I've never liked the methods offered by many SEO agencies, they seemed to me to be black hat and a kind of cheating. I wanted to create a campaign which is important and strong enough to have a real impact on SERP. I decided to follow latest trends (or rather future ones) and do SEO for our site starting from social media. Of course I knew it would be a hard task.
Pinterest was supposed to be a small part of this inbound marketing strategy. Just another social media channel where we could promote our lingerie wholesale site.
At the beginning of March I checked Google search results to see how our company name ("Lingerose") was indexed. In the top 10 results I found Lingerose's Pinterest account despite the fact that it wasn't definitely strong and developed - yet.
At that moment I realized that Pinterest may have huge impact on SERP in Google and might be a great tool from SEO's point of view.
But, my aim wasn't only to improve Lingerose's position in Google. I wanted also to conduct a real research that would prove the impact that Pinterest has on Google. To do it in a proper way I had to document all results and act in accordance with a ceteris paribus assumption ("with other things the same"). I did so. Full documentation of the results is available at my blog PinterestandGoogle.com. I created also a kind of isolation from other sources that might affect Lingerose's SERP in Google and dedicated myself to Pinterest only.
Fortunately for the purpose of this research, at that time there weren't any special SEO activities done for Lingerose.com. Except for friendly URLs and the fact that the domain was registered in 2009. No link building or other SEO methods that could have an impact on SERP. All the social media activities done before March of 2013 didn't affect Google significantly. For the most important search query - "lingerie wholesale", the site were out of the first 200 results.
So, there was a huge chance that information and results I was going to gather, could reflect some correlation between Pinterest and Google search results.
Because it's all about pinning
As the main aim was to conquer Google search results, I knew that the campaign and all actions taken had to be effective and successful. No wasting time for unproven or time-consuming methods, just a simple recipe to succeed. Before I started my 6 months' campaign, I prepared and optimized the account's and main boards' descriptions according to SEO rules. Also, descriptions of all the pinned photos always contained relevant keywords. Pins were added and repined manually on a daily basis. No automatic tools, no cheating. Just me, Lingerose, Pinterest and a hard work.
I present stats of the campaign from the 2nd of March to 31st of August 2013
According to them there were total of:
- 8418 pins added from Lingerose.com
- 24485 pins from Lingerose.com were repinned
- 17.075.547 impressions of pins from Lingerose.com
- 17385 visits to Lingerose.com
Below, the graph - how Lingerose's position in Google were changed during the 6 months period of the Pinterest's campaign.
In March, after 2 weeks time, Lingerose jumped onto the 112th position, but it was just the beginning.
Before the site reached the top positions in search results, Google indexed the boards from Lingerose's Pinterest account. At the end of March they were already displayed on the 3rd page of Google.
It seemed like the boards passed juice or kind of their power to Lingerose.com. The higher the site was indexed the lower the boards were.
Below the results for the "lingerie wholesale" query from the US - June 2013
In July and August Lingerose reached the first top 2 positions in many countries around the world.
Results from Greece - the 2nd of August 2013
I checked results in 68 different countries and noticed the following positions in Google:
- the 1st position - 3 countries (Greece, Ireland, Poland)
- the 2nd position - 49 countries (USA, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, France, Russia, Argentina, India, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates etc.).
- the 3rd position - 12 countries
Only 4 countries were out of the top 3 results! It gave an average of the 2,72 position in Google!
Click here to see a map with countries and positions in Google
My initial assumption was to reach high positions in Google SERP for the "lingerie wholesale" query - maybe the top 10. I achieved even more than I had expected.
The campaign brought the great results not only for the main query - „lingerie wholesale" but also for some other keywords related to Lingerose's offer.
It was another aim of mine to promote brands which products are sold in Lingerose. In total, I created 17 boards dedicated to the most popular manufacturers from the wholesale offer.
Almost all of the boards reached the top 3 of Google by the end of March. Below the "Axami Wholesale" search results:
What was interesting - I stopped adding new pins to the brands' boards in April but they didn't lose their positions in Google search results during the next months of the campaign.
Additionally, for keywords related to the brands' offer, Google indexed Lingerose's site itself at the top positions as well.
I'm presenting below the UK's results from the 26th of August 2013 for the "Obsessive wholesale" query - the most competitive one among all brands keywords. As you may notice Lingerose is classified at the positions 7 and 8. The board is at the 4th position, despite the fact that last pins were added to almost 5 months earlier.
I hope that my research shed some light on possible impact that social media channels may have on Google and might be useful for your future campaigns.
Pinterest definitely has a huge impact on Google all over the world. Not the US only - as many specialists claim. In fact, no matter what country you run your business in, a proper Pinterest's campaign can turn out to be a real mile stone for your company. You may strongly improve your website's position in Google results.
Of course, I'm not trying to say that Pinterest will always guarantee you the top of Google. I did precise research of Pinterest's impact on Google for the most important query ('lingerie wholesale') for Lingerose.com in this case. However, there are much broader keywords which you may want to use. Still, no matter how popular and competitive query you would like to rank for, Pinterest's marketing campaign will always help your website to be higher and higher in Google search results.
If you would ask me to point out the most important tips, I would definitely say: create a powerful account, be consistent and become a leader!
And finally - the simple recipe to succeed:
"Keep Calm and Keep Pinning"