How to Improve Pinterest Search Optimization for Your Brand

A few months ago GlobalWebIndex released a survey of 2014 worldwide Internet users, which found that Pinterest had the largest growth in members and active users of all other social platforms in 2014, outperforming Tumblr in 2nd and Instagram in 3rd place. Among other stats, this highlights how important Pinterest is and what it could mean for your brand. From an SEO perspective, now is the time to get your Pinterest business account optimized for search and make sure Pinterest’s growing users are finding and sharing your content. Below are SEO tips to apply to your Pinterest business account today.

Start by Checking Your Pinterest Profile.
Your profile should include your business name, logo, a good description, and should be verified. When writing the description for your business profile, try to provide information about your brand or products through relevant keywords, without sounding spammy or losing brand voice. Also make sure your Pinterest account is verified. Verified accounts have a check mark next to the website URL.

A verified Pinterest account tell users that this is the official page for your brand, and can improve your page’s search authority. To get your account verified, follow these steps from Pinterest.

Categorize Your Boards and Create Short, Descriptive Titles.
When naming your boards, keep in mind that the title you choose for your board will become the unique URL for that page, so choose short, succinct titles that clearly describe the contents of the board. Apply this same categorization across your boards. You can use your brand’s website for ideas on how to categorize your Pinterest boards. You can also take the categorization on Pinterest a step further by incorporating new categories, like “Yellow Dresses” or “Summer Sandals,” to add customized pages for more niche markets.

Add Descriptions to Your Boards and Pins.
Add descriptions to each of your boards, including information about the type of products or features in the board.

Make sure you also add descriptions to each of your pins. Use this text space to describe the featured product as clearly as possible. If your pin relates to fashion, include what kind of clothing it is, who designed it, the season or seasons to wear it in, and any other relevant details. In the below example, there are two pins featuring long-sleeved denim dresses, but the second pin provides a more detailed description of the product.

Not only are good pin descriptions important for your Pinterest search optimization, but they also increase user click through rate. And, Pinterest users often do not change pin descriptions when sharing or repining. For brands, this means your pin descriptions get viewed, shared and re-shared on Pinterest with the exact content you want people to see.

Enable Rich Pins on Your Product Pages.
Rich pins provide Pinterest users with more information about your products, including pricing and availability, and create a better user experience. Pins that include rich pin information often rank better in Pinterest search and have a higher click through rate.

Thanks to rich pin markup, the below pin shows interested art-lovers that the Periodic Table print is in stock, and provides details about pricing and where to purchase.

Pinterest has a few different options for adding rich pins to your product pages, outlined here.

Add Pinterest Widgets to Your Website.
Install Pin-It buttons on your site’s product pages. Doing this will allow people to pin products from your website onto their Pinterest boards, and presents an opportunity to get your products and your site discovered on Pinterest. Another widget to add to your site is the Follow button. Adding the Follow button on some of your site’s main pages is a great technique for getting more visitors from your website to your Pinterest page. Both the Pin-It and Follow button can lead to more pins and repins from real people interested in your brand, which is great for search authority and rankings on Pinterest.

Depending on your site’s theme, you can add or build a widget to enable these buttons on your site.

Keep an Eye on Your Links.
Lastly, check the links in your pins regularly and make sure they’re going to live product pages on your site. If a Pinterest user likes one of your product pins, clicks to your website to view the product, and is served a 404 Not Found or dead page, he or she will have a poor user experience and you could miss out on a potential customer. Bad links can also hurt your site’s search ranking in Pinterest.

If a product goes out of stock or is no longer available, make sure you are directing users to the next best option on your site, like related product items or the main category page.