How Pinterest can help your SEO efforts

One of my favorite articles about How Pinterest can help your SEO efforts was published almost a year ago by Search Engine Land. The article titled, Pinterest SEO: 7 Tips From A Pinterest Engineer really got my wheels turning about how my clients could leverage this social channel for SEO. Pinterest may not seem like a fit for the home services or dental category but the domain authority of Pinterest is undeniable. If we could somehow create interest in our Pinterest boards the value of the client headed over to our site is high plus the link strength gives our site more authority with search engines.

So here is my take away from the seven tips from a Pinterest Engineer and some other easy action steps for businesses to take to get the Pinterest train rolling.

Pinterest Strategy for Small Business

The reality of running a small business is that you could spend all day producing social media content and that would be great if you had nothing else to do right? So I challenge you to set aside 30 minutes, one day per week and get the Pinterest ball rolling. Now, as Martin Beck mentions’ in his article, you may not even have a Pinterest page set up correctly, so you will need to follow his steps to set up a Pinterest profile for your business that is optimized correctly. Take some time to do that and once you have completed his steps, come back here.

Your Pinterest business Page is set up! Congratulations, now what?

As I mentioned before, calendar 30 minutes a week to pinning. Below are some goals for effective Pinterest activity in those 30 minutes.

You want to set up boards that match the core of your business and branch out from there. EX: You are an Endodontist: Core boards could be, Myths about Root Canals, Tooth Saving Tips, Root Canal Safety, Facts about Dental Implants.

Pin 5-7 blogs and graphics from your website per week

Follow 20+ businesses in your geographical area a week – If 5 follow you back, you’re in good shape!

Re-pin 10+ pins from industry leaders.

Add one new board a month. Be sure to ad geo tags to each board based on where your business is located if you have a brick and mortar.

Last tip, Don’t get sucked in! Pinterest is fun, and it’s easy to get sucked in to searching, before you know it you’re 20 minutes in to your weekly pinning session and have only accomplished researching your latest crock pot experiment. Set an appointment with yourself to be focused and accountable. If you can accomplish the above list once a week you will have a rich flourishing SEO focused Pinterest Account in no time.

Don’t believe me?, let’s do the math:

One Week: 15 pins & 20 follows

One Month: 60 pins & 80 follows

One Year: 780 pins & 1,040

I know what you’re thinking, you want to jump ahead and dedicate 3 hours a day for 6 weeks to growing your Pinterest page. Don’t. You will burn out and never log back in. Not only that, SEO is a constant effort, it would be easy to create an awesome Pinterest account and never have to touch it again but that’s not what the search engines want to see. They want consistent effort to creating interesting content for your audience. I’m challenging you to do it my way! I have created a private Facebook group called Social Sharing for SEO where like minded businesses can collaborate and support each other’s efforts. Click here to JOIN.

Best,

Lauren