Pinterest is a hot, trending social network and it is gaining mass momentum. If you are wondering if Pinterest is worth the effort for your business, read my last post A Pint of Pinterest for Gallons of Interest; a smart Pinvestment?. It will help you decide whether or not Pinterest will be beneficial to you.
You probably don’t need a full time ‘Pinner’. According to Pinterest demographics, one of your female employees ages 25-54 probably already knows how to use Pinterest. You don’t need a marketing specialist to Pin for you (just yet. It may get there soon though). Your employees can all be company Pinners. You can easily ask them to spend 10 minutes on their personal Pinterest and Pin some images/products/videos for your company. However you go about using Pinterest, get Pinvolved!
Pinterest as a Pinvestment
A site-owner shared with me that they had a huge influx of traffic from one pin that we re-purposed. The only problem was that the pin wasn’t really related to their services so it didn’t convert very well. ~5% of their traffic came from that single pin, Pinterest was a hit…and a miss at the same time (conversion rate). Imagine what it could do for you when you pin images that are targeted to your demographic.
Become fully Pintegrated
Get your brand on Pinterest. Many ‘big’ brands are on Pinterest; Nordstrom, Land’s End Canvas, Mashable, ETSY, and more. People will more likely find and follow you if you have richly populated, full boards than if you have a few sparse boards. Pin wisely.
Before we do business, “what’s your Pintentions?”
Make sure to be social in your pinteractions. Don’t just pin your own products. Find and pin images that you believe your audience would like to add to their pin boards. Better yet, find relevant pins that are popular, re-purpose the content and pin it yourself. Don’t use Pinterest as a self promotion tool.
Don’t get too Pintense – Pintruder!!!
There are people already spamming Pinterest. Make sure you aren’t perceived as a #badapple You will quickly engage peoples distrust engines…and you’ll get called out.
But don’t be a Pintrovert
Make sure to re-pin some of your clients pins. They’ll feel appreciated and be more likely to watch your pins. Be engaged in other peoples pinboards and they will be more likely to be engaged in yours.
Have some social Pinteraction
Remember, Pinterest is a social platform. Make sure to Pinteract with people within Pinterest and without. Let your pins be known on your blog or other social properties you control.
Efforts can be Pintensified
Pins can be re-pinned an infinite amount of times (well, at least 10,399,999 more times). One really share-able pin, can turn into a ton of Pinterest.
Pinterns with Pintuition
This here is an original Right idea: because of Pinterest demographics, we know that 34% of the users are females 18-34. One-third of which have some college education. Chances are, you can find a marketing intern who already knows how to pin. This will be a great opportunity to learn more marketing and a great opportunity for you to receive good labor for a decent price.
Become a Pintellectual
For right now, marketing on Pinterest is a fairly easy task. Stay up-to-date with trends and keep an eye on the changing demographics. Most businesses can capitalize on new additions and features within any social network.
Right Hat Tips and Tricks to Become a Super Pinner
Make your URL visible within your logo
Avoid self promotion like the plague
Pin naturally – don’t force product placement
Use your Facebook login to join Pinterest so that you will quickly be connected to others instead of starting from scratch
Follow others with similar Pinterests – they will likely follow back
Create seasonal boards
Add links in the pin descriptions
If it’s a product you’re selling, add a price to the description and it will automatically be added to the gift category. This is one of my favorite features, so I went ahead and created a pin with a price. Here’s my Pinned gift to me! :
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Look at the yellow arrow! It showed my ‘gift’ seconds after I pinned it
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Pintrigued yet? I am.
Thanks for putting up with my corny Pin-Puns in this Pin-Post. I hope you will find your own space in Pinterest and have had Pinspiration while reading through these tips. Feel free to Pin this post if it helps your audience
…an afterthought I’d just like to add: I predict that more men will be joining as more women join. Since I’ve joined, I have received about two-third of my follows from women and one-third from men.
Your Pinteresting Experiences
I’d love to hear what’s been going with your best Pinterests in mind What kind of successes have you had using Pinterest? What have been your greatest challenges?
Leave your questions and comments in the box below
If I could Pinterrupt your day for a brief five (5) minutes. I want to give you a few reasons you need to be Pinterested in Pinterest if you own a business. Before getting to those reasons, I’d like to explain the different sections of Pinterest, just in case you’re unfamiliar with this new social sharing site.
A Brief Pintroduction
What it is
My dad asked me, “What is Pinterest”? The best explanation I could come up with was, “It’s like a real pinboard that you pin things to, but it’s online; so a virtual pinboard“.
The Pin
Basically, a ‘pin’ is an image added to a virtual pinboard on Pinterest. A Pin can be added from a website or uploaded from your computer.
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The Pinboard
A board is a collection of Pins. You choose what to name the board and the things you pin to that board.
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The Follow
You can follow a user, which will follow all their pins or just follow one of their individual boards.
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If you’re brand new to Pinterest, I encourage you to read this helpful guide for very basic Pinterest set-up and functionality. It’s the best basics guide I’ve found to date. Download/View Pinterest Whitepaper SEOinc.comby SEOInc.com
Why Pin?
Cause It’s a Smart Pinvestment
Let’s look at some Pinterest demographics from Google AdPlanner and a few other reliable sources, then you can decide if this social Pinteraction will be a beneficial part of your online Pintegration.
The growth and reach of Pinterest are quickly gaining momentum. Pinterest grew from 1.2 million users in August 2011 to over 4+ million as of mid-February 2012. From September to December in 2011, Pinterest traffic increased 400% which meant 7.51 million unique visitors in just the month of December. Pinterest has also become a major player in being a referrer for several clothing and apparel retailers. Pinterest is also generating more inbound traffic for retailers than Google Plus (here and here).
If these demographics look good to you, keep reading. If they don’t, might as well read the rest–you’ve come this far
Getting Pintegrated
What it can be
In the social arena, having a presence on Pinterest is trending to become as important as having one on Facebook, especially if your target market is female. You can also add a Pinterest feed to your timeline. Integrating pins to your timeline is a great way to build visual awareness for your Pin boards. Many big brands are currently promoting on Pinterest: Nordstrom, Land’s End Canvas, Mashable, ETSY, and over 100 other brands.
As stated before, Pinterest has become a major source of referral traffic to specialty apparel retailers. Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube combined. A site-owner I know recently re-purposed a pin and it ended up generating more than 5% of their monthly traffic for the past two months–that’s just from one well-pinned pin! He says that they’re still receiving traffic from the pin and it hasn’t died down just yet.
Pinterest can be a great brand awareness and traffic generation tool. All in all, according to the growth trends and referral statistics of Pinterest, the benefit of having a quality presence on Pinterest greatly outweighs the cost.
My next post will include a how-to guide for businesses using Pinterest. Stay Tuned!
P.S. if you’re still unsure if Pinterest needs to be a part of your business model, check out some more stats and information in this infographic by Lemon.ly
With 40 reported changes, Google sets a new monthly record for search quality updates. Time to celebrate? Let’s find out!
Google announced search changes for February earlier today. They call them improvements–soon enough we’ll see for whom the improvements were made. Among the 40 produced, some look a little scary for online marketers.
Link Evaluation Changes
Here’s what Google says (no more, no less)
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
What Right Hat SEO says
We’ve been through so many link devaluations, it’s nothing new. We move forward and adapt. SEO is an evolving creature. SEOs have to be also. The hard part is knowing which of all the reports created by “gurus” will prove truthful concerning which method Google is ‘turning off’–but then again, shifting through falsities has always been part of SEO. Nothing new under the sun.
Local Search Rankings
Here’s what Google says about “Venice”
Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal…..We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
Here’s what Right Hat SEO says
I have seen the results of local search rankings since 2010 and think it’s a positive thing. There are many businesses that wouldn’t have a fighting chance if Google hadn’t included local results for queries. It looks like Google is trying to help out the little guys a little more.
More Locally Relevant Predictions in YouTube
Here’s what the Big G says about “Suggest”
More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
Here’s what Right Hat SEO concludes
I think this is a step in the right direction. I predict that, in the not too distant future, ‘locally relevant queries’ will also benefit local businesses. Get your video cameras out and start shooting some commercials!
With these new updates, I’ve already seen some people losing rankings, which means some people are gaining rankings. Keep your SEO clean, following correct SEO principles and you’ll end up on top! Until the next update!
Warning: For those Internet Marketers reading this article, you may want to skip this post–this stuff takes time, study and work. The choice is yours
I first started off delving into search engine optimization when I began online marketing as an internet marketer. Now that I look back on it and see some friends still going that route, it’s interesting to see how my mindset has changed. I no longer have the internet marketers mindset.
I used to think like an internet marketer; find a niche, throw up some basic content, use Google ‘loopholes’ for backlinking, throw up a whole bunch of crappy automated backlinks or a few of those and some high PR backlinks from wherever I could insert a generic comment.
One of my IM friends still has the Internet marketers mindset while trying to do SEO for a real company. He’s currently running into some issues and I foresee a ton more coming his way like a tsunami. He still believes that it’s just part of the SEO game to have some of your sites slapped and de-indexed while others magically stick. I don’t see it like that at all anymore. After stepping out of the Internet Marketers world and into the light of correct SEO for businesses (locally and nationally), I learned that minor ranking fluctuations happen for sites, but Google slaps and de-indexes aren’t happening to most legit businesses.
As I learn more and more about SEO, I realize that I was doing a lot of things wrong while doing IM. Some of the misguided ideas and techniques I followed were
Thin content
Low quality backlinks
Get as many links as possible as quickly as possible
No value provided for user
Have as many sites as possible in as many “profitable” niches as possible
Do everything just for the sake of SEO
Exploit ‘loopholes’
Off-Page SEO is everything
I will now compare my previous IM mindset with how I currently view SEO and online marketing
The Internet Marketers Mindset
Thin Content
Not only was my content thin, it was typically thrown together with a generic sales pitch or fluff. I was writing to sell with the end-user in mind (Google was the end user in this case). I had my family writing to just get content on the sites–”…And make sure you use the keyword in there at least once every two paragraphs”. I didn’t really care how well-written or valuable the content was, I just wanted content on the site so Google would see ‘unique’, ‘relevant’ content. I didn’t care about what the people coming to the site would receive for visiting. And it’s a pretty common thing in internet marketing to throw up horrible content, “Cause then visitors will want to stop reading and click on your ads just to get out of your site”–seems like a pretty good plan, no?
Thanks to the first major Panda update, a ton of ‘thin’ sites were demoted. I had internet marketer friends that lost ~80%+ of their incomes because of Panda–it was a sad thing to hear and see. Nevertheless, Panda was an answer to many people wanting ‘fat content’.
Low Quality BackLinks
Well, at the time, I really didn’t realize that they were low quality. All I knew was that I needed a ton of back links. So I built backlinks or had them built. What kind, you may have asked? I would have simply responded, “Backlinks.” Backlinks have different values, provide different PR amounts and the wrong kinds can be the end of you. I never really paid attention to what kind of pages my links were coming from, nor to where else they linked. Backlinks from relevant sites were less important than amassing a ton of high PR sites from any page on which I could place a link.
Mass Links? I’ll Take 10,000 Shipped Overnight!
Oooh. This scares me. I see people still doing this kind of link building and I cringe. One of the major issues with mass link building is that it tends to look (and is) unnatural. Search Engines are looking for natural links to be built to your site. Gaining a ton of links and losing a ton of links tells Google, “Hey! Come check out my site. I’m ready to be slapped. And hurry please.” I never really implemented this technique cause it always seemed a little fishy to me; so glad I didn’t–Panda would have rocked me more than it did.
No Value for the End-User
The Internet Marketer mind-set thinks, “How can I make money the quickest and easiest way possible?” The focus is on the “I” and not on providing value to the end-user or an audience. I fell into this mind-set cause I saw money being made and thought, “How can I get my hands on some of that?” These two questions aren’t bad in and of themselves, but the way to go about accomplishing these goals can be skewed. The IM courses I read focused on pushing out over 100 sites that only made a couple dollars a day. With that in mind, my thought was, “Dag, that’s a ton of sites. I need to hurry up! The quicker I get something out there, the faster I’ll make money.” In that mind set, I focused on quantity over quality. I was paying $0.50 to $1.00 per article for my site and I was excited about it–that right there can tell you about the quality of the content on my sites (although, the technique I used did often provide some pretty good content for a dollar).
100s of Micro Niche Sites
I learned that I needed to have tons of mini sites in order to make the big bucks with internet marketing. 100 sites x $2 a day was $200 per day x 30 days = $6,000 earnings. The math looked great and very desirable. I spent so much money on niches that didn’t turn a profit. It was always a gamble, and that’s just how it was. The courses I read even told me that they had a ton of sites that didn’t make any money. My goal was to have an empire of 1,000 sites. I broke over 100 sites. I made money, but the ROI wasn’t worth the effort.
One for All and All for SEO
Search engine optimization was the goal. Good SEO meant high rankings. Good SEO meant a ton of back links. The purpose behind every link, every article, every web 2.0 property, etc. was to produce a link. There was never really any value to anything I produced. Ever seen the comments on your site, “Great blog post! I was searching for this topic and you seem to be an expert on the subject. Thank you for posting this!” with a keyword as their signature? That’s part of the IM mindset. Put it out there and hope it sticks.
Google Loophole
This one always makes me laugh. This technique is to SEO what ‘Insider Trading Secrets’ is to stock trading. By the time someone sells a course on the loophole, the loophole is already closed. It’s often IMers trying to stay ahead of the game. SEO has sound principles that will stand the test of time. Loopholes are just that, loopholes. If you’ve heard tax evasion loopholes, SEO has the same.
Off-Page SEO is EVERYTHING
The majority of Internet Marketing courses, WSOs, PDFs, etc. devote most of their chapters/modules to link building tactics. The rarely focus on On-Page SEO, and if they do, it’s a quick overview with the most basics of on-page. On-Page has become and continues to become a more weighted metric for SERPs.
A Fresh New Pair of Google Goggles
Thick Content
Don’t be fooled by this sections’ header. Thick doesn’t just mean a longer version of thin, it means well-rounded, juicy, plump and savory content that people can chew on, digest, then regurgitate for their chicks to enjoy–sorry for the gross visual, but it seemed to fit Moving on….The trend in ranking is that more content equals better rankings. I now focus on creating content that provides value to the end user. I want visitors to learn something. Whether I write 600 words or 2500 words for a page or even an article, I now focus on providing value for others.
High Quality BackLinks
Backlinks are supposed to be votes of popularity. The more relevant, trusted and authoritative the voter is, the stronger the vote. I like to use this analogy when thinking of good backlink candidates.
For deciding on good fish bait, whose opinion would you trust more, someone who has fished a total of three times in their life or a seasoned/expert fisherman with qualification? How about a gymnast?
Most likely, you would trust the expert fisherman’s opinion. Why?–it’s a given, but I’ll answer the rhetoric anyway . The expert fisherman has experience and has established him or her self as an authority on fishing. He would also be a trusted source. His or her vote would most likely persuade you more than 20 people who have never fished or rarely fish.
Google sees backlinks the same way. When building backlinks, I now focus on getting high quality backlinks. High quality backlinks have three attributes:
Relevancy
Trust
Authority
Amounting links from sites or properties that have those three attributes will provide strong, long-term back links that will stand the weight of any Panda. These links take work, but are well worth it.
A Sufficient Amount of Links at a Good Rate
Instead of just trying to get as many links as possible as quickly as I can, I now pay attention to Link Velocity (the rate at which links are gained and lost). Examine the product life cycle graph below
Product Life Cycle Graph
Using that chart as a reference for link building efforts, with links on the y-axis in place of “Sales Volume”, I start building links slowly at the beginning. As rankings begin to increase in the growth period, I increase link building efforts by quite a bit. With link building, this looks more natural than sticking with the same amount of high volume backlinks continuously. In an ideal world, your content would be shared. Just like MLM companies sales pitches, the 3×3 matrix is also a good reference for how backlinks would naturally grow (3 to the nth power).
Provide Value
When creating content, I now focus on, “What will help my audience? What do they need that I can provide?” I have changed my focus on helping out others. I feel pleased with the sites I create now. With the IM mind-set, I was kinda ashamed of the low-quality sites that I was producing. When valuable content is created, it helps people and in turn, those people begin sharing your information or product and end up creating backlinks for you. I once read that “content is king”, but I thought it would be too much work and money to provide valuable content. Now, after a lot of trial and error, I realize that crap content won’t hold up in the long run.
Authority Site Focus
Instead of creating 100s of sites, I have now changed my focus to authority sites. These sites contain quality content and a lot of it. I focus on producing quality content that people will love to share. This will take longer to develop than niche sites, but there are many benefits of establishing an authority site.
Safety in numbers (of pages)
More authority
More trust
More pages for people to share
More rankings for long-tail keywords
Do everything just for the sake of SEO
I love SEO and think it needs to be done, but there has to be balance. As an Internet Marketer, I would write (outsource) and send out a press release just cause I knew it would provide strong backlinks. The writing was just ‘good enough’ to pass as a press release. I realized I was wasting a valuable traffic building and link baiting opportunity. If I had just taken the time to write a quality press release that was worth sharing, I could have tripled the effect of the press release and enhanced its back-fetching ability. I now focus on quality in my link building campaigns. This goes back to Google SEO Best Practices–create content worth sharing, and you will be rewarded by people sharing your content. Google has stated, “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here.” (SEO Starter Guide, Google)
Exploit Loopholes
I don’t really pay attention to these anymore. I’d rather focus on using sound SEO principles that will keep my site clean and free from any penalties.
Off-Page SEO isn’t EVERYTHING
Off-Page is only half of the SEO equation. On-page metrics are beginning to hold more weight in ranking factors than in prior years. Search engines are continually re-evaluating and updating algorithms. I predict that on-page will become more and more a ranking factor and that on-page will entail much more than it currently does.
The Advice
The latter techniques will provide long-term rankings, while the former, IM techniques will often lead to instability in rankings and short-term success. Google is always hacking down on ‘SPAM’ sites. Follow the SEO mindset and you will create an empire that will stand the tests of time.
As the internet becomes more and more easily accessible (iPhones, Androids, Tablets, etc.), people, more often than not, turn to the internet to find local businesses for products and services. They know that they can find helpful peer reviews to help them decide to which of all businesses they should give their money. Are you being found?
For any local business to be found online, they need a strong online presence. Local listings and citations do exactly that. They allow businesses to be found online on many different sources and platforms. By including your business’ information in online directories, your marketing reach will greatly expand and business will grow. The more listings you have, the more opportunities people will have for finding your business. These listings allow users to rate, comment on and/or suggest your business to other people.
Local listings and citations are easy to create and the ROI is off the charts. A few hours of work can turn into hundreds to thousands of new customers overtime. If setup correctly, listings and citations can be a set and forget source of constant business.
7 Tips for optimizing your local listings
Business information – Make sure that your business information matches the information on your company website or BBB listing. Google looks at these to determine your business address. Be meticulous with your NAP
One listing per business location – Do not create multiple listings for the same business location. Google will give your Google Places listing a nice little slap if you try to work the system
Add pictures - Potential customers like to see pictures of places they are considering and Google does too
Add videos – Even more than pictures, videos provide a great way for you to engage potential customers. Google loves social engagement
Write unique descriptions for each listing – This is mainly for SEO purposes. Google penalizes duplicate content, even within local citations
Duplicate Listings – Claim all your business listings under one email address if possible. If there are duplicates in a directory, choose the strongest one and delete the rest.
For the listings that ‘require’ you to pay- Search for an existing business listing created for your business within the directory. You can often ‘Claim’ the business and take control of the listing
Since you will be creating most of these manually, you may want to install Auto-Fill add-on for Firefox or if you’re using Chrome, Auto-Fill extension for Chrome–these should speed up the process of filling out the listing information. Make sure to make each listing unique though
Ultimate Local Business Directories List: sum=54
Google Places: The #1 local listing that a business must have is a Google Places listing. Google Places will be the largest source of business for you. Don’t stop there though, all other local business directory listings that you create have the ability to rank your Google Places listing. Here’s the other 49 local listings and citations.
Adding your business to these local directories and directories that are specific to your market, you will increase your online reach, build solid backlinks for your website and pump the ranking power of your Google Places listing. Feel free to add more directories that are not on this list. Good luck!
You will quickly engage peoples distrust engines…and you’ll get called out.
