Don’t Overlook Pinterest’s Top Keyword Opportunities

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100 million active users. That’s too big a number to ignore, especially if you are in an industry that is visually-oriented or targets women, who make up 85 percent of “pinners.”

Even if you aren’t in those categories, there is room for making a place for yourself on Pinterest, as this post from the HubSpot blog shows: 7 Industries You Wouldn’t Expect to Be Creative on Pinterest, But Are.

To make the most, however, of your Pinterest efforts, you’ll want to optimize your pins for search so that those 100 million users can find you.

Find 10 tips for optimizing Pinterest for search, along with details on setting up a business account that drives traffic back to your website in our free ebook How to Optimize and Measure Your Business Pinterest Account.

Optimize Your Pin Descriptions

One of the best places to incorporate keywords is in the 500 character pin description. Don’t just pin and go.

HubSpot social media scientist Dan Zarrella researched 11,000 pins and found that the most re-pinned and commented on items had descriptions ranging from 200 to 310 words.

What should you include in your pin descriptions?

Terms your users will relate to, including exact word matching. For example, if users are likely to search “St. Louis small business accounting,” use that exact phrase, rather “small business accountants in St. Louis.” While you may still be found, you’ll rank higher when the phrase matches exactly.

Include links to the original product or content. These links are one more opportunity to bring Pinterest users back to your website, which is where you have the opportunity to convert them from visitors into leads.

Consider including instructions. While this may apply more to B2C companies selling a product, providing some additional information about how to use the product or service adds value to the pin.

So what mistakes do you want to avoid in writing pin descriptions?

To start, don’t be lazy and ignore them altogether.
Don’t use language your customers don’t understand (we’ve talked about corporate jargon and buzzwords in blog posts - the same rules apply on Pinterest).
Don’t link to irrelevant content.
And don’t try to overstuff the description with keywords.

Optimize Your Pinterest Image Names and Alt Text

Optimizing your images names and alt text is vital for website and blog SEO. That’s why we’ve talked about it time and again and again.

So, if you are doing it right on your website and your blog, when you pin your own content, those images should already to optimized for search with descriptive image names and alt text that contains keywords.

If you aren’t already doing this, now is the time to start. See the blog posts linked above for simple steps to follow.

Along with optimizing your image names and alt text, work to optimize your image sizes to match Pinterest parameters. Pinterest images don’t have restrictions regarding the height, but widths are limited to 554 pixels. Going back to Dan Zarrella’s analysis that we referenced earlier, he also found that taller images were more likely to be repinned than shorter ones, so use that to your advantage.

Pinterest is growing in overall popularity, including its use by both B2B and B2C brands to promote content. Find more advice on optimizing your business Pinterest account in these blog posts: