“Where is all of this traffic coming from?!”
I thought as I was reviewing one of my client’s social analytics. The major social media channels – Facebook and Twitter – were where they had seen most of their social traffic coming in. This time, however, was different. The traffic was coming from a brand new source that I had yet to tap into or truly understand – Pinterest.
Yes, Pinterest. That social media channel that you may still be overlooking in favor of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, continues to grow. Fast.
Since then, I have learned a lot about how to use Pinterest as a way to generate traffic as well as help build a brand. One of the most important being the value of getting your pins to the top of Pinterest search results. So, I wanted to share with you some findings about the Pinterest search engine to be considered in future pinning.
How it Works
Just like Google, Pinterest is trying to find the most relevant content (pins) to the users search query. Because Pinterest can’t tell exactly what the picture is (though they’re working on it) they depend on three major factors:
- The Description of the pin
- The URL that the pin goes to
- The “Likes” and “Repins” which Pinterest uses as their measure of authority
Here is a great example of this working in practice:
Keyword: Travel Destinations
Result:
As you can see the top 2 pins reflect different aspects of the search algorithm.
“Incredible Travel Destinations” has all of the makeup of a great search result.
- Description: 5 Incredible Travel Destinations to Visit
- URL: http://www.topdreamer.com/5-incredible-travel-destinations/
- Repins/Likes: 275/32
The “Swimmers in Krka, Croatia” doesn’t have the description of the pin, but it does have other properties that place it at the top.
- Description: Swimmers in Krka, Croatia
- URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rkroenert/10156092003/in/contacts/
- Repins/Likes: 1349/122
So the fact that the “Swimmers in Krka, Croatia” had way more repins and likes, it was pushed to the top of the search results.
The question then becomes, if the search keyword isn’t in the description or the URL, how does Pinterest know that this pin has anything to do with Travel Destinations?
My first theory was that the Board must be named “Travel Destinations” and that must be another factor in the Pinterest search. But the board it was pinned on originally was “Wanderlust”. Sure, that’s about travel, but it doesn’t have to do with “Destinations” necessarily.
Then I took a look at the boards that it was repinned to:
As you can see, the keywords “Travel” and “Destinations” are all over the place! I’m still not 100% sure that this is a major factor in the search results at this point, but from this example you can see that it clearly plays a role.
In the end, we cannot control the amount of people that like or repin our content nor can we control the name of the board that they repin it to. What we can control, though, is the description of our pins and the URL they link to. And as you can see from the example at the top, that can still go a long way!
Happy Pinning!
