Pinterest SEO - How to increase CTR with Related Pins

October 30, 2019

Pinterest SEO – How to increase CTR with Related Pins

Pinterest SEO – How to increase CTR with Related Pins. You know those pins that show below a pin you've just tapped? You click on one great idea and then another, and another... As long as you keep clicking, new ideas and inspiration continue to pop up. It's known as the "Pinterest Rabbit Hole" and the pins that it keeps on supplying are Related Pins. Let's take a closer look at how you can leverage Related Pins to increase your Click Through Rate.

Pinterest SEO – How to increase CTR with Related Pins

Did you know that Related Pins, i.e. the ideas you see below a pin you’ve selected, account for 40% of engagement on Pinterest?*

That’s significant.

When was the last time you checked which other pins show up as suggestions below your own pins? Take a look at “More like this” just below one of your pins. Is the Pinterest algorithm on the right track or are the results completely off-topic?

It's in your interest to make sure that whatever Pinterest decides to show underneath your pin is highly relevant. That way, your own pin stands a much better chance of being shown as a Related Pin under someone else’s pin around the same topic, especially if it’s “fresh”. Pinterest displays newer pins (7 days old or less) more prominently.

Related Pins for Products

Here’s an example for “wall light ideas”. I picked a random pin from this search. As you can see the other pins that appear under "More like this" are very similar. If you have an e-commerce business that sells lights like this, wouldn't you love to have your products show up here? 

Related Pin results for e-commerce product pin

Related Pins for Services

Now let’s take a look at a pin for a service-based business. There was a time when the suggestions below my own pins were highly irrelevant. That is because I tend to use images that are not directly related to the topic of my pin. Whilst I was checking related pin results for the purpose of this article, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Pinterest’s suggestions have significantly improved! Not so long ago, the pins displayed below this pin were interior design pins that were totally unrelated to the subject of this pin. Clearly, the content that is shown now is far more relevant and helpful to people looking for this type of information.

Related Pin results for service-based business pin with non-business related image

The Related Pins Scoring System

In the above example, the algorithm is clever enough to ignore the image when it has nothing to do with the topic. After a little research on the Pinterest engineering blog, I discovered that this is partly due to the use of “annotations”. This is a concept used with machine learning models. It is put to work to generate related pins, to select and rank home feed pins, to retrieve and rank search results, to propose board suggestion for new pins and to detect unsafe content.

Heath Vinicombe (Software Engineer at Pinterest) explains**:

“Annotations are short keywords or phrases between one and six words that describe the subject of the Pin. In addition to its text content, each annotation also has a confidence score and a language associated with it. We extract multiple annotations per Pin across a total of 28 languages.

The first step in computing annotations for a Pin is to extract potential candidates from a variety of text sources such as:

  • Pin title, description, URL
  • Board name and description
  • Page title and description of the link
  • Search queries that frequently lead to clicks on the Pin
  • Names of objects detected in the image using a visual classifier"

Get started today!

Grow Your E-Commerce Sales with Pinterest

The importance of keywords on Pinterest is nothing new. The better you align your main keywords in all of the above text sources, the easier it will be for Pinterest to make the relevant connections. To increase your chances of showing up in a Related Pin feed, and thus boost your CTR, you must pin new content daily. Pinterest favors "fresh" content (7 days old or less).

To increase your CTR with Related Pins:

1

Pick your target keyword(s)

What is the main keyword or phrase you want your pin to rank for? Use Pinterest’s search function to find the best search terms.

2

Optimize the Pin title & description

Is this keyword or phrase present in the pin title and pin description? Include several keywords in the pin description. Write phrases without keyword stuffing.

3

Pin to most relevant board first 

Is the first board you’re pinning to highly relevant to the subject of the pin? Always post your pin to the most relevant board first. This gives context about your Pin to the Pinterest algorithm.

4

Pin new content daily 

Create different images for the same product. Use your imagination and crop the same image in different ways. Pinterest favors fresh content (i.e. new images). When pinning daily take care not to spam. Always vary your content and never pin the same content in short intervals.

The Pinterest algorithm evolves constantly, but quality images, pinning consistency and the importance of using relevant, unique keywords to help classify your content remain essential components of any Pinterest marketing strategy.

Related Pins account for 40% of engagement on Pinterest! Here's how you can leverage Related Pins to increase your CTR (Click Through Rate). #pinteresttips #pinterestmarketing #marylumley

*   Source: Keeping Related Pins fresh (Pinterest Engineering Blog, February 2018)

** Source: Understanding Pins through keyword extraction (Pinterest Engineering Blog, July 2019)

Mary Lumley - Conversion Focused Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest SEO – How to increase CTR with Related Pins

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