How to Search Engine Optimize Your Pinterest Page

I’ve noticed that Pinterest isn’t just dominating the social media scene, but it’s starting to dominate quite a few of Google’s search engine results.

Many brands and online marketers are missing the opportunity to rank high forlong-tail keywords through the use of Pinterest.

What are long tail keywords? I’m going borrow the definition of a long tail keyword from an article from Search Engine Watch:

Essentially, long-tail keywords are less popular keywords because they have less search volume and less competition to rank for. Consider the following two examples: “home remedies for bed bugs” or “how to get rid of depression.” These are each considered long-tail keywords as compared to trying to rank for the much more competitive search terms “bed bugs” or “depression”.

Why would you want to use Pinterest to rank higher for keywords?

Some long tail keywords may have low competition but your website may be new and find it hard to compete for them still. The good news is that you can piggy back off of Pinterest since it is a strong domain authority site.

A strong domain authority allows for pages to show up higher on search results for relevant searches. This gives your business more visibility and higher chances of people clicking on your Pinterest. If you have some great visual content on that particular board, then it will help drive web traffic to your business website or e-commerce site.

How do you exactly use Pinterest to rank higher for the keywords you want? Here are three tactics for marketers that want to get their Pinterest page, and boards, to rank higher in search engine results.

1) Name Your Boards with Long Tail Keywords

If there’s a long tail keyword that you would like to rank well for in Google, consider naming your board with that particular keyword without sacrificing the brand.

For example the keyword, funny advertisements, has an estimated global search on Google of about 2,900 times a month for that exact term. When I type in that keyword on Google, there is only one Pinterest board specifically titled as “Funny Advertisements” that shows up on the first page of results. At the time of this writing, it was the only Pinterest board that uses that exact keyword, which is why it ranked so high. There was no competition from other pinners.

The exact url of that board looks like this:

pinterest.com/appltncre8ve/funny-advertisements

With the board containing the keyword and also having low competition, that specific Pinterest board is on the first page of Google. When I searched for it, it was ranked number 6 in the first page of results. And yes that’s my article on 17 Funny Advertisements that’s ranked number 4.

Pinterest allows you to create up to 350 boards, though I don’t recommend you maxing the number of boards for the sake of SEO. I would suggest no more than 20 to start off since it can be time consuming to manage all. This allows you to compete in Google for 20 + additional keywords that may be harder for your own website to compete with.

2) Ensure Your Board Descriptions are Keyword Rich

One of the biggest pet peeves I have about brands that use Pinterest is their sheer laziness to fill in the description of their Pinterest boards.

This is one of the Pinterset boards from Starbucks titled, “Real Food.” From an SEO perspective, titling the board Real Food isn’t the best since most people are not searching up the term for real food. However, the name of the board needs to be aligned with a company’s brand, and it’s understandable they titled it Real Food.

What’s an absolutely travesty is that the description of the board is left blank. This can easily be corrected when you click on the edit button on the board, and to fill out the description with keywords. To help with their search engine optimization, Starbucks could have stated in the description:

“Delicious Starbucks pastries, sandwiches, and food that we love. Our board also contains some of our favourite foods and pastries that we would love to try and eat.”

This would have helped their Pinterest board be found for keywords such as Starbucks pastries, Starbucks sandwiches, and Starbucks foods on Google and other search engines.

Starbucks isn’t the only one that’s guilty of this, many social media blogs tout how great Whole Foods is using their Pinterest page, which they are when it comes to posting visual content, but when I clicked on four random boards of theirs, not one single one of them had their descriptions filled in.

Always fill in the descriptions of your Pinterest boards with keywords that your business wants to rank for.

3)Put Keywords Into Pin Descriptions

This technique most likely isn’t going to get you anywhere close to the first page of Google results for keywords, though it is possible depending on the search term, but it is still an excellent practice as it can help your Pinterest boards show up on the second and third page of Google search results for keywords.

Ensure that keywords that you want to rank for are in the pin’s description, as Google search engines do crawl the descriptions of pins, and takes it into consideration for search results. The website that shows up in the search engines for those pin descriptions will not lead directly to that specific pin’s address, instead it will be list the Pinterest Board’s url on which the pin is located.

A specific pin’s url will look like this:
http://pinterest.com/pin/246290673344396313/

And a board address looks like this:
http://pinterest.com/mcngmarketing/pinterest-tips/

Here’s an example of how this works. I typed into Google the following words, “Funny pins on Pinterest.”

Here are the first six results that showed up for my search:

The determining factor that the Pinterset board, 1000 repins, showed up on the first page of the results because of a single pin’s description. The actual board name doesn’t contain any of the search words, nor the actual description of the board itself, but because one of the pins had contained the words “Funny” in it, it was able to show up as result number 6 for the search words “Funny pins on Pinterest.”

In order to maximize your Pinterest page and boards on Google, ensure that your social media marketing team isn’t taking short cuts. Have the boards titled after long tail keywords that your organization wants to rank well for, as well as ensuring that descriptions are keyword rich.

Do you have any suggestions or tips on how to rank your Pinterest page higher in search engines?

GE

Business benefits of Facebook apps

With time facebook has become more of a marketing platform where brand managers create their brand’s identity and in turn derive great insights about the product/service with a correspondent increase in sales as well. Facebook is the epicentre of all social media marketing strategies; it has worked tremendously well and in favour of a large number of brands.

In such a scenario the most important task is done by the applications available on Facebook. These act as the most essential and functional tool for survival of a brand.

 1.      Building awareness

There are a large number of Facebook apps that are deployed to help a brand grow and stabilise itself in the market. Facebook apps are used by brand managers to initially help in establishing a brand and creating its awareness. The initial seeding phases are very important because they lay the initial framework on which all the marketing strategies depend.  Building awareness about a product is the first step before any activity can be done for its promotion. Applications like ‘My Yelp Reviews’, Tweets tab, Google+ tab all help in bringing traffic to a page and help in creating a valuable existence of a brand on the social networking platform.

 2.      Generates Traffic

Once the initial seeding and framework is done then comes the stage where in brand managers wish to generate as much traffic that is possible. For this very reason facebook applications are used, which prove to be beneficial to the brand as a whole. Applications like Photo Contests, Video Contests, Polls tab etc bring users to a particular page which increases the number of followers a page has. It is for the manager to ensure that the users who once come to the page are retained on the page.

3.      Reputation management

Once the brand is well known in the market and users have been converted into followers there is a need for the brand to manage its reputation in the market and in front of its competitors. By now a brand has already exposed itself to a long list of its customers and it is important that a stand of the brand is maintained in front of them as well. Facebook pages are the best means of communication between brand owners and its users.

4.      User Engagement

Applications like Multi-Videos tab, Instagram tab, Essay Contest tab, Welcome tab, Top fans tab all help a great deal in engaging users with the facebook page of a brand. These applications are such that they can keep users bound to them for long and in turn provide better results to brand managers. Users generally like applications that provide them with some returns. In such cases if a brand manager declares the name of the top fan of the page with his picture and updates it as the page’s facebook status the user is happy and continues to interact in the future. Others seeing the post are also intrigued and thereby interact.

 5.      Affects sales and profits

In the 21st century people are more technologically advanced. Online portal sites are doing very well today, if a brand owns a portal site then that acts as an added advantage for the brand.  Using the e-commerce tab a brand can promote his online portal as well which will affect the sales positively and eventually increase the ratio of profits largely.

How to make a post go viral?

Social Media is bombarded with brand pages; every brand small or big is creating its identity on influential social networking websites. These pages bring laurels to the brands in the form of traffic and a substantial increase in the number of followers. Marketing activities are taking a sharp turn and are being concentrated on the social media only. As such all brands are targeting platforms like Facebook, Twitter Google plus etc to form their niche to promote products effectively.

The weapons used in marketing range from normal posts to efficient marketing campaigns. The most commonly used feature that is used is frequent and regular updates on the brand pages. Now the biggest challenge faced by brand managers is to promote that post and make it viral such that it reaches out to a large number of people. To help brand managers, following are tips to make a post go viral.

 1.   High Quality

There are brand pages on the web pertaining to nearly every possible field. As such there is so much information and updates about social media marketing that it is not possible for users to like each and every page and each and every post. If brand managers post relevant content that relates directly to the brand and the post is of good quality generally users like it. It is normally seen that the posts that have some valuable information to pass on and make sense are the ones that go viral. It is good to be different but it is also important to stick to posting high quality good content.

2.   Market it well

In the present times nothing sells until it is marketed and promoted well enough. Just posting good quality content does not solve the purpose the post also needs to be promoted well and marketed for people to see it and eventually come in terms with it. In the presence of so many brands and even more posts, a post will not go viral until a brand manager takes extra care of that.

 3.   Hover around recent events

Brand managers are often confused about what should be posted, what should be the contents of the post. It is advised that posts should be such that they are in relevance to the ongoing events in the world. This helps in making the post a trend and chances of its going viral increases manifold.

 4.   Smart and short content

Too long posts and those that have no relevance with the brand or are totally out of context are majorly disliked by users. The posts that are short yet are able to express and carry a message go viral on their own. Everybody on the social media likes to read influential posts that have the capability of leaving them to ponder upon certain thoughts. Thus short and smart posts are preferred in the social media domain.

5.   Link all pages

To make all pages and all posts go viral the brand pages on all platforms should be linked together. Once linked together the posts automatically carry a high viral strength and easily become the most viewed and liked posts on the web.

Benefits of marketing your brand on google plus

Marketing on the social media has become a common phenomenon in the recent times and every brand is utilizing the power of this domain to the fullest. Google and its derivatives are the most widely used social media websites across the world. To be recognized on these websites is something that no brand manager can ignore.

Google plus is one such community that is making social media marketing strategies easy and effective for users. In the recent times it has gained momentum and the number of people and brands using it has increased manifold. Google plus has a lot of advantages to provide to its users in terms of search engine support, good contacts and customers, impact social media presence and increased influence of brands on the audience.



The benefits of using Google plus are many, some of them are listed down below which will give you an insight to what Google plus can offer you.

1. Get found across Google

Google is by far the largest search engine known. It is prestigious for each brand to be able to rank on one of the Google pages.One of the biggest benefits offered is that creating an account on any of Google’s platform allows you to use the same account for other Google platforms as well. Being a Google derivative it adds a lot of value to the brand’s entity on the platform and increases the reach and frequency of the brand manifold. Google Plus is influential and helps your brand to be recognised better than any other platform.

2. Get face-to-face with customers

Users need credibility and accountability in a brand, when they are able to communicate with the brand representatives directly it adds on to the level of trust and belief in a brand. Google Plus takes you a step ahead in this respect. It allows brands to carry out video chats/conferences referred as “hangouts”. Such chats and conversations speak volumes about a brand’s loyalty towards the customers. Many brands are using this particular feature to help solve all issues and queries of users such that their trust and belief in the brand is maintained and the value of the brand is increased.
3. High Ranking on Google

As mentioned above ranking on Google is important and it makes brands viral when they reach the first few pages around a certain list of keywords. Mastering certain keywords and maintaining your rank on Google enables the brand to lure more traffic and bring in more better and useful results. Google gives preference to Google Plus pages which helps in ranking the pages better.

4. Link every platform

Google Plus is a tailor made platform for brands to market themselves.Every platform
can be linked to your account and thereafter be monitored from one place only. This
particular feature helps brands to keep all their content and data together and compiled. Every platform where the brand’s presence exists is updated from time to time. It increases the chances of a page going viral bringing in more traffic for the brand and influence the brands ranking on search engines making the work easier for SEO’s. All social media campaigns are highlighted at once on each and every platform that the brand is operating on.

5 Creative Mobile Marketing Tips for Startups

Getting your business started is no simple task. It takes a lot of preparation and hard work. Once you have it off the ground, the next step is to get your company noticed by consumers. Cellphones and the Internet have made it a necessity to have your startup easily accessible to people on the go. Here are a few tips to get your mobile marketing campaign started.

1. Know Your Target Market

No matter what direction you want to take in marketing, be it an app or an e-mail newsletter, you have to know who your audience is. A few simple ways to do this are having customers fill out a feedback form in-store or after online purchases. That way, you can get the exact demographics of your products and cater to their advertising senses.

2. Search Engine Optimization

According to a Google study, about 50% of smartphone users also use search engines at least once during the day. If you have your business tied to one of these search engines, you are allowing your company to be viewed by anyone searching for the goods or services you provide. This is a great way to get your name out there and at a minimum of cost.

3. QR Codes


Image via Flickr by swanksalot

A relatively recent phenomenon, QR codes are springing up at businesses everywhere. A QR code is a type of bar code that can be scanned using your smart phone that gives information regarding a certain product.

By adding this to your marketing materials either in-store or on packaging, you can give yourself another medium of advertising. Now, anyone that owns a smartphone, even with the new the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, can get a comprehensive report of your products.

4. Apps

Although some apps can be pricey, starting your mobile marketing with the simplest of apps is the best approach. By starting with an inexpensive or simple app, you can gauge the interest of potential clients as well as see if the app is of value to you and the customer.

Many online companies let you create apps with a drag-and-drop interface for the less tech-savvy. That way, you do not have be an IT guru to design your app, and you don’t have to outsource it, saving you money.

5. Don’t Rely Solely on Mobile Marketing

In an ideal setting, having a mobile marketing campaign as your only form of advertising would suffice. However, it should be used as a tool to give customers something else. If you incorporate offers that you don’t have in-store or on your website, having mobile marketing gives value to your customers. Remember that this marketing is just a portion of the marketing product.

If all else fails in your marketing approach, remember one easy saying, “Mobile first, Internet second”. The advantage of implementing such a strategy is quite simple. As more people begin to use a smart phone as their primary device, the more important it becomes to steer your marketing for mobile consumers.

Benefits of Pinterest Marketing

There is so much traffic over the internet that most of the brand entities are lost in the rush. They fail to establish an identity for themselves. In this very respect, many such platforms are gaining momentum to participate in the rat race and sway away users from the functioning and crowded websites.

Platforms like Tumblr, Pinterest undoubtedly carry a lot of potential, with time users are realising the benefits and features that these social networking platforms can offer and are being lured towards them to a varied extent. According to a survey conducted on the social media, facebook is losing the charm it once held that attracted people towards it. Many new platforms have crept in with the dream of taking its place and you never know, they might just be successful.

Pinterest is definitely a website which has many valuable features to provide its users with pictures and images given the prime most concern here. Reports derived from comScore (an American Internet analytics company) says that by January 2012 Pinterest had 11.7 million users that increased to 25 million by the end of 2012. As per Reuters and comScore, in July 2013 the website had 70 million users and the count is still exceeding exponentially. Following are the reasons that portray how Pinterest is all ready to kill the traffic of all other platforms.

1. Visual Content

What pleases the eyes appeals to the mind itself. Pinterest’s biggest merit is the concept with which it is created. It consists of boards similar to bulletin boards where users can pin/upload images and pictures. This is one of the most effective and innovative feature that is offered to the users. Especially in the case of brand management, managers wish to showcase their products in a way that maximum interest is directed towards the pictures. No doubt, other platforms also allow uploading images but the attention shifts towards quality posts and comments rather than these pictures.

A pinterest board looks like this, here you can pin up images that pertain to your brand and eventually showcase all your products from which users can choose and select.  Giving much emphasis to pictures and images, Pinterest is ruling the social media marketing domain when it comes to showcasing of products effectively.



2. User Friendly

 This platform consists of unique features that adds on to the reasons that make it successful and different. Apart from that, it is easy to incorporate the features in your account. Creating boards and pinning images is a very easy task on Pinterest and requires no technical skills.




3. Apt for marketing

Brand are using the social media as the most impactful weapon to market the products and generate traffic. Pinterest allows status updates, posts, comments just like any other platform; Facebook Twitter etc but huge emphasis is laid on creating a board on Pinterest and correspondingly pinning up images. It creates a sort of online portal for the brand as all products are properly displayed with the price and other details in  description tab. The reach of such marketing tools is any day larger than that of simple posts and comments .

4. Demographics

If we take a close look at the statistical data presented below, we can easily analyse that Pinterest is growing at a faster rate. Daily sign ups are increasing and the platform is being preferred by users as it is giving them better mentions on the web, marketing is done easily. The number of visitors is increasing and the time spent by each individual is also large.



5.  Customer oriented

The platform has kept in mind the minutest details. Its founders have made sure that brand managers face no difficulties in marketing their brands over here. Whether it is seeding in the initial phases, generating traffic or gaining profits, all is easily done on this platform. Pinterest is designed in a way that its customers face no problems and nor do the users find it unfriendly to use.



Pinterest marketing is growing at a steady rate, in the short span of time it has garnered a lot of traffic and has brought into light some new brands. Moving at this pace, Pinterest is sure to attain great heights and may pose a serious threat to its competitors in the times to come.

SEO and Google following Steps 2013