How to Get a Standout Pinterest Profile

In my last Pinterest post, Three Ways to Up Your Pinterest Game, I mentioned that Pinterest is like a visual search engine. So you want to make sure your pins and profile are easily searchable. The more visible your profile, the more re-pins you get which leads to more click throughs to your blog!

So how do you make your Pinterest Profile Standout?

1) Update Your Bio and Board Descriptions: You want to make sure your Pinterest profile gives a clear impression of what your blog is about. It’s a good idea to include your blog name and keyword in your title to make your account easily searchable. What is a keyword? It’s basically any word or phrase that you want people to associate with your account. In my case “fashion blogger”, “style blogger”, “Los Angeles blogger”, “outfit ideas”, “outfit inspiration”, and “budget friendly style” are all good keyword options.

For example – when people search for “fashion blogger” in the Pinterest search bar, my profile might have a higher chance of showing up because I used the “fashion blogger” keyword in my profile name.

You also want to make sure your profile contains an interesting description of what your blog is about. Things to include – your name, location, website link, and more keywords. Since I want to direct followers to my Instagram account I also included my username as well. You can add all these things by editing your profile information.

You also want to make sure your Board Titles and Descriptions are full of keywords. It’s tempting to want to make your board titles cute and artsy like // Styles I Love //  but that is not very specific and is not going to help people find your boards when they are searching Pinterest. Instead go with something like “Spring and Summer Outfits”. It’s boring but that is a phrase someone is more likely to search for in the Pinterest search bar.

You also want to include lots of keywords in your board descriptions. (Just click “edit” under each board in your profile to add a description). Creating thoughtful and specific descriptions is the best way to go. I would avoid listing keywords as that might seem like keyword stuffing.

 

2) Pin Quality Pins: I mentioned in my last post that you need to be pinning A LOT in order for your profile to rank well in Pinterest and be seen by more people. Not only do you need to pin a lot but they need to be quality pins. A good pin has these characteristics:

• Vertical:  Horizontal pins do not do as well in general because they don’t stick out as much. That doesn’t mean you can’t pin horizontal images – just keep in mind that you might not get a lot of re-pins.
• Size: The standard pin size for a horizontal image is 735X1102 pixels. If they are smaller than 735px width then the image will appear smaller on Pinterest next to ones that are 735px width and might not stand out as well. My blog images are 900 pixel width and when they get pinned, Pinterest automatically resizes them to 735px. So it doesn’t matter if your images are larger than the standard size, just make sure they aren’t smaller!
• No broken links: You will get penalized on Pinterest if your pins link to spammy websites or lead to a non-existent page. The easy way to get rid of these pins is to use Board Booster‘s Pin Doctor for a small fee. But if you don’t want to spend the money you’ll have to click on each pin to double check the source. OR just make sure from now on that you click on the pin you want to re-pin to make sure the link is safe. It takes a little extra time but it’s worth it!
• Keyword rich description: Before you pin an image to your boards (it could be your own image or someone else’s) you have the option to edit the caption. You should ALWAYS edit the caption and include a thoughtful and specific description of that pin or board. This will ensure that your pin will show up when people type those keywords in the search bar. You should also go back and edit the captions of old pins. Again, this takes a lot of time but it’s worth it!

3) Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards: Now that you know what a good pin is – go through all your boards and delete bad or low performing pins. Pinterest gives more weight to boards with high performing pins. So if you have a lot of pins with zero or only a couple of re-pins, consider deleting those and/or re-pining them later. If you have a lot of older pins that are horizontal, bad quality, with low re-pins, you might want to get rid of those altogether. You can easily rearrange and delete pins by clicking the arrow cross icon at the top of your boards…

…and selecting pins you want to move/delete.

 

4) Pin Pin Pin: Potential followers might not take you seriously if you don’t have enough boards and pins with in those boards. Try for at least 30 boards. It’s actually really easy to do if you create really specific boards. Instead of having a “Fashion” board split it up into “Spring Fashion”, “Summer Fashion”, “Fall Fashion”, “Winter Fashion”, etc. Not sure what to pin? Just click on one of your favorite pins and scroll down to the bottom to find related pins! This should make it much easier to find quality pins to re-pin.

P.S. including relevant keywords when you pin/re-pin will help your pins show up in the “Related Pins” section.

The moral of the story is Pinterest is looking for quality Pinners/Boards to promote. If your profile lacks descriptions or contains a lot of “low quality” pins Pinterest is unlikely to show those pins in other people’s feeds. So clean up those boards, add great descriptions, pin away and watch your traffic grow!

P.S. You can find me on Pinterest here!

Linking Up:
Happiness at Midlife, Doused in Pink, High Latitude Style, A Labour of Life, Daily Style Finds, Elegance and Mommy Hood, The Mix