Pintrest and SEO

[SEODinosaur]

Can a company benefit from Pinrest? and if so what type of Company?

I know that some companies can for example, if I sold hair supplies and I placed images of hair styles when a user clicks on my picture it directs them to my site which is relevant I know they will likely interact, However if I offer a service like  an SEO service, can Pintrest hurt my SEO efforts by creating a higher bounce rate. Someone clicks on my picture or repins it when they get to my site they lose interest. Does this influence my results for better or worse? and I know that Pintrest is nofollow, so I don't expect to get any link juice from an image link.

[MRCSearch]

I said this in a question earlier...today I think. The threshold for bounce rate creating a negative impact for SEO is very high, to the point where you don't need to worry about it.

With regards to using Pinterest as a marketing channel, ask yourself what the benefit to your user is. Are you going to create intriguing SEO images that people will want to save or share? If so, I don't think I'd spend that capital in Pinterest, rather I'd try to turn it into good link bait.

I haven't seen anything good on whether or not Pinterest generates a measurable social signal that could influence a SERP, so I can't speak to that.

[MikeShreeve]

My wife runs a craft blog and gets almost 2k a month in traffic from pinterest. The traffic coming in seems to do really well in terms of purchasing things from her site.She also uses craftgawker which has been HUGE in terms of targeted traffic to her blog.

With Pinterest, you need to be mindful of the trending images and topics, just like twitter. Sit and watch what is going on there. If your company doesn't naturally fit in there, I wouldn't worry about using it. You will end up wasting time and resources trying to crack the "pinterest code".

I would look at the categories that pinterest has listed on their site and if you don't fit in, then move on. Pinterest is amazing, don't get me wrong. I wish I was ben or paul or any of them! But I wouldn't get too wrapped up in using pinterest just because everyone else will. In a way I feel sorry for pinterest. What made them great when I first started using it was how uncluttered it was with terrible stuff. Sort of like twitter in the beginning. Now that more and more people are talking about it in a marketing way, I can already tell it is heading down the twitter path.

Pinterest is great for companies who want to contribute without a huge expectation of anything in return.

This was totally unhelpful and I apologize

[WilliamBay]

Totally agree with Nicholas and Michael. The demographic is not SEO's and techy people.

Like your example illustrates, my clients are photographers, so Pinterest is a huge focus when I'm working with them. My company actually developed the first Pinterest WordPress plugin just for that reason. We knew it would be huge for our clients. But hasn't really done much for me in the SEO side of things. It has helped a little for the design side of the business though. So if you're a company that has web design as a service it could help you there.

[MikeShreeve]

Wow! You designed the first Pinterest WP plugin? That is so cool.

I agree with everything you said, and not just because I think you are awesome for developing the plugin.

[WilliamBay]

Haha! yeah. It was the first one, but it was coded pretty poorly (I outsourced the writing of it). http://flauntyoursite.com/pin-it-on-pinterest/
And the feedback we've been getting is that users want to use it quite a bit different than we had envisioned. So we're heading back to the drawing board with it. And I'm proud that we got something out there.

What I have planned for the 1.0 version will blow away what even Pinterest is doing with the bookmarklet.

I appreciate your stoke

[NoahsDad]

My main readership is moms, so they are very active on pintrest. They repin a lot of my content, and spend time looking at other pages on the site once there.  However, they know what they are getting before they come to the site.

Like the others have said, it really just depends on what sort of audience your site has.  For me, it's been good (I actually want to step up my boards, and make them a bit more organized...) but may not be for you.  Also remember it's invite only at this point, so even though there are a lot of people on it, not every one is. So you'll have to decide if it's worth your time at this point.