How Pinterest can help your website rank higher on Google

How to improve your Google ranking

Did you know that optimizing your presence on Pinterest can help your website rank higher in Google’s search engine?

Search engines will put a higher value on your website depending on how many other sites or blogs are linking to yours. And the more sites that can send you a backlink, the higher your site shows up in a Google search.

So am I saying that every time you share your pins that it creates a backlink to your site? Kinda sorta … but not really.

The backlinks that improve your SEO fall into what they call follow-links, which means: a link that is counted as a specific point that sends an SEO boost to the page rank of the end point website helping it go higher in the search results. 

The pin itself isn’t a follow-link but the content connected to that pin can be the specific point that can create the follow-link.

 

When the content you post that’s connected to your blog posts or your email opt-in gets shared to your Pinterest board, you’re starting the process of adding more backlinks to your website.

And the more pinners who reshare your content/pins on your boards, Google picks it up that people who are searching for those keywords are getting results from your board’s content. Google then recognizes that the content in your Pinterest boards as FRESH new content for their search.

And when this happens, your Pinterest boards will move up higher in the Google search rankings.

 

How Pinterest Boosts Your Google Ranking

What can you do to help your content get picked up in a Google search? Try out these steps to make sure that your pins get found by more people who can help you increase your follow-links by clicking back to your website.

Turn off the search privacy button

In the settings section of your profile, scroll down to Privacy & Data. It should default to the OFF mode – meaning that the box has NOT been checked.

If the box has been clicked for some reason, unclick and turn it off. This will make sure that your profile and your boards are not private and they’ll show up in a Google search.

 

 

Maximize your Pinterest account for more clicks back to your site

While I realize that this post is about improving your ranking on Google, I recommend that you focus your efforts on pinning and build your SEO strategy with Pinterest first.

This process starts by choosing a keyword or phrase that you want to see your ranking improve on Google. I suggest that you choose a long tail keyword as you have a better chance of seeing your content come up in search versus trying to use a one-word keyword that’s being used by way too many people.

Long tail keywords are 3 – 4 keywords in a phrase which are specific to the content that you’re pinning. When a Pinner uses a specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for something specific that they want to learn more about, buy or read.

And when you can get that specific with your keywords, you have a greater chance to convert that repin into a click to your website.

Let’s say that I sell wedding planners that have a checklist and planning ideas for your big day. I log into Pinterest and run a search for keywords by typing in wedding planners into the guided search bar at the top:

 

 

Pinterest will suggest additional words to add to my original keyword, giving me a phrase that is actively being searched for by other pinners. Since my wedding planner has checklists and free printables, I can already see several good options for me to choose for my long tail keyword phrase.

 

To get even more ideas, I could hit enter after my keywords ‘wedding planners’ and see what Pinterest pulls up with their suggested words to help me pull together my long tail keyword phrase.

 

 

Can you see the different colored boxes listed under your results? Pinterest is sharing with you even more options for your keywords that are actively being searched on Pinterest.

Reading from the left side, the first keyword in the boxes is the word with the highest traffic. And it works it way down the list based on the order of the most highly searched terms down to the least ones.

To find the long tail keywords for your content, click on the first box under your search results. Keep clicking on the options for the keyword boxes until you no longer see anymore boxes appear.

Once you’ve reached the end of the long tail path, you should have a very specific keyword phrase that describes the content of your pin. Now you can add this keyword-rich phrase in your pin’s headline and in the pin description.

 

How this works with Google

Your next step is to set up a new board and name it with your long tail keyword phrase.

Let’s say that I decided to use Wedding Planners Printables as my long tail phrase – this came up in my first search and it’s one of the first colorful boxes under my search results.

Once I set up my new board, I can start pinning all sorts of amazing pins to my new board. I want to make sure that I’m not putting all wedding related pins with stuff like wedding dresses or reception ideas. I want to make sure that every pin that I add – ESPECIALLY pins with my own content connected to them! – has my long tail keyword phrase in the headline title and in the pin descriptions.

As my new Wedding Planners Printables board gets populated with more pins, Google recognizes that the content pinned to my board has ‘fresh’ new content connected to a search about Wedding Planners Printables.

The more active my new board gets with repins and followers, the more Google recognizes that this link to my Pinterest board is something that people are consistently clicking into to get information about wedding planners. And when the Google algorithm picks up my board as a good search result, it starts to move up in Google’s search rankings.

 

Ranking on Google requires a plan

To recap the steps to help your website rank higher on Google:

1. Choose long tail keywords that you know your customers or readers are looking for.

2. You can either run a search in the guided search bar on the top or use the colorful boxes under the results to determine which words you’ll add to your keywords to create your long tail keyword phrase.

3. Create a new board using your long tail keyword phrase as the name of the board.

4. Pin your content to the board and make sure that you’ve added your long tail keyword phrase either to the headline title or in the pin descriptions.

5. Frequently pin to the board with lots of content that’s not your own – specifically pins with your niche keywords – to keep showing Google that your board has ‘fresh’ content connected to the board’s link.

6. Create new pins for all of the content that you’re sharing to this board. The more pins you have on your new board, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate follow-links to your website.

 

Need more help with your Pinterest Process?

If you need more help with your Pinterest Process, I’ve pulled together a 25-page Pinterest Process Workbook to give you simple easy to follow action steps to give you clarity with your Pinterest strategy.

What you’ll learn:

• Understand how Pinterest decides which pins show up in the feed
• How to get more people to repin your blog posts, products and services
• Step-by-step process to create a personalized Pinterest strategy
• Monitor what’s working and what needs tweaking

You’ll also get a tracking guide that you can customize to monitor your Pinterest marketing plans so you can see which boards you should be pinning to and where to focus your time on Pinterest. Plus, you’ll get printable tracking worksheets to use every month to track your progress … all of this cool stuff for just $34 bucks!

Click here to get your instant download of The Pinterest Process Workbook.