Today I will help you understand how to get more traffic with Pinterest. There are two sides to Pinterest, which may cause confusion for new bloggers.
First, there is the Pinterest for scrapbooking types, crafters and people who post recipes. In other words, shoppers.
And then there is Pinterest for business, and these people are also known as marketers. Pinterest for blog traffic is a gold mine, if you have the patience. But you do not need as much patience as you do when using SEO.
This post was originally published August 21st, 2018 and has been updated to be current with new information. This post may contain affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. However, my opinions are my own. Full disclosure is here.
Welcome to Fearless Affiliate.
My name is Irma and I help new bloggers to learn the ropes. There is a lot to take in that first year of blogging, from choosing a niche to changing your mindset from worker bee mentality to that of successful entrepreneur.
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Pinterest for Business??
Whenever I write a post and talk about the subject of traffic from Pinterest, I am surprised by the number of comments that I get from readers who do not know about this amazing source of traffic.
Huh? I thought I was the last person to discover this gold mine!
On the Pinterest “Success Stories” page, you can read how multiple businesses are marketing with Pinterest because 85% of weekly pinners have made a purchase based on pins from brands.
85%. Let that sink in.
When you use Pinterest for business to share your brand with shoppers, you can not only get traffic, but also a new audience to re-share your content!
Related Post: How to Use Pinterest for Business
Who else uses Pinterest?
Sephora. Lowe’s. Shaw Communications. Stella Artois (A Belgian beer). State Farm. Samsung. Cadbury. Haagen Dazs. It is challenging to keep up with all the brands that keeping jumping on to the Pinterest ship.
These companies are all getting on the Pinterest bandwagon because they can see the reach that is available from people who are searching and shopping.
Pinterest is the number one visual search engine!
I personally went from having almost zero views on Pinterest to having 60K in about 3 and a half months. Now those are Pinterest views, not page views via Google Analytics.
However those Pinterest views translated into page views, which increased monthly.
It does take a bit of work, which is mostly how to create clickable pins, but it is still faster than writing for SEO (which you should keep doing btw).
Yes! Free, organic traffic coming to my blog daily.
Can you see the value of being a part of this? Pinterest loves content marketers because they provide something for the shoppers to shop for! Would you like to tap into some of those shoppers? If so…
How To Get More Traffic From Pinterest
It is recommended that you always use good SEO for your business. However, SEO by itself is slow and it can take time.
This post is about using Pinterest to generate traffic in the short term.
Pinterest is also a search engine, but is more focused on the visual, so you need a different strategy for how you use SEO and keywords.
Using keywords strategically on your pins allows interest from Pinterest to impact your search results on Google and Bing, so it is like a one-two punch. #helpful
1. You need a Pinterest for business account
If you have a personal account, but it is not related to your niche website, then go ahead and create a new business account.
There is no penalty for having two accounts, but it is best not to get your hobby pins mixed in with your business. It will cause Pinterest analytics to become confused about what you business is about.
Just go to the top right of your profile page and click on the 3 horizontal dots and Pinterest will offer you a free business account.
The business account gives you access to analytics, which will tell you which of your pins are being clicked most often so that you can keep creating that type of content.
2. Verify your account
You will also want to verify your account by uploading the URL from a blog post (not your home page), and wait for approval, which can take a few hours to overnight.
3. Apply for Rich Pins
Rich pins give shoppers more information about what you pin(s) are about.
For many bloggers, the Article rich pins allow you more promotion options for your website from within the pins.
If you will be posting recipes with your pins, then recipe rich pins show your recipe ingredients when someone clicks that pin.
Create Click-Worthy Pins for Your Blog Posts
You can use a photo editor like Canva, which comes with Pinterest pin templates.
- The ideal size is 600 pixels wide by 900 pixels high, or a 2:3 ratio.
- Longer pins will get cut off in the feed.
- You can have: standard, video, product, collection, and story pins. Use whichever works best to market to your people.
Pinterest’s latest update has a way to link to products from your pin images, making the link from idea to purchase much easier for shoppers.
The following post shows you how to use Canva 1.0. The latest version of Canva is 2.0 but the guide still applies. Canva 2.0 just has more than the 1.0 version.
Use tutorials to get ideas for how to create pins that encourage clicks.
Related Post: Simple Branding Tutorial
- Create your pin and insert it into your blog post.
- Be sure to keep it full size in your blog post
- Upload the pin to Pinterest, link your blog post URL and write a keyword-rich description and include a few relevant hashtags if you like.
- Hashtags are not mandatory but a well keyworded description is very important.
- Try to use synonyms when writing the pin title, so that it is not word-for-word the same as the pin text. This is an opportunity to use more keywords.
After you save the pin, Pinterest will ask you if you want to see it.
Click yes, and then take the URL from your pin and go back to your blog post and edit the alt description of the pin with your new URL from Pinterest so that they link to each other.
Pinterest likes helpful pins
Without giving your blog post away, write as much into the pin description as you can to describe how it will help readers.
And don’t forget the call to action. If you have a linking freebie, be sure to put it on your pin. As well, you can add “+ get my free thingy” to your title (to encourage clicks).
If you look around Pinterest you will quickly be able to tell which images seem to more pinnable than others.
- Bright, happy colors versus dark.
- Easy to read fonts versus cursive scripts that are almost illegible. You can use cursive, but don’t use it for the main concept text.
- Photos that convey a positive feeling.
- Photos of yummy, attractive foods.
- And don’t forget that call to action, so promote, promote, promote.
Related Post: Start Pinning with Pinterest
To create shareable pins:
- Use large text for your main ideas and CTA, i.e. START A BLOG IN 2021. Click here for details.
- Use cursive fonts sparingly and for secondary ideas, like how I used a different font for the word ‘with’ in my pin for this post.
- Make sure that CTA’s have an obvious benefit to the reader (FREE! Click here! 15 minute call etc)
- Do not let images take over the pin unless the image is the main idea.
- Be sure to add your website URL to the pin or use your logo.
When to pin
Well, according to the latest updates Pinterest is looking for fresh pins daily. Fresh pins means that the pin image is new even if it points to an old blog post URL.
If you use Canva or PicMonkey, you can easily make one new pin and then change the image and font to make multiple versions.
Time of day no longer seems to matter, however consistency does.
What I have noticed is that if I pin a new pin first thing and add that pin to several related pins during that same day, Pinterest gives me more traffic.
I believe that pinning to a few related boards helps Pinterest properly classify the pin and then show it to people searching for those terms.
Uploading just one pin daily will help improve your traffic.
This is made easy by using the Pinterest native scheduling tool.
Just choose “CREATE” from the menu in the upper left of your Pinterest profile page and choose CREATE PIN.
- Drag the pin image into the editing box
- Choose which board the pin should go to (the most relevant board first)
- Create a well keyworded title, using SEO and a Call To Action
- Use a keyword-rich description, with or without hashtags.
- Add the URL that the pin should point to (your blog post, TikTok, YouTube video etc)
- Pick a day and time for the pin to be uploaded from Pinterest
I upload 14 pins at a time and set them to go out at the same time every day. Then I go in and manually re-pin the pin into other relevant boards.
I know what time to do this based on my Tailwind analytics for when my people are online and pinning.
The scheduling tool allows you to schedule 30 pins at a time, up to 14 days in advance:
- Schedule one pin or multiple pins to go out at different times, up to 30. There is a drop down menu to choose time increments.
- Add 14 different pins to the tool and set it so that the pin goes out every day for 14 days. Use the drop down menu to choose the day(s).
Your call.
Because I am also using Tailwind (a pin scheduling app), I have access to their analytics which tell me best times for my pins to go out.
I suggest getting the free one month trial (use my TAILWIND link for that) and joining 5 “Communities” to help spread your pins around.
You send your pin to the community group page and other people can then re-pin it. This gives your pins more reach and can help you establish an audience faster.
The free account will allow you to access analytics to see when the best times to pin are, based on your audience.
Create Well-Named Boards for Your Pins
For example, if you have a recipe site you might have boards called: breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, desserts, soups etc.
You want the board title to be descriptive enough that visitors to your profile can find what they are looking for.
Try to create at least 10 boards
Plus your Best Of board, which is where you pin only your own pins. This is a bonus for people coming to your profile to see what you are up to.
They can then see all of your pins in one spot.
When you are first starting out you will not have many pins for each of the boards, so use the search function in Pinterest to find other profiles in the same niche as your website.
Look for pins that you can save into your new boards.
This is also a great way to see how other people name their boards.
Ideally, you can just search your niche and click enter and Pinterest will give you the top search results.
You can also use keywords for your board names.
Look at my boards (and feel free to follow me while you are there…thank you!) to see how I did it.
Over time you will likely re-name some boards or merge them with others. Ideally, you want to be able to re-pin each pin you create into at least 3 to 5 other boards.
Group Boards
When I first started, group boards were all the rage. Now Pinterest could care less about them.
If you want the benefit of having other people pin your pins onto their boards (for potential sharing), then you can join Tailwind Communities.
If you use my Tailwind link, you will get a free month of Tailwind and this is enough time to find 5 Communities to join and get a feel for the analytics.
Communities are similar to group boards, but easier to get success with.
Group boards used to be full of people pinning random stuff, which throws off the Pinterest feed algorithm.
Tailwind communities have many niche-specific groups, making it easier for your pins to be seen by people who are looking for that topic.
I have applied to group boards and never heard back from them. And it is getting harder, in my opinion.
But they are not necessary to Pinterest success, especially if you use the free Tailwind communities.
Related: All my Pinterest Blog Posts on one page
Conclusion
Improving and streamlining pin creation will help you the most.
I can also recommend getting pin templates but try to be discerning about it.. Carly Campbell’s pin template subscription has been quite helpful to me.
Click my link to get 10 FREE templates (7 for Canva and 3 for PicMonkey plus 2 training videos – one for each platform. And a pin checklist!)
I was hesitant to join a subscription plan, but it really makes life much easier when you don’t have to think about the how. Just switch out your words and photos and you’re done.
One of the subscription templates has been steadily viral for me since the end of summer 2020.
I tried many free pin templates, but for the longest time the templates were just templates and were not created with Pinterest SEO in mind.
Carly’s is a Pinterest geek and she uses the Pinterest best practices to create pins that help readers understand what the pin is about.
Be sure to share this post with anyone that you think may benefit from it. Sharing is caring!
Until next time, happy blogging and follow me on Pinterest
-Irma
Hi Irma, thanks for giving a different perspective about Pinterest. I am new to Affiliate marketing and I can definitely learn a lot from you and your website. I am bookmarking this site for my learning. Your site has an amazing visual appeal. Keep it going.
Thank you Rudolph and thank you for visiting us today!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I use Canva all the time. For a free tool it does wonders. I think I may have to start using Pinterest, I sort of avoided because I did not know how to use it. Thanks for the info, I definitely needed it!
Hello Patrick and thank you for visiting,
Canva is a great free tool and is awesome for making pins!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Thanks for sharing this, I’ve definitely wanted to expand my own blog into pinterest, but wasn’t sure how to start. I will definitely reference this later on. I’m still working on expanding instagram, which has a lot of value as well.
Hello William and thank you for visiting us again,
I know zero about Instagram for business but it sure is popular and I have put it on my to-do list for learning. If you know of any good courses, let me know 🙂
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hi Irma, I learned a lot from your article about using Pinterest. I do use Pinterest and pin every one of my articles but I don’t get involved much more than that. I wasn’t aware of how beneficial is to bloggers. You have so much information here and I am bookmarking your site because not only is the article on Pinterest helpful, the rest of your site provides a lot of great information! Thanks Irma!
~Rob
Thank you Rob and thanks for visiting us as well!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I have always “pinned” my post to Pintrest. At first, the traffic was rather slow and intermittent, but now given time, I receive numerous links from Pintrest to my website everyday!! My readership has gone up, my clicks are enormous and my followers are growing day by day!! This is a great article about a hidden gem that we all should be using to achieve great results.
Excellent Brad and thank you for visiting today and sharing that.
You are right…Pinterest is a hidden gem 🙂
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I do have pinterest but I haven’t really used it very often. I will definitely start to do that now as I didn’t realize how useful it is to bloggers.
Also, thank you for the information on pinterest for business. I sincerely did not know about this.
Thank you very much for the info!
Cheers,
Kahlua
Hi Kahlua and thank you for visiting,
Yes! And that is why I want to share this information. Pinterest is awesome for bringing traffic to your blog.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I have Pinterest with quite a big following but never knew how to utilise it. Thanks for the information.
Happy to help Angee and thank you for visiting today,
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Awesome! My Pinterest is my most lacking social media. I’ll consider this information and step up my Pinterent game! thanks.
Hi Lance and thank you for visiting us and best of luck with that!!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hey Irma,
Pinterest is certainly a great source for free niche related traffic.
The group boards are a GR8 idea it’s certainly worth getting involved with an active grp.
thanks for sharing
Tony.B
Hi Tony and thank you for visiting,
Yes, and I am trying to add more daily now that they are becoming easier to get into. Best of luck!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Wow. This article was eye opening. I have been neglecting Pinterest, but I think I now have a renewed interest in pinning. How much time per day do you spend on Pinterest to generate this new traffic?
Hello Melinda and thank you for visiting,
When I had Boardbooster, it was easy to set and forget. Now that I am learning how to use Tailwind , I would say that I spend about 30 minutes a week doing that scheduling. I am also manually pinning to all of my group boards every evening and that can take me another 30 minutes, but I am trialing a new system.
If you are just starting out it is a good idea to pin anything that you think visitors to your Pinterest profile might like. Pinterest loves it when you are pinning throughout the day. I do a lot of that in my Pinterest-related Facebook groups.
I do not spend a lot of time considering how much traffic it brings. I sure do not get this much reach with Facebook and Twitter.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hi Irma,
Very informative article on Pinterest Business, and perfect timing for me reading it. You have convinced me this is an excellent way to drive organic traffic to my site, so without any reservations, I will set up a Pinterest account in the next few days. Thank you.
Best of luck to you Terry and thank you for visiting us today,
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I love your article! I am now planning to build my audience on Pinterest but literally have zero ideas on how to do it! That’s why I find your article particularly helpful!
One thing that confuses me is the rich pins. May I know how should I apply for it?
And, I currently am still at the stage of building my website so I don’t have many best-of posts. Will this matter if I only have just three best-of posts in that board?
Hi Crystal and thank you for visiting us,
You are at the perfect point to grow with Pinterest, because you will not have to “fix” anything, like old and ugly pins! Keep writing posts and filling up your Best Of board naturally.
If you have created some personal boards (non-group boards) on your profile that are specific to your niche, and you go looking for more pins for them, Pinterest will figure out what your profile is about and you will start to see more relevant pins show up in your feed.
One piece of advice I will suggest is that you click through to the website to make sure that it is not spam or a landing page. Other people will come to your boards to re-pin and if the pins are crap they won’t come back. Over time you will know whose pins you can trust and pinning will go faster.
Rich pins are different from regular pins in that they give readers (aka shoppers) more information when they click the pin. Rich pins allows you to create a better call to action and to give some details about the post without giving everything away. After you switch your account to a business account, apply for Rich Pins at https://business.pinterest.com/en/rich-pins and be sure to apply for the most appropriate type i.e recipe rich pins for recipes or article rich pins for blog posts.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Thanks so much for the Pinterest Content! I am a newbie to Pinterest and get confused in how to get followers but your article has helped me figure out what I need to do 🙂
Happy to help Danielle and thank you for visiting today,
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Wow. That’s a lot of insight crammed into one post! I was very active on Pinterest years ago, but only for personal use. I’ll definitely have to create a business account now and get busy! Do you have a post about Tailwind? That seems super useful. Are you on Pinterest daily? How long do you spend there to get that kind of traffic?
Hi Susie and thank you for visiting,
Yes, I am on Tailwind but I am still learning how to make it work as well as Boardbooster worked for me. I am going to try to explain how I pin in a future post, but I am using Tailwind to pin my pins to group boards. I set that up once a week and it takes about 30 minutes.
I also pin manually every evening for about 20 to 30 minutes. I am trialing a new system for manual pinning because I have added a new bunch of group boards, so I will give that 30 days and report back.
Pinterest rewards consistency, so even pinning 10 to 20 pins a day manually – which only takes a few minutes- can help your traffic.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hi Irma, thanks for the motivating post.
I have applied for your group board. Your Pinterest profile looks great, I think you have put in many hours of work 🙂
I use Tailwind too, one of the most valuable tools I pay money for. I have to join more groups too when I look at your profile and the number of views.
I have about 15 K views per month, and surprisingly about three days ago I detected some 40 website visits from Pinterest on my website.
Do you know that you can add pins to your website that can not be seen by website visitors? I learned this about hidden pins and think you’d like to know how to do that.
I now started creating 5 different pins for every post on my website. Of course, I can’t add them regularly for everyone to see.
There is a small code you can enter when you add the image to the “text” editor in WP.
This is the code, before the image, then the image data and after.
……..image1……..
………image2………..
………..image3………..
Make sure to add your image plain, without title etc, full size and not aligned.
If you add images like that you and open the Tailwind publisher for a post you see the pins and can add them to the schedule.
I hope you understand or you can check my training in WA : https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/zappades/blog/add-hidden-tall-pins-to-your-website-pinterest-knowledge
Hello Stefan and thank you for visiting us again!
Thank you so much for the information. I have not been doing that with Tailwind just because I am running a couple of other strategies and it is getting hard to keep up with everything.
I got a ton of traffic super fast using Boardbooster, but BB is gone now. Sad. Tailwind does not do things the same way, however it does pick up a lot of pinning work for me, so that is great.
I sent you the invite to my group board, so welcome!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
I was already looking into Pintrest so now i may have to take another look. This sounds like a very promising way to get traffic through Pintrest! Amazing!!
Hello Jamaar and thank you for visiting us today,
It really is. You will be amazed that spending time pinning stuff brings blog traffic.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hi Irma
This post is perfect for me, I have just started a pinkest account which i am going link to my posts, but at the moment its a mess, this a great article in which i have added to my favourites.
Pinterest is perfect for my website and i will following you instruction.
thanks for the help
Chris
Let me know if you need anymore information and thank you for visiting us today!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
That’s a great article and exactly what I needed right now. I just started with Pinterest and still feel unsure how to use it. You shared some valuable tips. Thanks!
Happy to help and thank you for visiting today!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Hi Irma,
Great article. Pinterest is on my list of things to focus on very soon. I still have a little work to do on Instagram to get it where I want it. Then, Pinterest look out.
You pointed out some interesting strategies that I am sure to incorporate into my plans.
Thanks for the tips and your hard work on this post.
Thank you for visiting today Kevin,
I wish you the best of luck! Pinterest is awesome for traffic 🙂
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
Pinterest is invaluable, in my opinion. It’s a wonderful, free resource. I use it for so many things.
Agreed Freya and thank you for visiting us today!
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂
My niche is quite suitable for pinterest and I should do more pinterest posting. However I have a lot of pictures, which have different dimensions. Would that be a problem?
Hello and thank you for visiting us today,
Pinterest likes vertical images with a ratio of 2:3 and they give the example of 600 x 900 pixels. What many people are doing is creating a pinnable image and using it as a blog post image, like the one that I have a couple of paragraphs down from the top. I also write in the Alt description PIN IT to encourage people to pin that image.
I also use Social Warfare Pro which allows me to choose the display options and I can set it so that no other sizes of images are pinnable from my post. This way people are only pinning images that fit the Pinterest criteria. You can still use as many images as you want, but the plugin just makes sure that only images that fit the criteria are pinned.
If you are not in any group boards, then you do not have to worry about that part yet. Pinterest will let you upload any size images. Once you start joining group boards you will want the vertical pins. When I discovered that I quickly made a pin for every blog post and moved forward from there. You do not have to delete the odd sized images, because they will just sink to the bottom of the Pinterest feed.
Cheers,
-Irma 🙂