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Pinterest: The Must-Have Social Media Platform

These days it seems like there’s a new site that pops up every day claiming to be the next best thing when it comes to promoting your business, but does your site really need another social media platform to manage? Well, if you’re going to add additional social platform to your roster, Pinterest is the way to go.

Now let me tell you why Pinterest is a must-have social media platform. First things first, here’s a little background on this creative site we’ve all come to know and love. Pinterest is an Internet platform used to collect ideas and images for projects/interests in a visual method. Users can then create and share their collections with other users (known as, boards) of their visual bookmarks (known as, Pins).

Some fun facts:

It’s available in 21 different languages
83% of users are women
There’s an average 158 pins posted daily by each Pinterest user
The most ‘pinning’ takes places within 10:00–11:00 p.m.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself “I’m not an E-commerce site.” Well, that’s okay and let me tell you why. For one, Pinterest can be a great way for businesses to connect with their audiences and display information using attractive images rather than repetitive wordy content. Although you may not be doing much E-commerce with your site, there’s still an SEO benefit when it comes to Pinterest. When companies are actively on Pinterest, they can improve their rankings on search engines like Google and Yahoo/Bing. Pinterest can also drive a great amount of referral traffic to websites as well, leading websites to rank higher within the search engines.

There are a few ways that you can successfully manage your Pinterest and find more wins than woes, as well:

Make your website ‘Pin-friendly’

When users frequent your site, there’s a strong chance if they see content that strikes their interest, they’re going to want to Pin those items.
The reason for this is mostly due to the fact they want a place that holds all their items for a future read.

Adding the ‘Pin This’ Button

Providing images at the top of pages and articles with the ‘Pin It’ button embedded within the picture
This allows users to Pin your image directly to their Pinterest, which then shares your website on a different social media platform, (via. Pinterest)

Adding Locations to Your Pins (Place Pins)

Great for sharing where your pins are located

Examples:
Where the restaurant you visited and posted is located
Where to buy the clothing items you’re posting
Vacation destinations, etc.
Top places to eat, with their correlating destinations attached

This feature allows Pinterest users to share a mapped outline of where your pins can be found and shared

Pinterest is steadily becoming one of the fastest growing and most predominant social networking sites on the web. Unlike the other top-tier level social networks, Pinterest allows companies/users to post, share, and spread their content, which has huge gains in your websites SEO efforts. Here are some great examples of how Pinterest can assist in your SEO efforts.

Allows Users To Share Unique Content:

Ability to share your content globally
Capability to share any image of your choosing by creating specific boards and pinning certain pins
Allows users to target their content around blogs, office images, items to be sold and so much more

Gain Future Followers

Be sure to link your Twitter and Facebook to your Pinterest account
This feature will notify your users on your other social media platforms of your Pinterest, which will lead your Twitter followers and Facebook fans to then follow your Pinterest account
This increases your chances of showing up in future search results

Builds Potential Backlinks

The more pins being shared or posted from within your Pinterest/Website increases your backlink capabilities
In SEO terms, backlinks are extremely valuable and with proper usage, your Pinterest can create many useful and successful backlinks
Additionally, every time your pin is shared the user has the ability to alter the text descriptions, which increases your contents expansion efforts and its exposure to the SEO efforts within your website

Targeting Specific Keywords

The ability to target specific keywords within your Pinterest boards and Pins descriptions is unlimited
When users search specific keywords, (for example, Red Shirts) your pins are more likely to show up in those search results if you have specific keyword within your pins description
When you specifically enter keywords into your pins descriptions, this increases the chances of your pins showing up within search results and being repinned

As you can see, I could go on for days why Pinterest is a ‘must-have’ when it comes to your sites SEO efforts. There’s so many exciting ways you can make Pinterest fun and collaborative for users, clients, etc. These efforts will not only help, but will increase your ability to reach your target audience and implement additional SEO benefits.

Happy Pinning!

This article was originally published by SEER Interactive

Published: August 12, 2014
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SEER Interactive

SEER brings a wealth of knowledge that collectively spans decades of Search Marketing, SEO and Analytics experience. Our team likes to win—A LOT, and not in a trip-an-old-lady-down-a-flight-of-stairs-to-win way. Search engines are our scoreboards. We’re able to use our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube channels to reach every facet of the Search and Business communities. By freely sharing best practices, strategies, and insights, we lift the industry as a whole and call out spammers, scammers and overall snake oil salesmen.