Just when you thought you had your social media strategy and web presence under control, yet another social networking site is becoming mainstream. Six months ago it was Google+, now it’s Pinterest and it is gaining momentum in popularity as well as relevance in organic search.
Pinterest is a social photo sharing website that has also been described as an online pin board. Its more than 10 million registered users, over 2 million of whom log in every day, "pin" photos, graphics, and videos into categories they create based on their own personal interests. Pinterest users also share their pins on Facebook and Tweet them.
"Their own interests" may indeed include images that represent your brand. Pinning images is how your visitors, prospects, clients and fans want to visually socialize your organization.
The likes of GE and IBM are using Pinterest, proving that it is relevant to both B2C and B2B.
Here are eight SEO reasons to add Pinterest to your web presence and how to get started.
1. Google
Pinterest content is being crawled and indexed by Google, therefore it will impact your SEO rankings. Think of it as an opportunity to outrank a competitor for a keyword. If you are pinning on behalf of your organization, take the time to optimize Pinterest photo comments with important keyword phrases. If you have control over image file names when originally published, take the time to optimize photo descriptions for keywords as well.
2. Backlinks & Referrals
Every image pinned to a Board has a link back to its original published source. These are valuable backlinks and can provide referral traffic as well. Capitalize on this. Posting your product and service images and videos is a great place to start. However, keep in mind that it’s important to avoid being blatantly self-promotional - remember to provide value to your audience by sharing quality content that is relevant to their interests and worth liking, commenting on, and re-pinning.
3. The Pinterest Search Box
With millions of visitors to Pinterest every day, people are looking for brands via the Pinterest search box. Is your brand available? Does your Pinterest presence represent and reinforce your brand to a prospect who might be searching?
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