June 5, 2012

Pinterest as an SEO Strategy: Is It Worth Considering?

During its beginning stages, Pinterest was designed for pin-happy individuals who wanted to create mood or inspiration boards for just about anything. Today though, Pinterest is much more than that and is fast becoming one of social media’s newest and biggest sweethearts. Now the question is is it very important for optimization practices? How important is it and is it worth the time to invest in Pinterest and include it in the current strategy?

What Is Pinterest?

Pinterest in a social photo sharing website that utilizes the use of pinboards, allowing users to create and manage themed pinboards where they can post (pin) photos of anything they like. Users can upload photos or simply pin them from websites. They can also browse through pinboards of other people for inspiration. They can also re-pin images and like and comment on the photos.

Pinterest is now the third leading social media site in the United States & Europe

The main principle behind Pinterest is to connect people from all over the world using the things which are interesting to them. To date, the social media site has over 10 million users and continues to spark plenty of attention to date.

Why Shift Attention to Pinterest?

With Facebook and Twitter being popular places for business and website promotion, why is there a need to consider Pinterest?

One main reason to do so is that Pinterest is quickly booming. In January of 2011, it had just a little over 100,000 users. Fast forward a year later, it had over 4.4 million users. In March, it had over 10 million users already, surpassing other websites for photo sharing like Picasa and Flickr. If you haven’t done it yet, now it’s time’s to go and speak with a SEO company about Pinterest.

According to a report posted at Mashable.com, Pinterest is currently the third most popular social media website in the United States right after Facebook and Twitter.

With that growth, Pinterest is also looking forward to going global, planning to add languages such as Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese.

In the past, the website was initially popular with women, but now there is an ongoing shift in gender, as it continues to attract more male users as well.

How Does It Help Your SEO Efforts?

A look at pins in Pinterest.

Pinterest helps your SEO efforts by creating high-quality Backlinks. Why? Because everything that you pin in Pinterest comes with a link. So, if you pin photos from your website, these photos also have links that follow back to your site. Your photos and your links are then available for everyone in Pinterest to see and share, and the more people share your photos, the more high quality Backlinks are created.

Some Things to Consider When Pinning

If you are thinking of using Pinterest aside from other SEO strategies, here are some tips that you should keep in mind:

Create a profile for your business where you can share your content.
Upload your own images, coming from your site. Make sure that you regularly share fresh photos and content.
Use keywords in your file names. A photo named “keyword.jpg” will rank better than “photo_01232.jpg.”
Use descriptions. Pinterest allows you to post descriptions of up to 500 characters, so make use of this space to give your photos short yet descriptive captions.
Make use of the right categories so that your photos will appear in the right category search.
Comment on other people’s boards and pins, especially those with similar categories and interests to you.
Pin and repin content not related to your business, so you can have a variety of things to share to your followers, making your profile more diverse and compelling.
Don’t over-advertise. While marketing is welcome in Pinterest, do not be lured into spamming and in-your-face promotion. Keep in mind that it is still a social media platform where people come to interact, join in the conversation and find out new interesting things.
Read up on guides and tips that will help you maximize the edge Pinterest will give your SEO campaigns.

What’s The Verdict?

Indeed, Pinterest is becoming a major player among the many social media sites, and is a great component for any SEO strategy. What is the reason behind its success? Users are drawn to the fact that they can create, share, and find creative images with other people.

You do not have to have a lifestyle-related business to do well in Pinterest. Your business can be about anything at all, you just need to look for ways of sharing that makes your brand fun.

So go ahead and try Pinterest for some time, and see how it works for your site.

This is a guest post and the views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this site. The author, Brian Nixon, is a professional search engine optimizer who writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Canadian company that provides top rated SEO services to businesses across North America. For more information please visit pitstopmedia.com

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