Use The Pinterest Search Engine to Drive More Traffic to Your Website

Millions of people love finding great ideas, information, and products from Pinterest.  Did you know that this social network also serves as a powerful search engine that can provide valuable links to your website?  Now is the time to take advantage of this free opportunity to reach your target market.
As with most marketing, you’ll find Pinterest pays off much better if you can brand yourself as an expert in your niche. If you sell gift baskets, for example, you want your pins, boards, and brands to be at the top of the page whenever someone searches Pinterest for gift baskets.
If that sounds a lot like your standard SEO, that’s because it is – and it works much the same as Google search.

What is the best way to get started?

Like a plant without water, your account will dry up and fade away if it’s not cared for. You don’t have to spend hours a day nurturing your boards and pins. To encourage growth and visibility here are a few simple steps to take:

• Follow people. This might seem obvious, but you need to actively seek out new people to follow. Spend a few minutes every day following new people, and your Pinterest account will look and feel healthier. Weed out the spam or followers who are not relevant to your niche in order to attract the most re-pins.
• Pin stuff. Until you get in the habit, this might not come so easy to you, but you really do need to learn to use that Pin-It bookmarklet you installed on your website. Do the same for other interesting content you run into online. Next time you see a cool new use for a product, or a great how-to infographic that relates to your brand, pin it!
• Tag your pins. This will help other Pinterest users find you quickly. Include relevant hashtags on your pins, which help users find your brand as they use the intuitive search bar.
• Create meaningful boards. A board with the name of “business” doesn’t really say much about its content, and is very generic. Using more detailed, specific descriptions helps users find you, and helps to establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

Why is Pinterest a Great Traffic Generator?

Did you know that this social network is chosen by 60 percent of online users over other search engines? And 72 percent say they are actually inspired to make a purchase just by looking according to new data from Pinterest Business.
Are you ready to get a percentage of them too?
Here’s another statistic for you — 90 percent of users on Pinterest report that the website helps them make a purchase. Clearly there is a growing number of people turning to this platform as a way to be inspired and find what they need or desire.
And Pinterest also reports that more referral traffic comes from their website than any other social network!

Can you imagine how great that would be for your website?

Visual marketing in every field has grown in popularity in recent years and is likely to continue to grow. Using Pinterest as one of your main content platforms to share images is one of the easiest ways to generate traffic to your blog.
Pinterest is also a great source to build online relationships and a community of people that are excited about your brand. It’s a perfect source for establishing an online community of potential buyers as well. These people are more likely to recommend your brand to others as they view your content as helpful and useful.
When you share links and high-quality images or video, you encourage people to share your content and to visit your blog. It’s important to Pin at least 10 pins daily. A few of the pins of stuff that links back to your website. Your content is short lived on Facebook or Twitter. Meanwhile Your content on Pinterest appears fresh even when things were pinned a year ago. This means you constantly have a new stream of people searching your stuff and re-pinning.
If you are using Pinterest for Business, which is free to signup for, your pins and content can get even more visibility with Rich Pins. These can be generated from articles, app downloads, travel information, favorite films, recipes, and purchases online. After deciding what applies to your website simply apply right at Pinterest here. Once you’re approved your website address and pins will be in bold letters.

Get Your Stuff Pinned

Pinterest’s terms of service don’t explicitly forbid self-promotion, but they clearly look down upon it. But if that’s the case, how can you use Pinterest to drive traffic to your site?
It’s easy. You simply have to get others to do your pinning for you.
Of course you want your blog visitors to do more than just pin your posts. You want them to follow you on Pinterest as well. In addition to the code snippet you can copy right from Pinterest, there are a large variety of WordPress plugins both paid and free to do all the heavy lifting for you.

How Pinterest Helps Your SEO

Obviously, everything that is pinned from your site offers a link back. Which is still important in your overall SEO strategy. Every time your pin is re-pinned, that’s another link. Can you see how quickly Pinterest can become a power tool in your SEO toolbox? And because this is also a social network your pins will also help contribute to social signals. Which also helps your website come up the ranks in search.
Pinterest is not just a fun site to store favorite images of things you want to do. Pinterest for business as a way to generate traffic can lead to quality visitors to your website. Keep a close eye on what people are pinning, and make an effort to do more of the same. And be sure to share with your other social networks when people pin your posts.