Improve Your Pinterest Business Strategy – Pin Optimization – Part 3 of 8 (Video)

Michelle G Held
Best Pinterest PIN Setup Pintalk

Improve Your Pinterest Business Strategy – Pin Optimization – Part 3 of 8 (Video)

Optimize your Pinterest Pins. Welcome to post number three in this series of eight on how to optimize your Pinterest account. There is a helpful video (below) that goes along with. This post will show you how to save a Pinterest Pin using ideal images, titles, texts, and links.

If you need to back up to see the other posts and videos in this series:

The Ideal Pinterest Pin

An image or video is required for all Pinterest Pins – just like Instagram and other social channels. This is what makes Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube unique. They are visual social channels where an image or video is required for each post – unlike Facebook or Twitter. Pins with a vertical aspect ratio image are ideal. That’s because a vertical Pin takes up more space in Pinterest users’ home feeds. This is especially obvious on the mobile app. I generally use a 2:3 aspect ratio for my images. Although required, images are just part Pin optimization.

Pinterest Boards and Sections

When saving a Pin, you must choose a board to save it to. I covered how to optimize boards and their content in my last post and video. For larger boards, you have the option of creating sections. If your board is divided into sections, choose the appropriate section from the dropdown list in the save a Pin dialogue. Remember to keep them organized and on-topic.

Titles

Be sure to add a title to your Pin. If you don’t, Pinterest will use the first thirty or so characters from your description and create a title for you. This is not as ideal as you want to control this. Your title is a chance to hook readers’ interest and get them to click on your Pin. There are two opportunities to create a title. You can have a separate text title of a Pin and another as an overlay on the Pin image.

Pin Description Area

With each Pin, you have 500 characters to use to describe the Pin and get messaging out to the reader. The title, image, and description all play an important part in getting other users to view a Pin (called a close-up), save it to their boards, and click through to your website.

The Pin description should use keywords you want to be found for. Hashtags can be used in this area as well. Try using up to twenty relevant hashtags but don’t stuff it! Use a good description that’s relevant and optimized for Pinterest and Google searches.

Pin Link

Be sure to fill in the link field. Without it now I can click through to your website or app. You’d be surprised how often a link is omitted from Pinterest Pins. If your goal is to send people to your website or app, and there’s no link information filled in, then you’ve already defeated your goal.

Always Use Vertical Images for Pinterest Pins

Vertical images are associated with a higher click-through rate. There are other things you can do to increase your clicks, but using a vertical image is the first step. I have three WordPress websites and use featured images with each blog post. Unfortunately for my Pinterest strategy, the WordPress themes I use require a horizontal aspect ratio featured image. To optimize my post for Pinterest, I include a vertically oriented image at the bottom of each blog post. That way the image is out of the way for the reader, but useful for Pinterest.

For video Pins, you’ll need to have a thumbnail that is the same aspect ratio as the video. So, keep that in mind when recording any video Pin. Planning ahead for the ideal Pin will help you get the best result. It all depends on where your video is going to live. See my Pinterest tutorial post on video Pins for tips.

Pinterest users can drag the visual search tool around an image and find more Pins with similar content. When you use a clear image for your Pin, you can maximize visual search as well. Always optimize for text and visual search to get the most out of each piece of content.

Keep Your Logo Out of the Lower Corner

Never position your logo in the lower right corner of the image you use for your Pinterest Pin. The reason is that it will be covered up by Pinterest’s visual search tool mentioned in the preceding section. Go to Pinterest and look at any Pin. The visual search “target” can be seen in the lower right corner of the Pin. If you place your logo – or any important part of your image – in that area, it won’t be visible, and you will lose out on a brand recognition opportunity.

Buyable Pins

With Pinterest Buyable Pins, formerly called Product Pins, users can shop products on Pinterest. If you have an e-commerce website, use meta-data and optimize your Pins for shopping. Look at the two Pins in the example. The one on the left is a Buyable Pin and the one on the right is not. Both have eye-catching images, but the one on the right gives more information such as price and description. It is also easier to buy with fewer clicks to complete the sale. We know that the easier it is for a shopper to complete a purchase, the more likely it is to get the conversion. It’s all about creating an enjoyable and easy user experience.

Pinterest Buyable Pins

Tagging

Tagging is a feature that is useful to eCommerce site owners as well as affiliate marketers. Items in Pin images can be tagged with links to buy the items. They don’t have to be products from your verified domain either. Which is good news for affiliates. These Pins can also be carousel Pins so you can show color options or other variations to buy.

Rich Pins

Pinterest Rich Pins have to be set up and verified on your website. Rich Pins are a feature for food and recipe websites that lets them show a lot of extra information right on Pinterest. The upside to this is that the Pin really stands out against Pins that are not using Rich Pins. The downside is that it may cause a lower click-through rate to your website because all of the information is available on Pinterest. The reader doesn’t have a reason to click through. Try both and figure out which is best for your KPIs. You may want to mix it up a bit for your strategy.

Video Pins

Video Pins are great for engagement. They are still underutilized on Pinterest. As with all social media, the feature that is the newest usually has the most opportunity. So, it pays to be an early adopter of technology. The video Pin I show in my tutorial video is one I saved to my account the very first week Pinterest allowed videos to be saved to business accounts. It’s not optimized with keywords. I was just playing with the video upload tool to see how it worked.

My video has over 8,000 views which is amazing for a Pin that has no optimization going for it. The lifetime metrics are very useful for remarketing too. Remember Pinterest forces you to use a thumbnail image for video Pins that is the same aspect ratio as the video itself. You want to use horizontal thumbnails for all Pins – organic, Promoted, video, standard, carousel, etc. Keep this in mind when planning your video Pins.

Track Your Pin Close-Ups

Pin close up views are an important metric just like engagement and link clicks. This metric gives you another indicator of how your titles and images are working to hook readers’ interest. If your close-ups are high but saves and click-thrus are low, then you know your audience or offer is not correct. Knowledge is power. The more information you have to work with, the more you can fine-tune your strategy to earn conversions.

Close-ups with low clicks are not necessarily all bad though. If you’re like me, you may look at the close-up view of a Pin and go to the website later on.

Join me for the next blog post which is about image optimization.