Pubcon Liveblog: Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities

Have an interest in Pinterest? You should – there are 70 million users are Pinterest, and their business is up for grabs. John Rampton, editor-at-large at Search Engine Journal, Stephan Spencer, vice president of SEO at Covario, and Cynthia Johnson, director of social media marketing at RankLab, share their insights on wielding Pinterest for to drive traffic, build community and boost sales.

Stephan Spencer on Pinterest Magic: 20+ Tips and Tricks that Will Amaze and Astound You

• The boards in the top row will get the most views. If you’re a sizeable brand, you might have several boards, and the boards you want to get traffic should be in that top row.
• Your descriptions are not only important for SEO – if you have great descriptions you can show in Pinterest newsletters.
• Vertical images perform better. Consider longer pins, but don’t make them too long.
• Text on photos instantly jazzes up the photos and are more likely to attract attention. Only choose text that complements the photo – it’s easy to choose something bad.

Content Ideas and How to Spread Content

Take advantages of the popularity of memes, quotes and infographics

Create your own memes with online tools:

• Canva
• Pinstamatic (only for Pinterest)
• Visual.ly

Get content out there by interacting with influencers. Don’t have influential followers? Tag an influencer’s Twitter handle and then tweet out the pin!

To every turn there is a season. Seasonal items do fantastically on Pinterest. Be about a month ahead. Don’t be like Kohl’s and post Christmas tree pins in August. Do consider organizing your boards by season.

Enabling Rich Pins

Rich pins should show a little taste to what is on the website. Rich pins can highlight:

• Business location
• Real time pricing
• Article snippets
• Movie ratings
• Pinboards managed by several contributors
• Invite key influencers to pin to it
• Shows on every contributor’s page

Group Pinboards

Avoid pinning at dinner time – your audience is mostly women and that’s not a good time. Focus on early mornings or weekends.

The tool Ahalogy lets marketers:

• Schedule pins
• Edit photos
• License content

John Rampton: 13 Tips to Rock Your Pinterest Account

1. Connect all your accounts and share.
2. Tag other pinners in your posts. (You can only tag those you are friends with).
3. Like and comment on other people’s pins. 99% of the time you should be like, sharing, pinning and commenting – you should only be promoting yourself 1% of the time. It’s about building community, not promoting yourself.
4. Write an informative description. Use hashtags.
5. Tip iPhone apps to create beautiful pics. Rampton’s favorite apps are PicArt, Over, and BeautifulMess. Creating beautiful art leads to more engagement.
6. Auto add a Pin It Button to every photo. User Pinterest Image Pinner.
7. Replace your site with your website URL.
8. Add the price to your products. Consider changing the price on oft-pinned items by a penny – everyone pinning
9. Pin images of trending news in your niche.
10. Postris – Use this to see trends in your particular niche and gin inspiration for what people are searching and actually repining. Typically things start trending on Instagram and move to Pinterest. Posris is a tool for Instagram, but
11. Use ViralTag. Let’s your schedule out pins in advance.
12. Use NinjaPinner. This will automatically follow unfollow and like pins. (Side note: don’t unfollow people – there’s no point. Use NinjaPinner to follow those that follow you.)
13. Here is a 1 hour a week Pinterest Plan – Use Viral Tag to schedule pins of the next 7 days. Go to Pinterest, visit 30 to 50 pins that are popular to your niche and comment. Next, go to NinjaPinner and have it follow people that add you. Go into Google Analytics and check you stats.
14. Make sure your pins are visible to search. Turn privacy off.
15. Make sure Your Account is set up as business page
16. Verify your website.
17. Name your boards with keywords. Use location mode
18. Use keywords in your pin descriptions.
19. File names become your image name – change the file name to something relevant.
20. Create boards with repins only. They show up in search results.
21. Map your pins. Pinterest maps are powered by Foursquare – switch on the “add a map” functionality.
22. Share your boards.
23. Adjust your Pinterest strategy to support mobile traffic. 75% of Pinterest users will access Pinterest from a mobile device.
24. Keep your four best boards in the first four slots on your profile – why? Because those are the boards you see on mobile.
25. Consider your character limits. On iOS you only see up to 100 characters, on Android 125
26. Size your image appropriately.
27. Make sure you website is mobile-friendly. They’re likely going to be coming to your site via Pinterest on a mobile device – don’t send them to a bad user experience.

Cynthia Johnson: 14 Pinterest Tips to Expand Your Reach

1. Make sure your pins are visible to search. Turn privacy off.
2. Make sure Your Account is set up as business page
3. Verify your website.
4. Name your boards with keywords. Use location mode
5. Use keywords in your pin descriptions.
6. File names become your image name – change the file name to something relevant.
7. Create boards with repins only. They show up in search results.
8. Map your pins. Pinterest maps are powered by Foursquare – switch on the “add a map” functionality.
9. Share your boards.
10. Adjust your Pinterest strategy to support mobile traffic. 75% of Pinterest users will access Pinterest from a mobile device.
11. Keep your four best boards in the first four slots on your profile – why? Because those are the boards you see on mobile.
12. Consider your character limits. On iOS you only see up to 100 characters, on Android 125
13. Size your image appropriately.
14. Make sure you website is mobile-friendly. They’re likely going to be coming to your site via Pinterest on a mobile device – don’t send them to a bad user experience.

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.