Pinterest drives 80% of the traffic to my blog – so it clearly deserves my time and attention!
Growing your blog traffic by boosting your Pinterest traffic is one of the most common methods of growing “the right” engagement.
In my first ever month of blogging my Pinterest had an amazing growth of 22,000%. Yep, I went from basically no traffic at all…to 104.851k Pinterest visits in my first month of blogging!
However, even if Pinterest is kicking-butt and you are gaining a ton of traffic, never forget the other very important things you need to do in order to continue growing your traffic and begin drawing more organic traffic to your blog or website – like improving your Domain Authority Score and Content Marketing.
How did I do it?
Hard work
I never realised how much work a blog actually is…luckily though, I love, Love, LOVE IT!! At the beginning, I was spending about 2 hours a day just creating pins, pinning, re-pinning, networking etc.
…I was a bit obsessed!
After I started doing the things that I will discuss in this post, that time dropped down significantly. I now only spend about 15 minutes a day (if that) on Pinterest – and that is mostly just for fun.
Eye-Catching Profile
Profile Name
When someone sees your profile name in a search and they click on it, they don’t expect to see half empty boards, disorganisation or spam! Make sure that your profile is professional, but still has that little touch of “you” and your branding.
It might sound obvious, but your profile name is VERY important!
Did you know that Pinterest also classes the words in your profile name as keywords? Awesome, right!
So, rather than just putting “Life It Or Not” (which seems pretty vague when you really think about it), add some common keywords in there.
…If you have enough room!
Unfortunately, Pinterest only allows 30 characters in a Profile name.
But, whatever you write, always think “keywords”. Pinterest IS a search engine after all.
Therefore, getting your SEO practice right on Pinterest is just as important as using SEO correctly in your blog posts!
Description
The description needs to be lengthy, but concise! Simple. I hate clicking on a pin to see a more detailed explanation, only to see it say something like, “I love this post!”. I mean, come on!!
Put as many keywords as you can in your description.
Use Google Analytics to find out which your top countries are by traffic. If your top country is the UK, you would use the term “mum”, whereas if your main traffic comes from the US, think about using Americanised language, such as “mom” etc.
Remember, this is all about being clever with your SEO and appealing to your most relevant target audience.
While we are on the subject of keywords – USE #Hastags in Pinterest!
Although Pinterest is technically a search engine (think of it as a Google-style thing), Pinterest recently began allowing hashtags into peoples board and profile descriptions.
Want More Traffic To Your Pinterest?
Selection of boards
When you view someones profile and you see just a few boards, do you bother to follow them? Ok, if their content is AMAZING then you just might, but with most profiles that have a minimal amount of boards they will fail to gain followers.
Whatever your niche topic is, it can always be broken down into multiple things. For example, if your niche is jewellery, you might want various boards on the different types of metals, precious jewels/gems, engravings, colours, design types, how to wear it, when/where to wear it etc.
Arrangement of Boards
Not only do you have to focus on the variation of boards that you have, but it is also a good idea to actually arrange your boards so that the most relevant or the best one is at the top. Pinterest now offers a “Featured Board” which allows your most relevant board/s to be pinned to the top of your page.
This catches peoples eyes before they scroll, so there is no point in hiding your most popular bits at the bottom of the page, where a huge bundle of people might not even look.
Custom Board Cover
This just looks a lot more professional than a bunch of images of random pins squished together. The first time I saw a board cover, I jumped straight onto Google to find out how to make my own – it is really easy to do too!
If you go on to ‘Canva‘, you can create your own cover to a custom size. Pinterest cover boards are normally adjusted to 217 x 146 pixels. You just create your cover image and then upload it as a pin. Then edit the board, check the “change” cover picture option and wa-lah!
Good Content
Pin Image
Ok, so you already know you have amazing content in your post – otherwise you wouldn’t be sharing it. Now it’s time to make sure that your pins are as good as your post.
You do not want to spend tons of time and energy creating a brilliant post just to have the pin cover fail you…that would be horrible! You won’t get any traffic to your blog or any Pinterest traffic if your pin covers are not attractive and pleasing to the eye.
I used to use a FREE online program called ‘Crello‘ to create my pin images, but then I fell completely in love with a different program called ‘Canva‘ – on which you can create the cover image for every social media platform you can think of.
Themed Pins
If you have a strong visual brand – e.g. colour or theme, you should try to use this on your pin. If you decide that you actually don’t want to use those colours etc., you don’t have to – but you should still make all of your pins relatable. Try to keep them as similar as possible.
The font should also always stay (roughly) the same – this adds to your branding strength. If you have ten pins that look completely different, people won’t automatically know that they are from your blog.
However, if you consistently put out pins that have a clear theme, it becomes instantly recognisable. The more your viewers see them, the more they will connect them with your blog.
Your Website URL
Many people think, “Oh, the viewers will click on the pin and go straight to my website.”
Nuh-uh! Wrong!
Most people don’t actually click on your pin the first time round – they will however, remember the name of your website if it is plastered on all of your pins and you are posting regularly (more on this soon). Include your blog name/URL somewhere on the pin – on every pin.
Use Vertical images
Although Pinterest allows horizontal images, it prefers vertical ones. Of course, you can create a beautifully stunning horizontal cover for your post, but Pinterest will not favour it well.
Quite a lot of group boards now don’t allow horizontal pins (some of the group boards I am in have a ‘Vertical Pins Only’ rule)
More than one pin per post
You will have a much better chance of spreading your post if you have at least 3-4 different (but still well-branded) pins for each post.
I try to keep my pin images to three per post. I create all three pins at the same time, and post them up one every few days.
This also tells Pinterest that you are posting new Original pins, which means that it is more likely to start favouring your profile and putting your pins at the top of search feeds – resulting in more impressions, more views and…more CLICKS! Yay!
As you can see from these three pins, there was a clear development!
Pin 1: First week of Pinterest, not linked to brand at all and colours were a bit weird!
Pin 2: Looks a bit better. Colours match brand, but the picture of the child is clearly older than a toddler.
Pin 3: Much better! Image and text work well together, my blog URL is clearer and the child is actually a toddler. Overall it just seems much more professional.
The below pins are my most recent style, which now fits entirely with my branding and the style on my blog. They also draw much more attention than my earlier pins and are getting saved (re-pinned) more.
Click on the image to check out the post for these pins!
Boards
Group Boards
Although group boards are a debatable concept in the Pinterest community, it seems to work for me. That said, you should only join boards which are related very closely to your niche and where the group members are supportive of each other and share each others pins, rather than simply spamming a ton of their own pins into the group and running without sharing.
Think about it…
If a group board has 100k followers, then anything you post in that group is automatically seen by 100k people!!
Amaaaaaaaazing!
Obviously, not all of those 100k people will be online during that week or so while your pin is at the top of a feed, which is why you still have to pin regularly.
It used to be said that on group boards (as well as on your own boards), it was a general (unwritten) “rule” to follow the 50/50 (or even 60/40) pins per day. This meant that around 60% of the pins on your profile / group boards were ‘Saves’ (repins) and around 40% were ‘Originals’ from your own blog.
However, as time has progressed, so has Pinterest and the algorithms. These days pinners tend to see a better result when they share around 40% of others pins and 60% of their own.
Some group boards have a sharing rule. Many group board owners ask that for every one pin you add to the board, you share one or two pins back, for example.
Your Own Group Board
When creating a group board, it is important to have your own contact details there (email address or profile name) so that people who want to join the board can find and contact you easily.
You should include the rules of the board, e.g., will you have rules on daily pinning/sharing? Are there only certain types of pins you want on the board (infographics, long posts, short posts, how-to’s etc.)?
Your management of the group board is also very important. Pinterest is known to have shut down whole profiles if someone owns a group board which receives a lot of spam! You could lose your entire profile if a selfish pinner decides not to follow the rules!
So, be careful who you allow to contribute to your group – check out their profile first.
Do not launch a group board with nothing in it – people won’t be drawn to it if it is empty! You should build the board up first with a lot of great posts related to it’s topic and then open it up to contributors.
TIP: You could do this on a public board and then just make it a group board, or you could even build it up in a Secret Board and then make it public before inviting people.
These are some great tips! I’ve just started my blog and while I’ve been using pinterest I haven’t had much success with it yet. How many posts did you have on your site when you started using pinterest, roughly?
Thank you Meghan!
I started with only about 5-6 posts, but realised very quickly that I needed more! lol. I did my research, got a few good ideas together and pushed another few posts out within a week. Then Pintrest started growing my views (Pintrest also notes how often you put out original posts and uses that to decide on how far up the feed they will place you).
Let me know if any of these tips help 🙂 x
Phenomenal and helpful post! Wow! This info is amazy. I will definitely be pinning this for rereading over and over until I get my pinterest looking good. Excellent info!
Teri – http://millennialadulting.life
Thank you Teri! I really appreciate that! I will be hosting a FREE email course for growing your Pintrest very soon, so I will comment back on here when that is live. If you subscribe to my blog I will send you an email when it is up and running if you like? 🙂
Pinterest is something I still haven’t gotten a handle on. It seems easy to use and yet is so confusing. I’ll be applying these tips and hopefully, I will see good growth on my Pinterest soon.
Hi Sarah (great name!) 😉 Pintrest is defo one of the tricky ones as there is so much you can do that people don’t realise at first. I will be running a FREE email course on how to use Pintrest very soon. If you subscribe to my blog, I will be able to email you straight away when it is up and running! x
These are some really good tips. I need to spend more time working on my Pinterest. Definitely going to try these!
Glad you like it Kat! 🙂 Have you signed up for the mini email course?
Thank you for all the tips and advice. I’ve started a Pinterest for my blog recently and I’m not really sure how to use it. There is a lot of information here that can really help me and hopefully, I’ll be able to make Pinterest better with help from this post. Thanks for creating it!
This post is full of so much information! I never thought about creating more than 1 pin for a post! I signed up for your Pinterest email course. Thanks!
Hi Chloe,
I’m so glad that you found this post helpful! If there is anything else you feel you would like to know, let me know and I will either update this post, or write a whole fresh one about the topic question 🙂
Hi Julie. Thank you for joining up to the mini email course. I hope it helps you out with the basics of progressing your Pinterest. I must say that having a variation of pins for one post works wonders for traffic. What works for one, will not work for another and vice versa. Let me know how you get on with the course and stay tuned for info on the full version of the course 🙂
Lots of really great tips! Thanks for putting so much thought into this and sharing!
Aw, you are more than welcome hun! Have you joined my Pinterest mini e-course?