Pinterest and SEO

Is pinterest usefull for SEO

[sim100]

Hello,
I wonder if Pinterest is usefull for SEO?
I mean I have Pinterest account with few hundred of photos (travel photos) but nothing appear on Google when I make a search!

Someone has experience with Pinterest and SEO? Does is bring something or do I waste my time?

Thank you

[RandallTT]

I have been using Pinterest for some of my campaigns and I find it useful so far. It has been one of the top sources for my website's traffic (according to Google Analytics). I think this is what Pinterest is good at - providing organic traffic to your website.

[al_gomez]

Pinterest just like any other website, when done right it can be a good site to add on your social media arsenal. It can help you in terms of brand awareness, referral traffic and build loyalty.

If you are asking how Pinterest can affect SEO, it will start first on the keyword choices. Google is indexing and reading Pinterest's content which makes your pins searchable to users.

Just make sure you are able to optimize the whole account - the profile picture, name, bio, boards, keyword-rich descriptions and verify the website. You can also link this to your other social media account.

Next, work on the followers. Build connections through providing people quality images and worthy to be pinned infographics or video. Be responsive, friendly and active at all times for you will never realize its value if you are only to set this thing up and leave it as it was.

Here in Pinterest, the advantage is more likely to be in those websites with more images like e-commerce sites but its reach isn't limited to them. Business with less image can use a little creativity by turning quote into image or testimonial into pinnable pictures.

[David_SEO]

Pinterest is one of the most effective way of SEO in current trend and I personally have realized this. You just need to pin posts on your relevant topic, Create more boards and include pins to each and every board as much as possible and try to maintain the profile everyday. Then you can see the traffic to your pinterest profile from its new feature called pinterest analytics.. Maintain and see the magic!

[chrisv1963]

I personally don't use Pinterest for SEO. It's a form of artificial link building and we all know what Google thinks about artificial links.

[helleborine]

The loss of traffic from my content being on Pinterest is not offset by any increased traffic. But my website comes first for my broadest set of keywords anyway.

[JS_Harris]

If you watermark your images and allow them to be pinned you might get some value in the proposition but otherwise Pinterest isn't much more than a scraper site, unless you are after the same demographic of visitor. In that case get on Pinterest and start pinning stuff yourself on your own account and interact with the pinners.

[wheel]

Sugarrae just published an ebook on how she set up a website and only used pinterest to drive traffic. She ended up with 50K backlinks just from her pinterest stuff.

So despite earlier objections to this type of stuff on my part, I've been proven wrong. In fact, as I struggle for new backlinks, I am seriously considering using sugarrae's tactics to get new backlinks to my website - and my website does not lend itself well to direct social media promotion.

I suspect that pinterst may also lend itself better to project type seo rather than ongong. i.e. I can build a bunch of stuff and release it in timed intervals. That seems better than the ongoing effort a serious twitter presence would require.

[RhinoFish]

link to her ebook?

[htmlbasictutor]

I have been using Pinterest for one site. The pinned images have the site logo on them. I am getting referral clicks and the images on Pinterest are doing well if you were to look at the images results in certain searches. When the images are in the initial band of images within the search results that is a great feeling. The descriptions of our images on Pinterest are SEO optimized so many be that is why we are doing well in the image searches.

[wheel]

>>>>> link to her ebook?

[sugarrae.com...]

If the question is "how do I get real links using Pinterest", then for $19 at that link you'll have your answer.

[didi15]

some people said it's good for SEO if we put the keyword from our site put on board that we created on pinterest. and start pin with our link site.

[JS_Harris]

*UPDATE*

- In Google search if you have a ranking image you do not get a text ranking for that page
- If your image is pinned to Pinterest it's very likely that at least some of the time your image is replaced with the Pinterest version giving you NO ranking at all for image or text

So, in short, trying to promote your own site on Pinterest leaves you extremely vulnerable to having Google favor Pinterest over your site. That first issue is also a real problem for webmasters...

I don't know WHY Google would remove your text rank if your image is in the top 3-4 but I do know that the top 3-4 images are displayed on text search results and that webmaster tools treats an image thumbnail on a text search as the same as a text entry. In other words if you have a text ranking of #8 and you move up to #4 there is a very real chance that an image from your page REMOVES your textual entry in rankings and replaces it with a thumbnail image. Having that image replaced intermittently by Pinterest can decimate your traffic.

In fact you can spot this in your webmaster tools. You will rank in the 1.1 to 1.4 spots for a keyword but get virtually no traffic. A quick check for that keyword will reveal that you have an image result in the "web" search rankings, and thus no actual text result in that "web" search. Instead of receiving less traffic you get virtually none when Pinterest image starts to be shown instead of yours on these image/web hybrid pages.

*SOLUTION* - I found one INSTANT solution to losing web rankings to image issues, remove all images. When I did this I instantly found that my web traffic jumped in the order of 1600% which makes sense since I no longer had images appearing in web searches and so I received my proper "web" ranking with a text entry(title+description instead of image).

Google's quirks combined with Pinterest snipping of images is a real problem.

[engine]

Thanks for posting that, JS_Harris.
Very interesting, indeed.

May I suggest you submit the discovery to a new thread in Google SEO News?

[JS_Harris]

Hi Engine. It's a bit off topic so I'll post when I know more. Thanks.