The Simple and Smart SEO Show

Pinterest Strategies to Maximize SEO w/Mackenzie Armstrong

May 24, 2023 Brittany Herzberg, Crystal Waddell Season 2 Episode 53
The Simple and Smart SEO Show
Pinterest Strategies to Maximize SEO w/Mackenzie Armstrong
Show Notes Transcript

The discussion focused on leveraging Pinterest as an offsite SEO strategy and maximizing its potential to drive traffic to blogs, podcasts, and e-commerce websites.

Mackenzie Armstrong is a Pinterest strategist for bloggers and podcasters.

1. Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media platform.

  • Conduct SEO research within Pinterest for better results.
  • Promote content on Pinterest ahead of the actual season and use clear, concise graphic designs.
  • Pinterest analytics help identify high-performing content and seasonal trends to inform future content strategies.

2. Focus on email list building as a primary call-to-action (CTA) when driving traffic from Pinterest to a website.

  • Embed YouTube videos in blog posts rather than directly linking to YouTube from Pinterest.
  • Make sure boards on a business account are relevant to the business and convert any irrelevant boards to secret boards.
  • Consider creating blog posts about products to help expand the content available for pins.

3. Viewing Pinterest as an offsite SEO strategy can help rank on Google search and increase visibility for blogs, podcasts, and e-commerce websites.

  • Emphasis on incorporating SEO throughout Pinterest accounts, including profile descriptions, board names, and pin titles.
  • For podcasters or content creators, create seven pins per week, one for each day, related to the content produced.
  • Perform keyword research for SEO within Pinterest by typing topics into the search bar and noting suggested keywords.

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[00:00:00] Brittany Herzberg: Alrighty, welcome back to the simple and smart SEO show. And this week we have yet another one of my friends. We have Mackenzie Armstrong who does Pinterest. Hopefully I don't mess this up. She's a Pinterest strategist for bloggers and podcasters. And we also have Crystal because I don't do this alone.

So say hi, people. 

[00:00:19] Mackenzie Armstrong: Hello. 

[00:00:21] Brittany Herzberg: Hello. 

Also, all three of us are just having like wonky health days. So this is going to be a very exciting podcast. Just buckle up. Okay, so here we go. 

Mackenzie, to kick it off you want to tell us like a little bit more about who you help and how you help them and all that fun stuff.

[00:00:38] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. 

So, I solely work in Pinterest because fun fact, Pinterest is not social media. 

It is a search engine. So I know people love to lump it in there with Facebook and Instagram. 

But I help service based businesses with podcasts and blogs to help get their content in front of their ideal [00:01:00] audience on Pinterest to help pull a colder audience, a top of funnel audience to their website to help them.

Get to know, and trust them to help nurture a new audience that's ideal for their content. 

[00:01:12] Brittany Herzberg: That is so lovely and beautiful. 

[00:01:15] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, I love Pinterest. I've been using Pinterest for years, for eight years. Like when Etsy started pushing it out for Etsy sellers, I was like, Ooh, what's this button do?

And so it started creating like product listings for my Etsy shop. And then when I realized that Pinterest was sending leads to my Etsy shop and then, advertising my competitors, I like put the brakes on that and redirected everything to my Shopify. 

So I am a huge fan of Pinterest and I'm so excited to hear like how you do things because I'm always learning new things from other Pinterest people.

So this is going to be awesome today. 

[00:01:51] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. 

And also speaking of Shopify, which that's not necessarily what I do. I do work with Shopify if the person has a blog. 

But so I [00:02:00] work with a teacher that sells digital products for other teachers. And so she does the blog, but we also set up Pinterest for Shopify for her because Pinterest and Shopify are connected there.

They collaborate with each other. 

So if you have a Shopify account, get your Pinterest set up because it is well worth it and it's super easy. 

[00:02:21] Crystal Waddell: Yes, it is. Yes. Yes, it is. 

I

[00:02:24] Brittany Herzberg: have two questions. One is when we ask everyone because I just love hearing this. 

How do you define SEO or when someone talks about SEO, what do you think of, there's no wrong answers.

[00:02:37] Mackenzie Armstrong: So when I think of SEO, I think of just those keywords, those key factors that you are wanting to hit and not necessarily when I think of SEO, I don't think of my personal SEO for how I speak about things. 

I think about it as how my audience speaks about things. 

So when I'm like talking about SEO for Pinterest, [00:03:00] I'm like, you're a coach, so you use specific language or verbiage, which your audience may not use.

So you need to really dive into what your audience uses to help you use those keywords, that SEO aspect of things, because how I speak about things as a specialist does not necessarily correlate with what my audience who needs my services to that they don't use that verbiage because they don't know because they're not a specialist.

So dive into those. Audience interviews and ask. 

[00:03:31] Brittany Herzberg: Thank you for saying that. Also, I'm doing a happy dance over here because yes, to all of that. 

We're done here. 

[00:03:37] Crystal Waddell: So I was wondering, besides audience language, how do you find keywords for your clients, especially like clients who are outside of like your industry and maybe something that you're familiar with?

[00:03:49] Mackenzie Armstrong: Sure. 

So because Pinterest is its own search engine, I do all of my SEO research within Pinterest itself. 

So I'll take specific [00:04:00] topics that they're talking about. 

So say I work with a lactation consultant. 

I'll really dive into pregnancy keywords or breastfeeding keywords, things like that to really see what is being searched and you're able to do all of that work within Pinterest itself.

You can pull a little bit from Google, but because it's its own separate entity, you really want to do the most, the big chunk of your SEO search within Pinterest, because what's hitting in Google might not necessarily be hitting in Pinterest.

 I also do keyword search looking at top ranking pins as well, seeing what kind of verbiage they use and see how I can correlate that within my clients post pins. 

[00:04:44] Crystal Waddell: Okay, so what I thought was interesting about what you said is it sounds like you're focused on like the before of what people need before they actually need your clients. 

Which to me is the ultimate Pinterest strategy because people are [00:05:00] searching on Pinterest way before they need something. So it makes sense that if you're serving a lactation consultant that you're actually creating pins about pregnancy and different things to bring them into your world. 

And so I think that's just a great example of how you do that because Pinterest is Like that first touch point opportunity, that top of funnel opportunity.

And that's just a really smart strategy to use for any business. So I definitely wanted to call that out. That's awesome. 

[00:05:27] Mackenzie Armstrong: And also like when you're creating pins for your content, you want it to be very straightforward. 

It's not like Facebook and Instagram where it's fluffy and you're trying to get to know somebody and you're trying to be funny.

You know what I mean? 

You really just want it to be to the point because you only have those 500 characters and to be honest, not many people read the descriptions. 

It's more for the AI. 

So if you can fill that with rich SEO rich keywords, and you're hitting those key points, it's going to be able to help categorize your content and show it to the right people at the [00:06:00] right time.

And also when you're putting out content on Pinterest, think of it like Walmart. 

When you go into Walmart, you're not seeing Valentine's stuff in February, you're seeing that in like September, so you need to have your stuff out like three to four months ahead of what the actual of when that seasonal product or that seasonal activity is going on.

So like Christmas, I start Christmas in September. 

Because you're not making a Christmas wreath in December, you're making that in advance. 

And it also helps prime your content to get it out there so that way, Pinterest can really vet it to make sure that it's saying what, like the pin actually, it's not like clickbait, like the pin is actually going to what it's talking about.

So really like you really with Pinterest need to have your content thought out so you can get it out in front of people before it's too late, if you will. 

[00:06:54] Brittany Herzberg: And I know I've heard Crystal talk about that with being seasonal. 

So I'm curious, you [00:07:00] mentioned that you wouldn't lump in Pinterest with the other social media platforms.

Can you say more about that? 

[00:07:07] Mackenzie Armstrong: Sure. Pinterest, yes, Pinterest does have a social media feel. 

You can like things, you can comment, but ideally it's a search engine. 

People are, like you do have a feed from what you follow and things like that, but you get an idea in your head and you're going to Pinterest and you're typing in the search bar. 

That's not necessarily what you do with Facebook. 

In fact, if you can do that, please share that because I have no idea if you that you can do that or not. 

And it's not mindless scrolling. You know what I mean? You're going in there with an idea. You want to make something happen. 

 You're searching for it.

So you're able to search, you're able to follow, and then say say you are a teacher, and you like this person's content, you can follow them, and then when they're producing more stuff, then it'll come up on your feed. 

But ideally, if you're looking for something specific, you're going to search it.

You're not just going to, it's going to take you forever to find something just scrolling. 

So you're searching for it, you're getting to the point.

And with that, with it being searchable you're [00:08:00] catching people's eye with your graphic. 

So you want your graphic to be in your face, big, bold lettering, no script font, people.

Stay away from script font because you cannot read that when you're scrolling. 

So you want it like clear, concise, in your face. 

You want it to be pretty, but it doesn't have to be like... Don't spend a whole lot of time on it. 

It doesn't necessarily need to be that you're getting people information that they want.

Pinterest and Facebook go about starting relationships with people in a different way. 

[00:08:29] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:08:30] Mackenzie Armstrong: Facebook, you're having that conversation. 

You're drawing in people, Pinterest, like you have an idea, you want it, some information: hey, come to my website. Cause I have everything you need there.

And that also is a big difference. Facebook wants you to stay there. 

Pinterest is: Hey. I want you to I want you to go to your, I want you to, I want you to leave Pinterest and go to this website because that's where they're going to help you the most because Pinterest wants to inspire and help you get into what you want to do.

I

[00:08:55] Brittany Herzberg: love that about Pinterest. 

[00:08:56] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Okay. So I just recently posted [00:09:00] like this week on Instagram about Pinterest analytics, because I feel like Pinterest is also a gold mine of customer data and a lot of people don't realize that. 

Yeah. So I see you lit up there. 

Talk to us a little bit about that and I'll follow up with any questions. I might have sure. 

[00:09:17] Mackenzie Armstrong: Okay. So when I look at Pinterest analytics, I look at 3 things I look at. Impressions. I look at outbound clicks and I look at saves. 

Impressions doesn't really mean anything. It's a vanity metric, but it also tells you if your keywords are working. 

If you're getting high, if you're getting high impressions, that means that you're appearing on people's scrolls.

So you're hitting keywords. 

Outbound clicks means how many people have left Pinterest and went to your website. 

And then saves is how many people have saved that content to go back to it later. 

And that's also very important because that's what Pinterest is using to categorize if your content is I don't want to say [00:10:00] worthy enough to show to other people, but they use saves to really say, okay this is getting a lot of saves.

So let's push this more. 

Those are the 3 things that I find the most important with Pinterest and with the data for like future. 

I always tell my clients, I'm like, let's go look and see what has been doing well because you can go back. 

I want to say six months, maybe to a year of your content because you can see the ebbs and flows of when people are looking at your information.

So if you're like, hey, this like topic a did really well. Topic B. Not so much. We got a little traction, but not much. 

So that means that in the future, you can write more about topic A, and then sprinkle a little bit of B in there. 

But focus more on this one topic, because that's what's getting your people lit up.

That's what's hey, this is what people are needing. 

So let's dive deeper into this topic, and get them into your ecosystem, to where you can say, hey, come to my website, and look at all these other blogs or podcasts that you can learn from. 

[00:11:00] Because all this other information is valid, but, Hey. This one piece of information drew you in.

So you can really hone into where your audience is, and then with that, you can also then start to look at your actual audience itself. 

You can say, okay this pin graphic did really well, this pin graphic not so much. 

So let's go back and revisit the one that's doing well and make things, tweak it a little bit to make it different to where then I can start pushing that, those new pins out, those new graphics to draw even more people in.

[00:11:32] Crystal Waddell: That's so cool. Okay, so just really quick, you've mentioned pushing people off of Pinterest to your blogs, which I love. 

I'm all about some content marketing. 

What about CTAs when you get to the blog? 

Because that's the question a lot of people ask about Pinterest. 

It's okay if I get into my website, then what's the conversion, what's a realistic like process that somebody could go through or expect when they do this.

[00:11:56] Mackenzie Armstrong: So when you get them to your website you want them to join your email list, that [00:12:00] should be your biggest push. 

Join my email list. Join my email list. Join my email list. 

Get this free thing. Get this free, free gift and join my email list or get if you want to learn about the top five tips of X, Y, and Z, join my email list.

So you really want to do that because that's really where you're going to nurture your audience through your emails and through your blogs. 

Hey, I have a new blog post coming out, go check it out because that's another thing. That's another big difference between Facebook, Instagram, and pinterest. When Facebook is down, you've lost your audience. 

If that's what you solely focus on, whereas if you have an, if you have Pinterest and you have that email is built, who cares if Facebook went down, who cares if you're in Facebook jail, you have all your names that you can still reach people.

You're not like constraint to what. Facebook wants you to do. 

And then also, if you like, say you're working with e commerce, Pinterest is actually rolling out soon. 

Hopefully sooner than later that you can actually buy from Pinterest itself. 

So you'll be able to [00:13:00] add that in there.

Because a lot of times with e commerce sites, you put a pin up there. 

And it's like selling a product and they go to the website and then once they go to that website and then they go to the checkout, you lose that Pinterest brought them to that checkout because that analytic just says Pinterest brought you to that website or that page.

It doesn't say that they actually went further and checked out and bought something from you. 

So now with the fact that Pinterest you're going to be able to buy from Pinterest, you're really going to be able to see on the backend that, Hey, I'm actually really making sales from Pinterest because Pinterest is allowing me, cause that it takes out that whole extra step of going to the website and then purchasing, they're able to really see that they're purchasing from Pinterest itself, which is awesome because I feel like that's a lot of.

That's a big thing that you can miss from your analytics if you're selling e commerce. 

Yeah. 

[00:13:54] Crystal Waddell: In terms of conversions and crediting the click, I think this is something that [00:14:00] most of the platforms are really having a problem with right now. 

And Pinterest has had conversion analytics in beta for years, and so what's interesting, it's interesting that you said that because there's been times where I can tell that my Pinterest traffic has gone up. 

And my sales have gone up, or correlated in some way, form or fashion, but yet Pinterest is not getting credit for the click. I'm excited for that because I do have a shop.

 And that would be one less step, in the process for people to check out if they could just shop directly from Pinterest.

So I'm excited for that. It's been a long time coming. 

[00:14:38] Brittany Herzberg: Is that going to apply for digital products too? Cause I know I have some digital stuff. 

 I believe that if you set up, like you can, because even if you don't have Shopify, you can still set up a catalog and have products on your page.

So if you, I believe if you have a catalog, you'll be able, because the catalog takes an inventory and even though it's digital, you still have to have that, even though it's like. Endless. I would think you would [00:15:00] still have to have that catalog to buy from there because they're going to be buying from the actual product pin itself.

[00:15:06] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And that was the reason why I chose Shopify because prior to moving to Shopify, I had a go daddy online store and setting up that catalog and the coding required and all that. I was like no. 

I love spreadsheets, but This is way outside my pay grade. 

So when I switched to Shopify, you're not kidding when you say it's so easy because, you have to have a few things set up to be a part of the verified merchant program. 

But they outline that, and you can use Shopify templates, once it's set up, it's just a matter of installing that Pinterest app for Shopify. 

And like you said, they do all the communication. They do all the updates. You don't have to worry about it. It's absolutely seamless. 

Now they have it for WordPress as well, if you don't have one of those two things, it may be a lot more difficult for you to set this up on Pinterest.

[00:15:55] Mackenzie Armstrong: And I do Pinterest all day and it's hard for me to set up because it's so tedious. 

[00:16:00] If there's one wrong thing, the whole thing doesn't work. And I'm just like.... 

oh man.

[00:16:04] Brittany Herzberg: I can see how that would be really helpful, especially for Crystal, you have many products. 

I think I have four that I would want to list on Pinterest. 

So I could see how it would be tedious for me, a service provider with digital products. But. It's not like I have 20 things that I need to list or 100.

Yeah, I have no idea. 

[00:16:23] Mackenzie Armstrong: And with a digital product, it probably won't be so tedious because you're not going to have to go in there and change your quantities.

You're always going to have product because it's a download. So it's just a matter of also with digital products. It's also a matter of having your outline set up of like return policy like this.

It's a once you buy there is a return policy because It's a digital product. 

So it's just a matter of having that verbiage and really communicating with Pinterest to make sure that it's to their specifications. 

Because I know that with the my client, I've had to go back and forth with Pinterest a few times.

And.[00:17:00] But besides that, once it's set up, you're golden. So once it gets going, you're good. 

[00:17:05] Brittany Herzberg: I might be calling you Mackenzie. 

[00:17:07] Crystal Waddell: So one thing I think is interesting is we've talked about, on site SEO and on page SEO, which I love. 

We do those SEO audits for people and it's so much fun, to help just see that light bulb go off, service providers, e commerce sellers, whatever. 

And it's oh my gosh. I don't even have a keyword in my H 1. I didn't even know an H 1 was on this page.

And then it's ah, they just go from there. 

But I recently had an aha about off page SEO and B always says, whether you have an SEO strategy or not, you have an SEO strategy.

And Pinterest for years has been my offsite SEO, like that has been my offsite SEO strategy. 

And I never thought about it that way. 

For those people who are hesitant about Pinterest, can you see it from that person for that [00:18:00] perspective as an offsite SEO strategy and that people really could embrace it as such.

[00:18:08] Mackenzie Armstrong: Oh, for sure. Because you're putting in, if you're going to put in the work, you're going to put in the work for the SEO for Pinterest itself. 

So that's another layer of SEO on top of what you're doing for Google and other search engines. 

But with the fact that like Pinterest, because it's searchable, your content lives for years.

Like when you go to look at, say you go to look at A cookie recipe, you know that blog that recipe that blog might be from like 2017 and it's still getting trafficked and it's still ranking super high because they have hit those keywords that are needed. 

And also if your SEO is strong, then it's also going to help you rank on Google as well, because that's another avenue of there's another place where your name's out there and your content's out there. 

So it helps rank because I know like when you, if you search in Google, sometimes pins come up for Pinterest. 

So [00:19:00] you're really able to hit that also.

I feel like your SEO needs to be everywhere. If you're going to go there, go do it hardcore. You know what I mean? 

Have your keywords everywhere because that's your brand. That's your verbiage. 

That's what's going to draw your clients and your audience, because it all comes back.

It all hopefully comes back to your website. 

So that's what you want to do. 

[00:19:20] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:19:21] Crystal Waddell: Okay. So I know we're going to talk about like podcasts and different workflows or whatever for that, but could you give us a very simple workflow that someone who's listening right now might be able to follow if they want to post to Pinterest?

Because over the years, there's been lots of, you have to post this many times a day, use tailwind, post organically, blah, blah, blah. 

Could you just, give us a quick and dirty workflow for someone who's okay, I want to give this a shot. 

But how do I get started and how can I be consistent and maintain it?

For sure. 

Okay, so we'll use you guys as an example. How many podcasts do you put out a week? 

[00:19:59] Brittany Herzberg: One. [00:20:00] 

[00:20:00] Crystal Waddell: One a week? 

That's perfect. I highly recommend having four pieces of content a month, one a week. 

For you guys, what I would do is, I would take your one podcast that's going live that week, and I'd create seven pins for it.

For that one podcast, and I'd have one go out each day, so we'll say Monday through Sunday, and then what I would do is say you have an off week where you like, say it's Christmas and you're like, we're not putting a week went out for Christmas week. 

Then I would go and pull an older piece of content and older blog posts that has done or a podcast that's done really well and create pins and send that out for that week. 

 Ideally, what you want to do is you want to have one new pin a week. So there's 3 types. So there's 3 types of it. There's gold pins, silver pins and bronze pens. And this is the verbiage I use. This is not like technical pinterest. 

So a gold pin is a new graphic, a new URL.

So you're gonna have one gold pin per piece of content. 

And then you have silver content, which is a new graphic and the same URL. 

So if we go to that [00:21:00] schedule Monday through Sunday, Monday would be gold, Tuesday through Sunday would be silver. 

And then bronze is a pin that you've already sent out, same graphic, same URL.

Bronze content is what I use Tailwind for. Now there are other schedulers. Tailwind has been a super pain in the butt lately, I'm not going to lie. 

But it's the most robust scheduler that we found. As of yet you can do a lot more things with you can do that interval scheduling.

I'll schedule your 7 pins for this week and then I'll go into Tailwind and then I'll schedule those same pins out 21 days later. 

And then it'll go to a different board and then 21 days later and I'll go to a different board. Ideally, you want to have 1 fresh pin a day. 

Or one new pin a day that you pin through Pinterest, and then you want to have three to five other pins, bronze pins going out.

So ideally you want to pin at least, I would say three to five, three to five pins a day, but it's all automated. 

Like when [00:22:00] I work in Pinterest, I work in Pinterest once a week. 

Like I do, I can do a client in one day for the whole week. 

And if they're only doing two podcasts a week, then I can technically do.

Two weeks in advance because I just need that URL to be live. 

You mean two podcasts a month? 

[00:22:18] Mackenzie Armstrong: Yes. A month. I'm sorry. A month. Yes. Two podcasts a month. 

So instead of four pieces of content going on a month, it was only two. 

So I would do the fresh content and evergreen content, fresh content, evergreen content, depending on what week the fresh content is going out.

Did that make sense? Sorry. I feel like I get talk myself into circles sometimes.

[00:22:39] Brittany Herzberg: That was perfect. I do have one clarifying thing. So pretend I'm new to Pinterest. Could you walk me through something really simple about going back to what you said much earlier about doing some SEO keyword research within Pinterest?

Like, where would I go? 

And how much time should I be spending on that? Cause I'm like a research nerd and I'll spend all day long and I know that's not helpful.[00:23:00] 

What I'll do is like thinking about your content, what type of content do you talk about?

[00:23:04] Mackenzie Armstrong: I would spend maybe an hour and a half typing in those topics into the search bar into Pinterest and seeing what comes up on when the bar comes down, when like you start typing and it starts guessing what you're talking about, type in that topic and see what topics come out.

Say we said for like the breastfeeding, breastfeeding, I type breastfeeding in there. 

Breastfeeding, newborns, breastfeeding, infants, breastfeeding tips, breastfeeding mothers and those are those keywords that you want to hit. 

Those are the top things being searched. 

And then luckily Pinterest has brought the bubbles back at the top of the page.

I don't know if anybody, how far into Pinterest you guys go, but like when you search something and you hit enter, then there's these colorful bubbles at the top. 

So then you want to add those words to that key bar. 

So breastfeeding and then tips might be a bubble, infant, newborn, milestone.

Hurt, hurting, these are all the things that might be searched within, [00:24:00] yes, mastitis. 

You know what I mean? All of those words are the words that you want to put into your, when you're creating your 500 character. 

Like legit, like three sentences, like it's not hard.

It's really not long and you just got to get a lot of bang for your buck. 

Okay. So this is a 

[00:24:16] Crystal Waddell: question I get a lot from my clients, especially the ones that I work with that are handmade and Shopify who are now like, Ooh, cool. I can connect Pinterest and Shopify. 

They're saying, okay, I used Pinterest a long time ago, but I don't really use it now.

And, I have a business account, but what should I do now in 2023 to make my business account relevant to search and to Pinterest and to make it look professional versus All of those, cozy nights at home with my love pins, that might be out there? 

[00:24:49] Mackenzie Armstrong: Okay, so what you want to do is it's not worth going back and deleting things like just look forward don't spend the time and delete.

Okay. And. [00:25:00] The thing about deleting is if you delete something, you lose the followers for that, and you don't want to do that. 

So what I would do is just go in and give your account a facelift. 

Go in and re optimize it. If it doesn't pertain to your business, secret it. Because I still have a business account, but I still have like nursery boards, birthday party boards.

It has nothing to do with Pinterest or anything marketing. 

So just secret the boards that you don't need for your clients. 

And I, the way I tell people to go about their boards and when they're deciding, is you want to have at least 10 boards. 

And they all need to be relevant to what you are talking about.

So you, as you guys are speaking about SEO, there might be other things like other marketing things that you necessarily don't talk about but could be useful for your audience. 

So go ahead and have those. 

Like on my page I have Pinterest boards but then I also have social media boards because that's something that people are interested in and are useful for people now and it doesn't conflict with what [00:26:00] I'm doing.

You don't wanna pin anything that conflicts with what you're selling or putting out there, and you don't want to pin anything that's going to be a competitor of yours. 

[00:26:11] Crystal Waddell: Yes. 

[00:26:12] Mackenzie Armstrong: Everybody wants some love, but don't pin your competitors because you want people to buy or come to you.

Make sure that you have that thought in the back of your head when you're doing that. 

And then also for the SEO, the keywords, anywhere you can write on Pinterest is an SEO opportunity. 

Your profile description SEO. Your profile name, SEO. Your board names, SEO. Your board descriptions, SEO. Your pin titles, SEO. Your pin descriptions, SEO. 

Everything that you have that you can type on a Pinterest needs to be filled with SEO because as you can tell when you go to search in Pinterest now, people's profiles show up now.

So if you have SEO in your profile name, SEO expert, then your profile is going to pop up.[00:27:00] 

Then it brings you them to your entire pool of content that you've put out for yourself. 

So everything is SEO. 

[00:27:07] Brittany Herzberg: Yes. 

[00:27:07] Mackenzie Armstrong: So go in, give yourself a facelift, secret anything that you don't need, create boards that pertain to your business.

Think about the content that you're putting out and that the topics that you're talking about and make them your boards. 

And then start to fill those with. So say for, say you, did a board for SEO and marketing. 

So any type of content that you put out about SEO marketing goes in that board and then it goes into another board for SEO.

And then you might have just a marketing board and it goes into that board as well. 

So, fill it, fill your account with content that you're talking about. 

[00:27:45] Crystal Waddell: So I'm wondering, can you explain what happens on the pinner side? Say I, I see one of B's pins and she has a pin about SEO and I click on it.

What then happens on my side in my, in relationship to B, [00:28:00] will I always see her stuff now or how does that work? 

[00:28:04] Mackenzie Armstrong: First off, if you click her pin, you're going to her website, or if that's where she leads you, that's the URL that she puts you in, and that's, that she put in, and that's where you're going.

On our side, or on the coach, or the person's content, whoever you're looking at side they'll see that you clicked that pin, that'll go into the data that somebody's clicked that pin if they've saved it, if they've, Done an outbound click anything like that, and then it'll go into your analytics.

And then also for the following side, if you start to click their stuff more often, or if you start to click a specific topic, then those things will start to show up on your feed.

But if you want them, if you want their content to, show up more frequently then you want to follow them.

[00:28:51] Brittany Herzberg: That's good. 

[00:28:53] Crystal Waddell: You mentioned like different types of pins and we haven't talked about that yet. It was huge. A couple years ago when [00:29:00] Pinterest rolled out idea pins.

And it was like, everybody's got to do idea pins, and I happen to love idea pins because when you're an eCommerce seller, you can add a product tag where other people. Couldn't, like you said, they couldn't click out, but I could tag my products. And so I was like, woo hoo, this is great. I'm telling everybody who's got Shopify tag your products and your idea pins, but now it's 2023.

What's going on? Does the types of pins matter? Because there's standard pins, there's video pins, there's product pins. 

Are any of those more valuable than others when you're creating for Pinterest? 

[00:29:34] Mackenzie Armstrong: Your product pins will be created by your 

[00:29:37] Crystal Waddell: Catalog connection. 

[00:29:39] Mackenzie Armstrong: Catalog. Thank you. Sorry. I really had a minute. Yeah, your catalog or your Shopify account. They're really pushing video.

So it's going to get you the most reach.

They're really getting rid of the idea pins. 

So that's good. They were really pushing idea pins to where everybody was seeing idea pins, but now they're evening out between the static pins. 

[00:29:59] Crystal Waddell: [00:30:00] So bizarre. That's just such a bizarre thing to go out and not have a clear strategy for, it's just such a mess. 

[00:30:09] Mackenzie Armstrong: That's what Pinterest does. Pinterest does things and that won't tell anybody anything. And they're like, hey, have fun trying to figure it out. 

[00:30:15] Brittany Herzberg: They are one of the more secretive ones that I've run across. And even I remember hearing, when Crystal was like really going gung ho with Pinterest, I feel like it was like 2020, 2021. 

And she was, noticing things earlier than some of these other Pinterest gurus, if you will.

And Then it was I don't know, behind the scenes, it felt like very bickery and it really, it was just like, no one knows what's going on, but Hey, I'm doing this and it's working for me. You could try it too. Kind of thing. 

That's what I felt like Crystal was saying. And everybody else was like, no!

[00:30:46] Mackenzie Armstrong: And that's the thing. If it's working for somebody, try it. It might be working for them. It might not work for you. It might work for you. 

But Pinterest is very secretive. They do not want to, I don't want to give anybody their secrets. It's actually pretty funny. 

[00:30:58] Crystal Waddell: Okay. So let's go back to the [00:31:00] podcasting workflow. 

If we're going to create pins and we're going to create, one new pin for every podcast. What is that going to look like? Can you break it down for us?

What it would look like as a pin, like kind of ideas for how to create different types of content for the same podcast or the same piece of content, what people are dealing with. 

[00:31:22] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. So what I would do is if you're doing one a week, I would create seven graphics for that one blog post.

And you want to change your text overlay to be, they can all be similar, but you want to try to hit those different keywords.

It goes back and forth if the Pinterest AI can actually read the text overlay or not, Because you're not creating it within Pinterest. 

But just to be safe on the safe side I create seven pins. 

Fluctuate what each over what each text overlay is saying, make sure they're clear, concise. You can read it as you're scrolling. Nothing too thin. Nothing scripty. You want [00:32:00] it to be very like block. 

I know it might not be in your brand, but. We're not worried about that. 

Keep your brand colors, you know what I mean? Put your logo on there. Put your website on there. 

But if it's not readable, it's not worth it. So just make sure that you're able to read that pin clearly. 

So, what I would do is, send those out one a day. You don't want to put the same URL out more than once a day because then it looks spammy.

Before you could put it out like a hundred times and Pinterest wouldn't care. 

They want new content and they want one URL a day. 

You can have several URLs going out that 

day, but none of them repeat. And then, so you'll have that for your week. 

We usually see Friday, Saturday, Sunday, not as high reach because people are out and about, especially with summer coming. 

Think about, your season, winter. Everybody's in early on their phones, hanging out, watching TV. In the summer, they're at the beach or if you're in that type of [00:33:00] area, they're out doing something.

It's warmer. So just keep that in mind with when you're pinning. 

People are all about videos. People are all about reels. And if you do reels for Instagram , you should put them as pins. They're the same size. 

[00:33:13] Brittany Herzberg: Do you wanna do it before you have like the Instagram logo on it, or does it matter?

[00:33:16] Mackenzie Armstrong: Yeah. You don't want the Instagram logo. 

[00:33:18] Brittany Herzberg: Okay. 

[00:33:18] Mackenzie Armstrong: You don't want it. You don't want it. Watermarked? . Ok. You can get it. Unwatermarked. . 

[00:33:22] Crystal Waddell: So just a quick thought on that. I see TikTok videos all the time on Pinterest. It doesn't stop me from watching them if it's relevant to me, and they're still showing up in my feed.

Why, what, does it really matter? 

[00:33:34] Mackenzie Armstrong: Pinterest is less inclined to show other platforms content. Just, you might get they got reach, but they might have gotten even more reach if it didn't have the watermark on it, essentially. 

[00:33:45] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:33:45] Mackenzie Armstrong: But, don't let it stop you from putting it out there.

If you can't get the watermark off of it, type a title. Or type in because like in Pinterest, when you upload your pin, you can actually create like a title and like you can move it around or put that bad boy on top of the watermark. 

[00:34:00] You know what I mean? Try to distort it in some way. You know what I mean?

Don't keep, don't let it stop you from putting it out there. 

But ideally, you don't want it to have the watermark. You want it to be like an original video. Or throw it into Canva and try to manipulate it that way. 

[00:34:13] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I was going to say too, I think the TikTok videos I've seen being repurposed on Instagram, I've noticed that they're still getting a pretty good reach if the creator has a really high, like a really large audience, like multiple thousands of people.

I think it really does, like you said, though, I think it really does still hinder them from getting as big of a reach as they could get, but that's just what I've noticed. 

[00:34:37] Mackenzie Armstrong: Yeah, and they're going to play into that, they have a big audience, 

so it's going to be able to play into that. Push out to more people.

[00:34:44] Crystal Waddell: Okay, so we were talking right before we got started here about who Pinterest is not good for. 

[00:34:50] Brittany Herzberg: Yes. 

[00:34:51] Crystal Waddell: And when I decided to dive into Pinterest marketing, I was like, Oh, I want to help all these people get on Pinterest. And then I realized, Oh, no, you don't [00:35:00] have anything to put on Pinterest. So let's talk about that.

What do you need to do to get ready to be on Pinterest? 

[00:35:06] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. So my, so I will essentially work with anyone. Ideally. I like to stay away from e commerce. That's just my thing. Cause I don't, I'm more of a service based person. 

[00:35:18] Brittany Herzberg: You can help me. 

[00:35:20] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Send the e commerce my way. 

[00:35:22] Mackenzie Armstrong: Yeah.

Essentially you want content going out and whatever consistency you have, that's great. But just keep that consistency because Pinterest will notice if your consistency changes. 

They're okay with you having more content, not okay with you having less content. It'll jack up your analytics for a little bit.

But again, that's okay. Life happens. 

But essentially you want some type of content going out, whether that be a podcast. 

Whether that be a blog, if you have a YouTube channel, I highly suggest not sending people from Pinterest to your YouTube channel, but to embed your YouTube video on your website as a blog post and send people to that [00:36:00] URL.

And then e commerce, if you have products going out, you only have three products and you're not putting blog posts or anything out about them. 

Then, you might not have as much reach. So what I say is if you have three products, write a blog post about it. 

If you, say you're a teacher and you have a web website or a worksheet that you wanna sell on Shopify, create a pin for that Shopify account for that url.

But then write a blog post of how people have used it in their classroom, or a blog post of Hey, this is what it could look like, or, these are the other things that I've added to the lesson to make it an even deeper lesson or to span a week. Use your content.

If you don't have a lot of content going out, if you're an e commerce or product based or whatever, write a blog post about how it can be used or why it's used or who can use it or when to use it, whatever information. And it doesn't have to be long. You don't have to write a book. It can be a short, nice and sweet blog post. 

Send it out and then you have that [00:37:00] URL, create pins for that and send it out and link it to have a link in that blog post to the product to buy. 

But you need content going out. When Pinterest first started to the same pin over and over and over and over again, it's not like that anymore.

They want fresh content. 

[00:37:16] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:37:17] Mackenzie Armstrong: Because 400 million people around the world use Pinterest monthly, so you have the potential to be seen by that.

[00:37:24] Brittany Herzberg: That is so many people, and I love being reminded of Pinterest because I'm like, it's, mine's just chilling in a corner right now and I need to get back on it, so this is always motivating.

With that in mind, I know that you have something super awesome that I'm for sure going to go download, but will you tell us about that and tell us like where people can find you? 

[00:37:42] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. I have a free checklist. 

The five things that I do as a Pinterest strategist first in an account of the five first steps that you want to take when starting or revamping your Pinterest account. 

It's going to help you hit those keywords and get everything [00:38:00] optimized for your account.

And then you can always find me at my website: it is Armstrongvirtualsolutions.Com, or you can always find me. I love spending time on Linked In. 

And I do peruse Facebook and Instagram as well. So you can always find me there at Armstrong virtual solutions or McKenzie Armstrong. 

[00:38:18] Brittany Herzberg: Love it. I'm going to need to go be friends with you on Pinterest and LinkedIn.

[00:38:23] Mackenzie Armstrong: For sure. 

Thank you so much. Yes. 

[00:38:26] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. I hope we can do this again because this went by so fast and I'm like, I have more questions. Like we need to continue to talk about this! 

[00:38:33] Mackenzie Armstrong: I have so much more to tell you. 

[00:38:35] Crystal Waddell: Pinterest is a bit of a, like Pinterest combines all of the elements of the online business space into one platform, so if you're frustrated with like how to do online business, Pinterest is probably going to be like a new source of frustration for you.

But if you can understand the concept of how Pinterest works and then how the internet works, [00:39:00] it's really going to serve your business and it's going to serve you mentally as you approach your business and how to promote it and market it online. 

Would you guys agree with that? 

[00:39:10] Mackenzie Armstrong: Oh, sure. And it's going to, you're going to spend less time on Pinterest itself, the platform as a business owner than you will on Facebook and Instagram once you get everything situated.

[00:39:21] Brittany Herzberg: That is, that gives me so much hope. I keep, I always have the best of intentions with Pinterest. And then, like I said, it's just sitting in a corner. So I know part of your magic message is like, nobody like don't put baby in a corner. And I'm like, dang it. I sure did.

We'll have to have you back. Thank you. This was awesome.

[00:39:36] Mackenzie Armstrong: Of course. I love talking about Pinterest. So anytime. 

[00:39:39] Brittany Herzberg: Catch you next time. Bye.