How to Optimize Photos for Pinterest

Written by: Anyonita Green on 7/4/2103

Welcome to the Blogging Crash Course! Helping you grow your blog into the powerhouse you know it can be!

Last week, we looked at the importance of watermarking photos. This week, we continue our photo discussion and talk about how to optimize your photos for Pinterest. 

If you haven't read the watermarking photos post, then I suggest you start there and then come back as watermarking is especially important for Pinterest. 

This week we're going to talk about a few Pinterest tips to help with getting your photos noticed, including titles, the often overlooked alt text, file names and keyword best practice. If you've wondered how to get your photos on the search results pages of Pinterest, then this is the tutorial for you! All right, let's go!

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While meal planning for July, I did a quick Pinterest search for slowcooker recipes. To my surprise as I was scrolling through the first set of pins, I noticed a familiar post: one of my own photos had made it to the top of the Pinterest search results!

Intrigued, I did searches for other relevant terms to see if any of my other pins were benefiting from top billing and they were!

Before we go on, let me say: I'm not a Pinterest expert and I'm not addicted to Pinterest. I pin sporadically at best and mostly from my iPod when I'm watching TV or in bed, before going to sleep or ... in the loo! (That Pinterest app is just so damn handy!) That said, I'm only sharing with you what I do and what has clearly worked for me.

Optimizing Photos for Pinterest with Keywords
Without rehashing the entire watermarking photos post, if you watermark at least one blog photo with the title of the recipe or post, you'll already have keywords for plugging into your image title, your blog post's URL and your Pinterest description.

Ensuring that your title watermark matches your image's file name and the keywords in your post's URL and the keywords in your Pinterest description is the best combination for pumping SEO attention to your blog and your pin. Since text as an image can't be read by search engines, it won't boost your SEO. However, it will make it easy for you to come up with  consistent keywords for a specific post.

Here's an example:

 The main keywords I wanted to use for this post were: smothered, pork chops, kale and mustard.
So I made sure to use them in the title watermarking for this photo.

I also used them in the post's URL like this:
http://anyonitanibbles.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/southern-smothered-pork-chops-kale-crisps-mustard-mash.html

The Pinterest description for my title watermarked photo is simply: "Southern Smothered Pork Chops with Kale Crisps and Mustard Mash"

But using keywords in those three ways alone isn't enough to really get the attention I want on Pinterest. So I've upped the ante by including my keywords in the image's file name on my computer and in the image's title and alt text in my entry.

The file name for that specific photo on my computer is: "pin_southeren smothered pork chops kale crips mustard mash.jpeg"

When I insert the photo into my blog post, I make sure I edit the title and alt text to include my keywords as well. Like this:

Pinterest Descriptions that Write Themselves
There are loads of benefits to editing the alt text of your images, but the most important one in terms of Pinterest optimization is this:

Pinterest pulls the description for your pins from the alt text!

Test it! When you try to pin the image of the Southern Smothered Pork Chops, you'll notice that the pin's description is auto-filled with the contents of my alt text field.

If you fail to edit the alt text of your photos, the pin description will default to your image's file name. In this case, if I had failed to alter the alt text, the description would have said: "pin_southeren smothered pork chops kale crisps mustard mash".

But what if I had failed to change the image's file name to reflect my keywords? The default pin description would then reflect the image's number and would look something like this: IMG_07584. In short, I would be losing out on valuable keywords.

With your photos optimized for Pinterest from the on start, you'll find that your Pinterest descriptions practically write themselves. What's more, when other people pin from your blog, the description of their pins will automatically include the most pertinent information. In my own Pinterest experience, if I pin something and the description is already filled in with the important information (and not too much of it!) I don't tend to change what the description is.

It may seem a bit labor intensive, but this method really pays off. By having my keywords plugged in so heavily, I benefit from appearing at the top of Pinterest search results with any combination of search items I put in.

For instance, here's what I get when I do a search for kale crisps:

Want to know more about alt text? Check out these articles here and here.

I hope this quick tutorial of how to optimize photos for Pinterest has been helpful for you! Be sure to come back next week, when we'll be discussing the Golden Rules of Guest Posting!