Enabling Pinterest on Your Website

Pinterest has been getting my attention lately. Pinterest allows you to graphically bookmark or "pin" photos and videos on a website and organize them into folders called "boards". The social networking aspect comes where you follow other's boards and "repin" content to your own boards. Users can also surf a content stream of different predetermined categories such as diy crafts and food and drink. The most popular Pinterest account belongs to Power of Pinterest Book with 28,000 followers. That's a pretty paltry in comparison to the most popular twitter or facebook

After launching in 2010, Pinterest has managed to capture and hold onto a strongly female demographic. According to Mashable, 68% of Pinterest users are female with 27.4% of the all users in the coveted 24-34 age range. If you are a business that sells products for women then you should absolutely implement Pinterest in a big way on your website - your competition is.

The biggest reason that a business should actively engage in Pinterest is inbound links. Every time someone pins or repins your content from one of their friends an inbound link is created. Search engine ranking gives a lot to weight to inbound links.

Pinterest integration can be incredibly easy to implement but must rely on two separate and distinct methods of generating Pinterest interest. The first method relies on the business creating their own pins. A "look at me" kind of approach. You simply pin images from your site to your boards and then hope and pray that people will follow you. To add this to your website you just add a button.
Here's a group of buttons that can be embedded on a website. These allow the user to follow specific accounts not unlike a "follow me on facebook" button. These, in fact, are buttons to my account.

The  second method is dependent upon visitors to your website to pin content for themselves. This "look at them" is a far better means of communicating your message. You can also add a button to a web page or a blog post to enable a user to create a pin and add it to one of their boards. Pinterest has a really effective code generator on their site to make it easy to add this functionality simply.  Here's a button that pins content on this blog post to your Pinterest account.

Users can also take "pinning" into their own hands by adding "Pin It" functionality to their browsers. This is the option that most appeals to me because currently the vast majority of things I want to pin are not Pinterest enabled on websites.

Over the course of a few months of pinning I have noticed a few problems that make pinning difficult. When trying to pin an image I get the error messages stating that there is no usable image on the pin. The fixes are not easy. They require thoughtful web design which is an art itself. Here's a list of best practices I came up with for making your website Pinterest friendly.

1. You must have an image or a video. Pinterest cannot graphically pin something that is not graphical. Pinterest will recognize media from upload sites such as YouTube and flickr so don't be afraid to embed content from the cloud.
2. Don't use incompatible image types. Pinterest can't pull an image from a Flash image gallery. Manually test pin all of you images to see if they work.
3. Don't use too many images on a single page. Make it simple to pin. Don't have 25+ images come up when someone wants to pin a page. Pinterest pulls every image on the page including headers and footers. One good one is the best. Having an individual item on a page as opposed to a table full of items makes it easier too. Not only does limiting the number of images on your web page help with pinning, it is good web design in general.
4. Avoid filler jpegs. That white jpeg you are using as a space saver because you don't know CSS will show up too.
5. Don't use images that are too big or too small. Some images don't  frame the subject well especially if you are using your jpeg to eat up white space in your design.
6. Go square or vertical with your images. I noticed this particularly on the mobile app. Long, thin, horizontal images look squashed and unflattering on Pinterest.
7. Always use alternate text for each image. Pinterest pulls the alt text of your image as the description. Otherwise the user will have to fill in the details of your product and might get it wrong. Include the product name, your company name and the price. This will also help with repins of your products as all the pertinent details show up on mobile devices.

Pinterest is definitely growing in popularity. It is becoming a visual facebook. The next big sector of growth for Pinterest will be with men. Find a reason for men to Pinterest and you'll make a lot of money.

Keywords: The 21st Century Personal Ad

In today's world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it's all about keywords. Also known as metadata, metatags, or simply tags, keywords are the little slices of code that we use to define our site kind of like the old personal ads in the Nickel Nick. "SWF BBW 42YO NS ISO FS P SAM  40-55YO for FTA. LTR ONLY NO CD, MBL or LDR. 420 OK." Search engines use these descriptors to classify and rank our sites just like randy singles perused the personals on a Friday night.

Back in the day, SEO companies used various nefarious tactics to artificially bump up search rankings but Google and others have become wise to these practices and now ban sites using them. Just like using the descriptor SBF on your personal when you are actually SBTG, don't misrepresent your site. It will only cause long pauses in conversation at the Starbuck's when you meet up. Check out this article on banned SEO tactics. It explains that going crazy with keywords is a sure-fire way of getting your site ignored. Make sure your keywords actually pertain to your site no matter how much you'd like to throw in "sexy coeds" or "jello wrestling". It simply won't help.

So the question is how many keywords do you need to be effective and not put you on a blacklist. In the old personal ads, you only had a column inch of print space to sell your desperate self. On the web you can have millions of keywords. You aren't limited to simple classifiers like HWP. You can be of average build, tall enough for your body, not overweight, adequately framed and of moderate stature all at the same time. A good starting point as to the number of keywords you'll need is to compare your site with your competitors. One of the best tools for gauging your keyword strategy is SEMrush.com. This site is a gold mine of information about your own site and your competition. As an online marketer you should definitely spend a few hours on this site. It will open your eyes as to how search engines perceive your site and suggest ways to increase your visibility.

The best place to start regarding keywords on SEMrush is the Organic Search tab. Here, clicking on the Competitors button, you can see how you're stacking up. Generally speaking, the greater number of keywords you have the higher your ranking. The number of keywords must reflect the quantitly of your product or service line. If you are an online retailer and you sell ten products then having 5k keywords is ridiculous. But if you have 10k products in your line then having 5k keywords is totally inadequate. Other factors are also involved in ranking but pretty much it's that easy - add more meaningful words, get more hits.

Although the way we are ranked is partly out of our control, how WE define ourselves is totally within our control. Don't be afraid to add "VGL Domme D SWF SOH WLTM Sub J M P TS 65YO+ for B&D" to your tag list if that truly reflects your site. And frankly who want's to be home alone on a Friday night.

Adding Meta Tags to a Blogger Blog

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the buzzword in online marketing these days. Many businesses have been founded promising higher Google search rankings to greater or lesser success. A common SEO strategy is to add search terms to a website. Part of the code that comprises a website is hidden. Called meta elements, they contains information about copyright, owner, publisher, a description of the website and search terms known as tags.

The meta tag strategy is fairly simple - add meaningful tags to your website and the big search engines will find your site and rank you accordingly. Then customers will crash your server with an avalanche of sales because you are listed at the top of a search page. Because, frankly, we know our customers are are just too lazy to hit the next button on the bottom of the page.

As I was trying to implement this killer new technique for exploding my monthly web traffic I noticed a huge omission on Gooble's Blogger, IT HAS NO TOOLS FOR META TAGS!!! Descriptions, yes. Tags, no. Check out this image from my blogger settings:



After doing a search for meta tags I found Google's own stab at explaining the complexity of writing this type of code. Their video makes watching a bowling tournament on television a viable alternative. What Google needs is a dynamic, exciting host, not another passionless computer nerd droning about coding.

Anyway, further down the search page I found this site that can generate the HTML code you need. Now I'm not much of a web developer, frankly I know barely enough to add links and make text bold. But I do know how to cut and paste. And that's all it takes to add meta elements. Blogger Tricks' Free Online Meta Tags Generator Tool is pure web gold. It easily does what I wouldn't take the time to learn in HTML code.

Simply enter your title, description, keywords, author, owner and copyright into the text fields and hit "continue" and it kicks outs beautiful HTML code. Now here comes the copy and paste part. Copy the code then open Blogger's Dashboard and navigate to the Template controls. Then click on the "edit HTML" button. Now you're ready to start coding.

Let's find within the Blogger code the line where we need to paste our new code into. Hit command+f on your Mac keyboard or control+f on a PC. A text box should appear. Enter the first few characters of the line below and hit enter. This should take you to where you need to paste the new code.



Set your cursor at the end of this line within the Blogger code and hit return. Now paste your meta elements code on the new line. It'll look similar to this:



Make sure you hit the "save template" button and you're done. The search engine gods will rain hit upon hit on your site. You will now be wealthy and famous. Now go in peace; the avalanche begins momentarily.