Are you seeking an alternative platform to showcase your work? Pinterest is a true treasure for photographers! All about visual storytelling, it’s an ideal option to share your photo collections, boost exposure, and connect with a broader audience of creatives and potential clients.
While this channel emphasizes visual inspiration, you can’t simply download your best photos to Pinterest boards and expect hundreds of likes and comments. Ask essay writers and marketers, and they will tell you: words matter if you want to grab users’ attention, engage them with your content, and motivate them to click your link, thus driving more traffic to your portfolio or photography site. Keep reading to learn Pinterest SEO basics and how to write titles and descriptions for your photos to turn Pinterest into your top source of traffic and leads.
Why Pinterest SEO for Photographers?
Pinterest SEO is a set of practices that make your photography profile and content more visible and drive more traffic to your leading portfolio or website. It’s about optimizing your Pins and boards with keywords, high-quality images, and appealing lexical items for search engines and users to love your content.
Why use Pinterest? After all, you can focus on optimizing and promoting your photography site directly, right? Not quite.
Think of Pinterest as a free tool for promoting your website, not a marketplace for your photos or services. With over 550 million active users per month, this platform is a significant driver of your visibility! In plain English, high-intent users are more likely to find and follow your Pinterest profile than your photography site. (Especially if you don’t spend budgets on the latter’s optimization and promotion.)
How does Pinterest SEO work?
Users click on your image and find themselves on a page with more information about it. They’ll see the title, description, and the link you added to it, leading to your website, portfolio, photo project, social media account, you name it.
Your task is to craft that information so search engines understand the context and showcase it in SERPs and users — get interested in clicking on your link to learn more about your work. How can you do that?
Below are the actionable tips from an expert plagiarism checker on how to write Pinterest descriptions for your photos without stealing others’ ideas while engaging users and driving traffic to your site.
How to Write Pinterest Descriptions to Get More Clicks
First and foremost, don’t confuse the titles and descriptions of your Pinterest posts. Titles are like catchy headlines for users to understand what they’ll find if they continue reading; descriptions are the place for more information about your photo, keywords, and a call to action for the audience.
Quick tips on writing titles on Pinterest:
- Keep your titles short and to the point; stick to 50-60 characters or less so the title doesn’t get cut off in search results.
- Evoke curiosity; tease a user so they want to learn more. But! Don’t use clickbait; ensure your title is informative enough and relevant to the content you intend to share.
- Add a keyword to the title. (Think of the words a user might put in a search query to get your content in search results.)
And now, to Pinterest descriptions:
You can write up to 500 characters, but only the first 2-3 lines will be visible to users in search results and under your photo before they click “…more.” So, place a hook and relevant keywords at the beginning. Remember that your pin description has two jobs:
- It tells algorithms to show your pin in search or recommended results.
- It informs the audience about why they should care. (What’s in your content that helps them, solves their problem, entertains them, etc.? In other words, your description should be persuasive enough to click your link.
A stellar Pinterest description is informative and witty and sells your offer as the solution to the users’ needs.
Here’s how to structure descriptions for your photo pins:
Start with a short hook to evoke curiosity and encourage users to click “…more.” Ask a question, share a controversial statement, write a weird word, etc.
Remember about keywords: Add 3-5 most relevant and descriptive to your text. (You can place one as the image ALT tag or add one or two as hashtags at the end of your text. It will increase your visibility for those search terms.
Write your description like a human, not a robot: Use complete sentences with simple language that’s easy to understand and highlights the benefits of your offer. What will users get from clicking on your pin and link? Why should they care? Don’t hesitate to add descriptive details to your text, and place keywords naturally throughout your description so it doesn’t look spammy.
Add a call to action at the end. What do you want users to do after reading your description: Visit your blog, check your photography portfolio, shop your photos at some website, or anything else? Encourage them to stay with you.
Some Extra Tips on Pinterest Titles and Descriptions
Once users get hooked on your beautiful, high-quality photo, they’ll pay attention to your pin’s title. Prioritize the first 30 characters in it: Place the most important words at the beginning. A good practice would be to add extra words like “best,” “fast,” “the easiest,” or others like that to spark curiosity and invite users to click on the pin.
Think of unique aspects you can highlight in your pin’s description. What is there in your photography that makes you stand out and resonate with your audience? Use active verbs, power words, and descriptive adjectives to paint the picture inside the user’s head; evoke emotions with your words to encourage clicks and further investigation.
Don’t repeat the same information and keywords in your title and description. Think of the latter as an opportunity to add more information about your photo or other works.
Over to You
Are you a photographer with a well-organized and optimized Pinterest profile? Let’s connect and share the experience and inspiration!
