Pinterest is continuously growing worldwide, but it is still a little-explored tool to increase traffic compared to other social media.
Pinterest drives more traffic to blogs than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined.
With some good practices, using the platform has resulted in a 30% increase in traffic in just two months, and currently represents over 50% of total blog hits.
In this blog post, I will share seven strategies to increase blog traffic using Pinterest so that you can skyrocket your blog traffic.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is like a search engine, such as Google, with some social networking features (example: messaging, sharing, like and others).
Pinterest has more than 291 million monthly active users, to answer questions, and seek inspiration.
That is, basically you are losing a lot of hits if you are not already using it.
Related:
- How to Double Your Pinterest Following in 4 Simple Steps [infographic]
- 21 Powerful Tips to Write High Engaging Content [infographic]
How to increase blog traffic using Pinterest?
On Pinterest, you can share your posts via pins.
Pins are ideas/inspirations/articles that people find on Pinterest, consisting of title, image, description, and link.
Every pin is associated with a website/blog link.
When someone searches for a term related to your pin, they can save your pin (also called repin), causing your content to appear to a larger audience.
But for your pin to have a more extended reach on the platform, it is necessary to make some changes. Here are seven ways you can start improving platform performance and increasing blog traffic using Pinterest:
1. Create a Pinterest Business account:
The first step in Pinterest is to convert your personal account to a business account (business account).
Business accounts are better for marketing purposes because they have additional features like Pinterest Analytics, a tool that contains essential insights into the number of views, which content is driving the most traffic, and more.
The process for converting your account to business is easy; follow the four steps below:
- Sign in to your Pinterest account
- Visit the business account conversion page
- Fill in the information with your business name, website, and business type.
- Click on Continue.
2. Claim your blog:
Once a business account is created, you will be able to claim your blog.
After this, all Pins from it will have your profile photo added. You will also have access to see what people are saving from your blog.
There are two ways to claim your site: with a meta tag or by uploading an HTML file. I particularly recommend the first option.
How to claim through Metatag
Step 1: Get the meta tag
- In the Pinterest panel, go to Account Settings.
- In the Claim site section, enter your website URL
- Click on Claim site
- Choose the claim option – in this case. The option is to Add HTML Tag
- Copy the meta tag
Step 2: Add it to your site through the Yoast SEO plugin
- In the WordPress Yoast SEO plugin, select “Social”> “Pinterest.”
- Copy the tags from Pinterest and insert it into the Pinterest confirmation tab.
Step 3: Add it to your site manually
- In the WordPress panel, select “Appearances”> “Editor.”
- Add code before your blog’s </head> tag – it’s usually found in the index.php file or header.php
Attention: If your theme doesn’t allow you to access the “Editor” tab, install the Insert Headers and Footers plugin and paste the code into the plugin’s “Scripts on Header” session.
Step 3: Complete the setup
- Go back to Pinterest and click next
- Confirmation will be sent by email and may take up to 24 hours
3. Use rich pins:
After migration to a business account, you can also apply for the use of Rich Pins (Advanced Pins).
This setting provides essential information (title, author, and description) about your blog articles and increased engagement of your followers with their pins.
The setup is often super quiet for blogs using WordPress.org:
- Install Yoast SEO Plugin
- Visit page to validate the rich pin
- Enter the URL of a blog post, for example, hustleriser.com/start-a-blog
- Select the “Validate” button.
- Verification may take a few days
After all the previous settings, your pin will scrape information from the article such as analytics, author, title, date, and description.
4. Understand Your Audience:
Before making any changes to your profile, consider which audience you want to attract to your blog. Optimize the SEO of your profile according to the profile of people you want to attract.
Pro tip: A widely used feature in marketing strategies is building a person who represents your audience, called a persona.
This way, you can understand what your readers are looking for and customize your Pinterest profile to the best of your ability, and then attract them to your blog.
Why will creating a persona help me?
Persona creation is seen as a fundamental step, because it is possible to draw the attention of the right people, and thus get higher chances of success. It will also help you to:
- Define the topics you should cover on your blog
- Increase engagement
- Better understand your reader’s buying journey
5. Organize your Pinterest group boards:
The most important thing about Pinterest is creating specific and relevant group boards for your niche, so there is no correct number. I advise in principle to use 15 group boards as a base and increase according to your needs.
For example, if you have a food blog, a group board called recipes is a very vague subject that may contain different types of dishes. Instead, try working with a specific topic for boards like:
- Appetizer Recipes
- Salad Recipes
- Mexican Food Recipes
- Seafood Recipes
- Dessert Recipes
Besides, a suggestion for attracting more traffic is to set up your profile so that the first group board contains only content from your blog.
6. Pine at least 10x a day:
Pinning content daily shows Pinterest that you are an active user, so I recommend starting with at least ten pins per day. But it is worth the attention. Sometimes one beautiful pin is better than ten half mouth. So be careful.
Also, keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily have to be just your blog content; you can replicate other people’s content that appears in your Pinterest smart feed.
7. Create posts with pinnable images:
Use images to enhance your engagement, so create pictures that are pinnable and eye-catching. Remember that 80% of users use Pinterest through their mobile phones!
There are a few changes you can make to improve the reach of your images on Pinterest:
- Create vertical images (recommended 800 x 1,200 pixels)
- Large texts for readability
- Use keywords in the filename
- Write a quality description
- Enter call-to-action and keywords in the description
To recap
Through this post, you learned how to increase blog traffic using Pinterest. Below is a brief step-by-step:
- Create a business account
- Claim your blog
- Use rich pins
- Understand Your Audience
- Organize your group boards
- Pine at least 10x a day
- Create posts with pinnable images
If you have any questions on the subject, leave it in the comment section below, it will be a pleasure to talk to you.
