Tips for Optimizing Pinterest Photos

We know that you want to receive as much traffic as possible when you write a blog post. Unfortunately, you may be missing some of that traffic and interested visitors if you aren’t paying attention to the important factors of correctly placing images on your website. Fortunately, we are here to help you and can offer some tips on optimizing blog photos for visually-oriented social sites like Pinterest.

Use Text on Your Images

Sites like Pinterest can be helpful when a person is searching for home interior ideas, crafts or recipes. Let’s say that you are a food blogger, and you have a delicious chicken Marsala recipe that you want to share with other people. It does take extra time, but you should be sure to add text onto your images. If you have a picture of chicken Marsala, pull up a fun font on your image editor and watermark your picture with the words, “Tasty Chicken Marsala.” This will catch someone’s eye when they’re browsing images and increase the chances of them visiting your website. You may also want to include your logo or website URL so people can find your site easily. You may also want to use longer, portrait-style photos rather than horizontal images. Putting your text toward the top of the image can also help get clicks and saves.

Use Keywords In the URL

The next tip is to use the main keywords of your post in the URL. On most content management systems such as WordPress or at blog creating websites, this can automatically be done when you have the settings take your post title and use it in the URL. Your URL should look something like this,”http://www.yourfoodblog.com/recipes/tasty-chicken-marsala-recipe/.

Title Your Image With Keywords

We’re pretty sure that taking these next two tips and incorporating them into your arsenal will help boost your traffic and increase visitors. We would also bet that many bloggers fail to use these techniques, and this may help put you above your competition. Be sure to use descriptive keywords when you title your image files. If you use something like, “tasty chicken marsala.jpg” and not,” image356.jpg,” it will help boost your images in search engine results.

Don’t Forget to Use Alt Text Correctly

Here’s a golden tip on why you should make sure that your alt text for each image is descriptive. Did you know that Pinterest takes the words from an image’s alt text description and places them automatically into their pin description? By using “tasty chicken Marsala” in the alt text area of your image, you are automatically giving a Pinterest user the description for their pin. This top tip will definitely help pop your images to a highly visible area when someone is searching for specific keywords.

What tips do you have to share? What has worked for you?

Naturally, this has caught the attention of marketers worldwide and has once again shifted the mindset of social media marketing. Intermingling with personal boards of mothers keeping crafting or dinner ideas organized are businesses and brands maximizing their marketing opportunities on Pinterest. Since Pinterest is based on the forwarding of visual images, keywords begin to play a different part in order for a product, blog or business to successfully stand out.

According to 2012 statistics, around 68% of all Pinterest users are women. Knowing that women are a majority of Pinterest users, should say something to marketers on how to better attract users to their pins. For example, even men’s products can be pinned by a high number of Pinterest users if the wording attached to a pin is enticing to a female user as well.

80% of all pins are also re-pins, which speaks volumes of the amount of content that is originally pinned versus content that is being forwarded by users. Images inking back to your website is what makes Pinterest so useful for marketers. To make sure your business, blog or product is getting the most out of Pinterest, always make sure to label your pictures with company names, names of products or websites so that pictures (pins) will always link back to your brand.

Hashtags are equally important when it comes to helping users find your pins. Hashtags (#fashion or #beauty for example) can maximize the opportunity for your pin to be found by hundreds of users who may not be following your boards

While Facebook gains new fans with content shares and friend endorsements (every like is seen by an average of 130 Facebook fans), Pinterest allows users to bring in new followers that might not have found your website otherwise. For example, if you were a small hardware store owner, pinning and linking back pictures of new lawnmowers in the summertime might only bring your website partial traffic. Whereas if the store owner got creative and started pinning pictures of inspirational quotes about hard work, articles about home repair or BBQ recipe ideas, the store owner is them maximizing his opportunities to get a wide range of potential new customers. On Pinterest, diversity of boards is always better.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has peak times when users are researched to be more active. Pinterest users are generally more active during the “coffee hours” between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., the lunch hour between noon and 1 p.m. and the hours before and during dinner, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

With a little creativity, using relevant keywords and hashtags and finding a way to always link back to your brand, Pinterest can become a great asset for web traffic and a powerful social media marketing tool for any brand or organization.

How to Get More Followers on Pinterest

Pinterest is a popular social media site where anyone can share favorite clippings such as photos and videos with their followers. Pinterest can be used as a fun tool to post favorite recipes or as a business tool to grow an audience for a product or service. You can create your own Pinterest page or hire a social media consultant to design it for you.

On Pinterest, you create boards and name them. Under each board you post images, web pages or anything else that you can pin. It’s a good idea to keep a theme for each board. One board can be favorite photos from around the web and another board can be books you’ve read recently. The options are endless, and with a little creativity you can gain a large following on Pinterest.

There are many ways to get more followers. The first thing you should do is add a “Pin It” button to your website or blog. When people visit pages on your site with this button, they can click on it to pin an image or the entire page their boards. Their followers can click on your name, view your boards, and follow you.

Also consider adding the “Follow me on Pinterest” button to your website. There is also the “Pinterest” button that’s useful for people who visit your site but don’t have a Pinterest account. This allows them to see your boards and then choose to sign up for their own accounts.

When posting to your boards, make sure you only add good content that others would re-pin. A blurry image of a birthday cake won’t go far, but a funny picture of the birthday boy with cake on his face will catch a lot of attention. If you post high-quality images, you’ll gain more followers who will check your site regularly to see what’s new.

Organize your boards the same way you would organize file folders. Place boards close together that resemble the same theme. For example, if you have one board for Hawaii, one for London and the other one for Mexico, then place them all together with other travel-related boards. Then add those boards to the travel category; anyone looking for photos under that category will come across your boards. If they see you share the same interests, they will follow you.