You’ve heard about “optimizing your Pinterest account” and you’ve been told it is a crucial step for a successful Pinterest marketing strategy. Truth is though, you have no idea what to do… I’ve got you! Optimizing your Pinterest account is indeed important. That’s why it’s usually the first step we, as Pinterest strategists, recommend any Pinterest beginners to start with! If Pinterest was a house, optimizing your account is like laying down the foundations so you can see why it’s quite important… So, ready to optimize your Pinterest account in 5 easy steps?
Why you need to optimize your Pinterest account
Optimizing your Pinterest account is very important because this is the way you’re telling Pinterest: “I’m ready for you to show my content to people!”. Pinterest is a search engine so just like google, it analyzes all the pins published on the platform. When someone types in a keyword, Pinterest analyzes the pins to determine which ones should be populated based on different factors.
Two of the factors Pinterest uses are the relevance of your content and the quality of your profile. Pinterest evaluates these factors via keywords, for the first one, and domain quality for the second one.
Why you need to use keywords on your account
The way you’re telling Pinterest: ”I want to rank for these keywords and my content should populate when people look for them” is by “keywording your account” and making sure your content uses the same, or similar keywords, like the ones you chose for your account.
This way when someone searches for a keyword, Pinterest will not only look for these keywords in the pins, but it will also analyze the account the pins come from, looking for these keywords.
The first step to optimize your account is therefore to “keyword your account”. It’s a scary sentence but it just means you need to add keywords to your account to make sure Pinterest can easily categorize your content.
How to show Pinterest you’re a source of quality content
When it comes to the quality of your domain, it’s similar to your domain authority on google. It’s basically Pinterest determining how much they can trust you as a source of content and they do it this way:
- They want you to claim your website so they can start attributing the pins you’re publishing to your domain
- They analyze how much people engage with your pins (by engagement, we mean link clicks, nothing like Instagram)
- They’ll expect you to be consistent with publishing content
By being able to aggregate the content you’re publishing, the engagement it gets, and your consistency, they determine how reliable you are and it impacts the reach of your pins as well.
This is also one of the main reasons why Pinterest is a “slow burner”, you know, trust is earned and it takes time! But once Pinterest trusts you it’s your best ally in traffic and leads generation, plus it’s kinda fun!
Optimizing your account is making sure that you are sending the right signals to signify to Pinterest you are a reliable source of content when it comes to these topics. So I’ll say it again: it’s a crucial part of your Pinterest strategy! Not doing it or doing it wrong could push back your results on Pinterest for months because you did not lay the right foundations and it is hard for Pinterest to trust you.
5 Steps to optimize your Pinterest account
I bet you’re a little intimidated now that you know how important it is to optimize your Pinterest account. Don’t worry, optimizing your account doesn’t have to be difficult! I’m breaking down the 5 steps you need to follow to make sure you’re doing it right below!
Step 1: Convert to a business account
You need a business account to claim your website so that’s your first step! If you’re not sure how to do so, you can check out my article about how to create your Pinterest business account in 5 minutes.
Step 2: Do your keyword research!
As mentioned before, keywords are crucial on Pinterest for relevancy and the searchability of your content! Go on Pinterest and type in the keywords you want to target. From there, you’ll write down any keywords you see populating in the colored bubbles that match your topics!
Step 3: Add your keywords to your profile
Add your keywords to your name and your description. These spots are searchable so it means that your profile can show up in results if people are looking for these keywords. Choose two to three main keywords that relate to your content and offers.
Step 4: Create your boards
Brainstorm 10 to 15 boards (to start with) relevant to your content and your keywords. Think that your boards’ names should use keywords that you researched in Step 2.
All your boards should be based on topics you cover or on topics that your ideal audience would look for. Your boards are not about you! They’re about your audience and help Pinterest understand what your content is about.
For example, if you’re a business coach, you’ll have boards about business strategy and starting a business, but no boards about “cute little dogs”.
Step 5: Add descriptions to your boards and pin some pins
Descriptions are the same deal as board titles! You need them because they’re one more place Pinterest is looking for when analyzing the relevancy of a pin. Make sure you add a keyworded description to every board so you don’t lose a chance to reinforce the relevancy of your content! And then pin a few pins relevant to your boards! You can either publish some of yours or add some others when you’re just starting out
Still a little confused about what to do to optimize your Pinterest account? I created the perfect roadmap to get started with Pinterest without the overwhelm! You’ll follow a step-by-step guide that takes you to the 5 steps above in more detail. I added two templates to use for your profile description, and a checklist to make it easy to track your advancement with the optimization of your profile!! Plus, it’s really cute!
What to do once your Pinterest account is optimized?
You optimized your account and that’s great but now what? The optimizing part is time-consuming but with the simple steps I gave you, you can do it by yourself. I know that the step after the optimization, however, is usually where you give up. I get it! There’s a lot of information about Pinterest out there and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed! So let me break it down really quickly for you!
Once you’ve optimized your account on Pinterest, you’ll start publishing your pins so they can start reaching people!
Publishing your pins means adding a pin image linked to a website page to Pinterest. It’s as simple as that! Once you upload a pin to Pinterest or Tailwind you’ll save it to a board (the ones we created in step 4).
You’ll want to make sure to choose the most relevant board to send your pins to. You can save your pins to more than one board but you shouldn’t save them to more than 10 boards. Plus, you should always wait at least 4 days before saving your pins to the next board.
There’s one more rule you should keep in mind: Never publish the same pin (same image) to the same board more than twice a year.
Let’s break down an example to make it easier:
Let’s say I was to create 5 images (5 pins) for this blog about optimizing your Pinterest account. I’ll publish the brand new pin (first pin ever with this URL published on Pinterest) to my “Pinterest marketing” board. Then, I’ll wait for four days and save it to my “digital marketing” board. I’ll wait another 4 days and save it to my “growing your business online” board, etc… I won’t save this same pin again to my board “Pinterest marketing” before at least six months.
I’ll then publish a fresh pin (same URL but different image) two weeks later and will follow the same publishing template as the brand new pin.
That’s it! You learned how to optimize your Pinterest account and make sure that you create strong foundations for your Pinterest strategy! Don’t forget to grab your free Pinterest roadmap to get started on Pinterest without the overwhelm.
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