With the loss of Facebook Open Graph, Pinterest lost its main source of growth. The mood-board-like social platform needed a new way to grow, and with the threat of a competitive landscape, they needed to identify it fast. Today, we’re discussing how Pinterest grew its traffic by 50% through testing their hypothesis, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how SEO could help your brand.
Build Locally Relevant Landing Pages
Little did Pinterest know at the time, they were sitting on an SEO goldmine. Pinterest users were creating boards and naming them after search terms. Using this to their advantage, Pinterest aggregated the best content on locally relevant landing pages. In just one year, 20% of Pinterest traffic came from Google.
URLs and Domains
One of the most important takeaways from Pinterest’s SEO efforts are URLs and Domains. As part of their international expansion, Pinterest needed to create localized content. This meant altering their domains (For Example https://www.se.pinterest.com to https://www.pinterest.se/). This step resulted in a 15% increase in traffic as the click-through-rate increases if you are a local domain. Words in Pinterest URLs also played a huge role in SEO and going international. For Example, ‘Recipe vs Rezept’.
Add More Unique Content
Pinterest is a purely image based platform. Typically, image based platforms/landing pages that are copy-limited are difficult to ‘optimize’ for search engines. However, Pinterest added visual tags to every image, which increased Pinterest’s traffic by 25%.
What Can We Learn from Pinterest’s SEO Efforts?
It’s important not to take ‘Google SEO Best Practices’ as gospel. Every brand needs to identify their levers for SEO growth and what is relevant. A great example of this is Pinterest vs Quora. What is relevant for one brand’s SEO may not be relevant for another.
If you would like to further explore SEO and how it can help your brand grow, Agency Entourage can help. We’ve been doing it for years and are one of the fastest growing Dallas marketing agencies. Give us a call at (214) 414-3035 today, and let’s begin your journey into search engine optimization!
Photo Source: [scyther5][482021470]Thinkstock
