and why users should choose your products rather than others.

• In the settings, be sure to enter all the necessary information such as business type, country, location, website.

• Check your website in the settings. A verified profile helps increase your domain on Pinterest and will prioritize your Pin between search results.

• Make sure that your profile is not set to “private” in the settings, but is therefore accessible to search engines.

• Make your Pinterest profile more visible by adding relevant keywords. To do this, consider both the terms that people use to search for your business as a whole, and the specific ones used to search for your products.

All this will help encourage more visitors to your website.

3. Connect Pinterest to your website

The fastest way to drive Pinterest traffic to your website is to add the URL to your profile. If you have made a good description of your brand among the business profile information, your audience will be more curious and want to know more about your business, so it is very likely that they will click to visit your website.

Do not forget to check the URL of your website. This will give users the credibility of your site and give you access to additional analytical tools, which can estimate the traffic that arrives at the website from Pinterest.

Add the Pinterest “Follow” button to your website, as well as the “Save” button to stimulate visitors to share what they like on your website directly on their own boards.

4. Set up and optimize the boards to direct traffic to your website

Well-organized boards on the business profile will help you attract users to your Pin and drive Pinterest traffic to your site.

How to start?

First of all, organize your boards by categories: many users start the search by browsing through the categories.

Organize boards in both general and specific topics, this will help your followers find the Pins they want. The general boards cover all the main product categories present on your website; at the same time you can also have boards dedicated to products or even better – a group of specific products and services.

How to optimize the boards?

Try to think about what terms your users could use to search for your brand or products and use them to name boards and check them out.

For example, if your company deals with bathroom furniture, the key words you could use as board titles are “bathroom ideas for small bathrooms” (for example, if your products fit small bathrooms), or on products new “bathroom ideas for 2018“.

Turning to the descriptions it becomes important to write for each board a rich content of keywords related to the content of the Pin.

Do not leave white space! You have 500 characters to use for your best keywords. You can also simply list all the keywords separated by commas, or you can write them in a short paragraph.

Furthermore, it is essential that you set the right number of boards for your account.

It is useless to create many different boards if you don’t bother to optimize them: try to create as many as you can then keep them active, publishing regular content.

An active board has a high chance of appearing in search results. The exact number of boards depends on the content you can supply, but 10-20 board is a good starting point.

5. Get traffic from Pinterest with seasonal boards

Even the boards dedicated to specific seasons or holidays are useful for directing Pinterest traffic to your website.

The advice is to set up your bulletin board about a month before the occasion. In this way you will have enough time to fill it with interesting content and promote it to your followers. As the season approaches, place the bulletin board higher and higher on the list to give it greater visibility.

Do not eliminate the bulletin board as the season goes by: each Pin that has worked well during the season will still be displayed in the search results during the other seasons.

This will allow you to attract residual traffic. Maybe they will be useful for the next year.

6. Optimize your Pin

As with all the other search engines, you will need to optimize your Pin to appear in search results. If you publish Pin randomly, without a specific strategy, you probably will not get the results you expect.

Your Pin will ultimately be the elements that drive the most traffic to the website.

Pinterest, being a visual search engine, focuses mainly on images. But this is not enough: for an effective SEO strategy it is important to make descriptions for each Pin. Do not be afraid to include details, as this will help Pinterest identify your images for relevant searches.

To optimize your Pin:

Use images that best represent your brand: Having the right image to use helps to generate involvement. Even putting multiple products into one image can be a good tactic: adding more objects increases the level of potential user involvement and, as a result, this increases the likelihood that they will click on the links to learn more. Sometimes images containing multiple objects can be confusing: to avoid this, try to collect and arrange the items to be photographed in an orderly manner. Many users do not pay attention to the optimization of the image name: they often do not spend that little time necessary to rename the photo with significant keywords, such as “ideas-small-bathroom”, but leave the image named “IMG1234.jpg”.

Take the dimensions into consideration: Pinterest recommends a ratio between 1.3: 5 and 2: 3 (width and height). The minimum image size is 600 Pixels. Make tall images, so that they stay longer on the bulletin board as people scroll.

Write a description for each Pin: Explain to your followers how the product you offer will meet their needs, how they can use it, or highlight an interesting feature of the product that they would otherwise not know. You can include up to 500 characters, which can be viewed in full when a user click on your Pin to view more. However, it is not necessary to write 500 characters. Generally a couple of sentences of about 100 characters in total are sufficient to provide some good information.

Write a short and concise title for each post: An important aim of the title is to be convincing and encourage users to read more.

Take care of the graphics of your Pin: You can have the most beautiful post in the world, but if the graphics of your Pin show up badly you will not get what you expect from Pinterest.

Do Keyword Research: In addition, you should also add relevant keywords to the descriptions of your Pins. The keywords you choose should be specific to each Pin. Users use keywords to find the content they want. Once you have focused your blog on an SEO content strategy and have already identified the keywords that your audience is looking for to find you, include them in your descriptions.

Avoid inserting too many hashtags: If your goal is to increase the visibility of your brand and direct Pinterest users to your website, then pay attention to how you use hashtags: these on Pinterest are more similar to a categorical element that you can add to your descriptions to help the Pinners find related content. Hashtags lead to search results based on the specific keywords you use. When you include a hashtag in the description, users can click on it to find the content related to that word. In this way, however, hashtags can remove your Pinners from your content and take them to similar Pins but belonging to other users or brand. Just because you use a hashtag, this does not mean that Pinterest will index it.

How many hashtags to use? Do not use too many hashtags as you would on Instagram: Pinterest has announced that if you add your Pin with too many hashtags, the value of your Pin in search results could even lower. At most, the use of 4 hashtags for a Pin is recommended.

  • If you use  hashtags, make them unique. To understand which words you should use, look at your competitors and influencers that inspire you.

Insert relevant videos in your Pin: Videos added to Pins are a great way for a greater variety of content. In this way you will be able to show more information that only with the images you would not be able to do. An effective way to use video to drive Pinterest traffic is to add a video teaser and link to the complete video inserted in your website. Remember, don’t limit yourself to the home page, but link directly to the specific page about the Pin. This will encourage the public to stay on the site.

Once you have set up your Pins, give them an initial boost using like and Repin. Thus, users will be more interested in reading your Pins if they see that they often come back. You can also direct traffic by commenting on other relevant Pins and leaving a direct link to your website.

More “tricks” to direct Pinterest traffic to the company website

1. Integrate quality images to your Pin

A picture says a thousand words! This is why you should use intriguing photographs in the Pin that you create to promote your content.

The right images can capture the attention of users and, out of curiosity, it is more than likely that you will entice them to click on your website to learn the rest of the story.

Almost all the pins are images and to distinguish you from others you will have to choose images that are much more than just graphic representations or photos of products, and be as creative as possible.

A Pin which communicates that there is an interesting story behind the image will cause the visitor to pause.  The more time they spend observing your images, the more likely they are to click on your website link.

2. Make a specific and in-depth search for the keywords

If you know anything about SEO, you will know that the only way for a search engine to know what the content is about is to add keywords. Just like it happens on Google, the search results of Pinterest depend on the searched keywords.

So, how do you use keywords to show Pinterest that your content is relevant?

Carry out a keyword search on Pinterest. When it comes to optimizing your SEO strategy pins, you will probably wonder if there is a Pinterest keyword tool to use.

Currently, the best way to search for keywords for Pinterest is right on Pinterest. How? When you type a search query on Pinterest, you will notice that you will automatically be prompted with keywords, as it happens on Google: these suggestions refer to the most frequent search phrases.

After typing, a set of additional keywords will be displayed below the search bar.

As well as Google’s SEO, Pinterest’s SEO is also based on long tail keywords (ie keywords consisting of multiple terms rather than single word keywords). With generic keywords the competition is always wider, so the advice is to focus on long tail keywords to get more targeted results.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to display the exact number of keyword searches on Pinterest. But, if you are interested, you can look at the categories of Pinterest and learn more about the topics to see how many people have indicated they are interested in the topic. This will give you an idea of ​​how popular a particular keyword is.

Once you have identified the appropriate keywords and, above all, once you understand how to use them, you will already be one step ahead of the competition!

3. Supports call-to-action with visual design

The most important part of each description is the inclusion of an appropriate call-to-action that directs users to the attached link. Let people who might  be interested know that they can find out more about your brand by visiting your website and not just the Pinterest profile.

To integrate this approach to your marketing on Pinterest, create an image that combines a clear CTA (call to action) with a button.

4. Intrigue the user with the promise to reveal more

One thing that makes users jump from a Pin to a website is curiosity.

There are some elements that can be used to intrigue users through your Pin, such as intriguing titles, descriptions or text overlays on the image of your Pin.

Regardless of whether you use one or all three options, use them to make a promise of information that will enhance the experience of users viewing your Pin.

People will click on your Pin with the expectation that you will provide more information on the page to which your Pin connects.

5. Give your audience a sense of urgency!

People are attracted by those offers that create a sense of urgency, such as offers that expire in a short time, limited edition products or products which are about to run out.

The sense of urgency creates the so-called “Fear of Missing out” (FOMO) or the fear of being too late.

The FOMO is what leads people to take the opportunity to use a discount, knowing that the offer will expire quickly, and is the reason why they click and buy something in a short time because it is almost running out. So you can play on that fear but telling your audience that they will lose our on something if they do not click and act immediately.

What are the prospects for Pinterest SEO in 2019

In 2018, the most obvious changes were the introduction of hashtags, board sections, visual search with Lens and the removal of likes and Repin counts.

With all these changes, it is certainly not easy to predict with any certainty what direction SEO will take in 2019.

What can you do about it?

The answer is simple. Do what every search engine wants you to do: concentrate on creating high quality content for your readers!

In this guide I have shown you how to use Pinterest SEO to increase the traffic of your website. In addition, I have explained a little about the new Smart Feed algorithm and given you some suggestions for how to optimize your Pins and how they are displayed.

Now it’s your turn! Go to your Pinterest account and fill in your biography, boards and pins with relevant keywords so your content will show up in search results. Try to put the recommendations I have given you into practice and monitor your results.

Some FAQs on Pinterest and SEO

Now you know how to make your Pins appear on Pinterest!

However, there are still some questions that are often asked about Pinterest, especially when it comes to a good SEO strategy.

1. Should I keep or delete the poorly performing Pins?

According to some studies, deleting Pins with only a few reshares can increase the quality of the Pinterest account.

On the other hand, eliminating pins that today are poorly performing, but which have previously remained viral for months or even years, could make you lose thousands of visitors.

So it all depends on where you are willing to invest your time: do you want to spend time eliminating Pins or creating new content?

2. When you Repin the contents of other users should you change the description?

There are many bloggers and website owners who do not know much about Pinterest. As a result, there are many fantastic and interesting articles that are however “disassembled” by poor and keyword-free descriptions.

Writing a good description for each Pin certainly takes time, but for a blogger or a brand that wants to invest on Pinterest is very important and will lead to results. In fact, a good description of both the Pin and the Repin leads to an improvement in the quality of your Pins and leads to getting more Repins. Try it yourself and monitor your results, so you can evaluate them compared to the time invested.

3. Should I use or not use hashtags?

Until recently, Pinterest was an “anti-hashtag” platform. Today, hashtags are accepted, but Pinterest still recommends not using more than 20 per pin.

Hashtags are clickable and searchable, but unlike other Pinterest content, search results based on hashtags show the pins in chronological order, rather than starting from the best.

4. How can you ensure that the optimized descriptions are used by users when they share your blog posts?

If you set up your blog on WordPress, you can use a WordPress plug-in such as Social Warfare to make sure that the description and image in your blog post are used by users when they download the post.

Alternatively, if you do not use a plug-in, add the description to the alt text of the image.

5. How much time is needed to get a large amount of traffic to your website?

Tendency in the first 6-8 months traffic growth is very slow, but this is normal: do not lose heart too soon and continue to publish Pins with constancy and strategy to achieve results that you will see increase week after week.
On Pinterest, the involvement of your audience really makes a big difference, so make them feel part of your business and encourage them to share more of your content.

Pinterest needs more time to get results than what happens with Facebook or Instagram. Be patient and follow the Pinterest marketing strategy step by step to see your business take off on Pinterest.

The amount of traffic that will arrive to your website will surprise you!

6. Is it important to add a text superimposed on the image of a Pin?

Sometimes text over an image detracts from the image itself. But try to look from the user’s perspective: if the photo is confusing, the text can help to tell the story behind the image and draw attention.

Generally, the Pin with a beautiful image and some text are the pins which perform the best, as they intrigue the user and make them linger on your profile, increasing the likelihood of visiting the website.

In addition, pay attention to color and graphics: these are elements that help attract the attention of users!

Accelerate your business with Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the best sources of traffic for many websites and some online brands confirm this. This is why many companies want to find out more about how Pinterest works.

If you want to get real growth and you’re seeing Pinterest as a possible solution, you have to commit yourself to designing Pins that make people want to click!

With the help of the tips discussed in this article, you can optimize your Pins for clicks and increase traffic on your website.

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