Pinterest is not just some social media platform for your girl-friend or mom to share their cooking recipes. In fact, these days many people go on Pinterest to generate traffic to their website. One of the best ways to generate traffic for your website is to drive traffic from Pinterest to your blog.
So don’t brush off Pinterest thinking it is just for images. More and more people are using Pinterest to read articles. Big brands like Walmart and Apple market their products on Pinterest.
Why should you use Pinterest?
Pinterest is valued at 13-15 billion dollars with more than 200 million active users and 2 billion monthly searches on an average. It is an ever-growing platform. In fact, 52% of Pinterest users find items they want to buy on Pinterest. Almost 30% of the Pinterest users report that they bought something after browsing for it on Pinterest.
More and more companies are marketing their products on Pinterest these days. Some of the top tech bloggers and entrepreneurs use Pinterest to generate traffic for their blogs.
Here is a list of reasons that helps you understand the scale of Pinterest:
- A pin can spread 100 times more than a tweet
- On an average, each pin can generate at least 2 page visits and 6 page views
- Pins have a longer lifespan than Twitter (24 minutes) and Facebook (90 minutes)
- Almost 150 million users per month worldwide
- About 70 million monthly users in the US alone
- An average of 2 billion searches per month
Now that you know how valuable Pinterest is for generating traffic, the next step is to learn how to use Pinterest to generate traffic for your website.
Setting up the Pinterest account
A Pinterest business account will give you access to analytics and ads. You need a business account to access the useful analytics data like pin engagement and reach. You need acess to analytics if you want to effectively drive traffic from pinterest to your blog.
If you’re new to Pinterest, the first thing you need to do is set up your Pinterest business account. Alternatively, you can convert your existing account into a business account. Sign up for a Pinterest business account for free.
A few things to keep in mind while setting up your Pinterest account:
We have compiled a list of the important aspects of a perfect Pinterest profile. Use these tips to create a good Pinterest profile.
Include the keyword in your display name
You must include the search keyword in your display name. So that when people search for these keywords on Pinterest, your profile would show up in the search results. This gives you a higher chance of topping the search results. In fact, all the profiles that show up in any search results almost always include the search term in their display name.
Unique, high-quality profile picture that stands out
If you’re an individual blogger or an entrepreneur, you should use a high-quality picture of yourself as the profile picture. Since Pinterest users prefer to look at faces than text or logos when browsing through search results. However, if you’re a brand or a company, I recommend you use a high-quality picture of your logo as the profile picture.
About section must include benefits for your audience and a call to action
You must also include the keywords in the about section of your profile. The about section must have a brief description of what you do, followed by how can they benefit from you and a call to action. A call to action can be a URL for a product discount or a freebie. It can also be as simple as “follow me”.
Featured boards with your best content and high traffic driving content
Your profile page must contain a featured board with your best content on top. You should include the boards and pins that have/can drive high traffic to your website in the featured boards.
Most Pinterest users look at the featured boards to get a sense of what you or your brand is about. Make sure that the images on these pins are of high quality. How to design the best pin images is discussed later in this article.
Make your personal boards private
If you have converted your personal account into your business account, it is highly recommended that you keep your personal Pinterest boards private. So that your audience is not confused by all those memes and cat/dog images you have shared. Keep things professional!
Group boards can increase the reach of your pins
If you’re just building your brand on Pinterest, group boards are your best friend. You can use this technique in two ways: create a new group board and invite people who will only share the high-quality content in these boards; or ask the admin of a popular existing group board from your category to let you join their boards.
The later produces better results than the former since the popular group boards already have an existing fan base with similar interest. If you created a new group board, have some high-quality content from also the other blogs to maintain the best quality.
How to create highly engaging pins?
When creating pins for Pinterest to drive traffic from Pinterest to your website, there are few things to keep in mind. From pin images to pin descriptions we have everything covered.
Having highly engaging pins that viewers would want to repin or like is one of the most important aspects to drive traffic from Pinterest to your blog.
Follow these tips and tricks to create high engagement pins for your website.
How to design elegant pin images
Images are the most important component of Pinterest as it is an image-based search engine. You need to create attractive and engaging images to ensure maximum user engagement.
We have compiled a list of the most important aspects of a perfect Pinterest image:
Tall images get more pins and likes
Almost 85% of the users browse Pinterest on their mobile phones. They tend to like tall images so they get more likes and pins.
The most engaging Pinterest images have about 2:3 width to height ratios i.e., if your image is 600 px wide, then it needs to be at least 900 px. Most of the time, I use 600x900px size images for Pinterest.
However, you can also use square images with 1:1 width to height ratio and images with fat proportions of 4:5 width to height ratio.
Place relevant text on the images
Pinterest users tend to prefer images that contain text. Images which contain text perform better than those which don’t. Images with text get more likes and re-pins than those which don’t contain text.
Use catchy headlines that create curiosity in Pinterest users. The text on these images must be clear and easily readable. Use text spacing and padding to increase the readability of this text.
A good headline must reveal enough about your post to create interest in Pinterest users. Don’t give away all the information about the post in the image itself. Even the description should only the information that can generate interest in viewers.
Create limited offers and discounts to capitalize on the fear of missing out. People tend to click or buy if the offer is limited to some time period. As they are afraid of losing the opportunity to save, they are more likely to buy or read your post.
Only use high-resolution images for your pins
When you’re designing the images for your website or Pinterest page, you need to use high-quality images. Use free stock images that look beautiful rather than using whatever crap you find on Google Search.
Include a minimal brand logo to add credibility
It is a good business practice to place website address and the brand logo on your images. Wherever people find these images, they will know where they can find more. When you’re including the brand logo, make sure it is big enough to read on a mobile screen but not too big to make the image look obnoxious.
Use padding and white space to make your message stand out.
Make use of white spaces to highlight the text and the focus of your image. White spaces need not be white but can be of any colour background which can highlight the contents of your image. Using either padding or white spaces can help the viewer focus on the message.
The meta description for SEO purposes
Add Meta descriptions to these images with keywords in them. Meta descriptions are very useful for SEO. Include all the keywords in the meta descriptions and alt-tags also.
Design your call to action like a button
Have a call to action on the image asking the user to click or buy your product. Although you cannot add a button to images, you can make a design with a button-like call to action. Viewers often tend to click images that have a call to action on them.
Have a pin description with relevant keywords
Write an engaging pin description along with the image to increase user engagement. Pinner is more likely to like, click or pin your images when they have interesting descriptions included with them.
Engaging pin descriptions are key to driving traffic from Pinterest to your blog.
Few things to keep in mind while writing pin descriptions:
- Include relevant keywords in the pin description
- A call to action with the link to the post
- Use relevant hashtags but not more than 20
- Add a link to your blog post after the call to action
- Tag users when possible but don’t tag people randomly
Building your Pinterest boards
Pinterest boards are made to organise your Pinterest page into different groups based on your personal preference. They are albums but for pictures with links.
Things that make a Pinterest board more engaging and interesting:
- Include keywords in board name and description.
- Set the relevant category of the board
- Make sure you use only have high-resolution images
- Have at least 20 pins in each board but not more than 75 pins
- Add links to your posts
- Also, pin posts from other credible bloggers
- Posts pins from 2 pm to 4 pm and 8 pm to 1 am when the traffic is usually high
- Organise your boards using sections
- Use group boards to grow your audience and user interactions
Enable Rich pins for your website
Rich pins are a way to add extra details to your posts and pins right from your website. There similar to Facebook’s instant articles but also a little different.
There are four types of rich pins:
- Product pins
- Article pins
- App install pins
- Recipe pins
You need to set up rich pins on your website. It is a little bit technical, so get your web designers to work on it. Test if the rich pins are working properly before you get them on Pinterest.
If your blog is a WordPress website, you can use the YOAST SEO plugin to easily set up Pinterest Rich Pins. Follow this guide to learn how.
You need to validate your website before you can start using Rich Pins. However, they are very useful in driving traffic to your website.
Include a pin it button on your blog
When you include a pin it button on your blog, it makes your readers to easily pin your posts on their profiles right from your website.
This will improve the reach of your website when readers pin your posts on their Pinterest profiles.
If your blog is hosted on WordPress, I recommend you use a WordPress plugin like Pinterest Pin It Button on Image Hover and Post plugin.
This plugin allows you to add a pin it button on your WordPress website.
I hope this article helped you drive traffic from Pinterest to your blog.
