Social Media

Getting traffic to your blog can be tricky, especially if your site is new or doesn’t have much authority.

Google just doesn’t trust new sites very much so they won’t send you a lot of traffic in the early days.

One way around this is to funnel traffic from other platforms to your site. There are a lot of options here, but a really good one to use in particular is Pinterest.

This social pinning platform is extremely targeted, which means that users are much more likely to stick around when they visit your site, subscribe and buy from you.

If you’ve already got an established blog then Pinterest can also be a great way to diversify and increase your traffic.

So here in this article, I am going to tell you exactly how to drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest and get those eyeballs on your site.

Set Up Relevant Boards Based On Keywords

Before you start, it is worth checking if the niche you’re in is also a popular category on Pinterest. Knowing how popular your niche is on this platform will help you to decide how much time you should put into your campaigns.

To get clear on this, here is the Pinterest categories list of the most popular niches on the platform.

The first step you need to take before uploading pins to your profile is creating relevant boards based on keywords.

To get an idea of what keywords to use, think about the general topics you cover on your blog. Then, head over to Pinterest’s search engine and start typing in some keywords.

In the search bar, Pinterest will give you some suggestions. You can note some of these down, and use them in your board descriptions.

This will not only help those boards show up when users are searching for boards with those keywords, but it will also help Pinterest determine what the pins inside of that board are all about.

When you do this it also makes it more likely for your pins to get suggested for those particular keywords.

I suggest creating around 10 boards in total.

Some of these could be your categories from your blogs, while others are sub-categories or related topics that you have briefly covered too.

The board title can be the general topic, while the description should be full of relevant keywords.

Choose Your Best Blog Posts To Pin

Once you have set up your boards, you’ll want to choose your best blog posts to pin.

Later on, you’ll probably pin all of your blog posts anyway, because you create pins much quicker than articles. But, the reason you want to choose your best blog posts to start with is so that you can put additional effort into optimizing these ones first.

Which blog posts you choose is, of course, your choice. However, I would suggest doing a mix of information-based articles with a few monetized ones such as reviews.

A lot of Pinterest users go to the platform with buyer intent, which is why a lot of affiliate marketers and eCommerce vendors do well making money with Pinterest.

This mix of informational and commercial content should give you a good balance of pins with some that help you grow, while others can generate additional revenue.

You’re also probably going to pin these more than once to help them get more traffic. If you do, make sure you change the general title of the Pin a little, so they look different.

For example, if you have a blog post called “How to drive Pinterest traffic to your blog” you could create 3 pins:

1. “How to drive Pinterest traffic to your blog”
2. “A step-by-step guide to driving Pinterest traffic to your blog”
3. “I drove 3244 Pinterest visitors to my blog. Here’s how”

Don’t worry about this too much for now, if you haven’t posted content yet. But later on, you’ll probably need it.

Add The “Pin It” Button To Your Blog To Drive More Traffic

A good little trick that will help you grow your blog through Pinterest is adding the “pin it” button to your blog.

Instead of adding normal images, you can use ones that have a “pin it” button this code from Pinterest. Simply follow the instructions on that page to copy and paste the code into your site.

Then, when someone browses your blog and clicks the “Pin it” button, they add the image as a Pin to one of their boards.

Pretty cool, right?

What’s even more exciting about this is that all of these pins have links back to your blog so it can help you turn one visitor into many.

If you have a blog post that is quite popular, this technique could help it blow up. The same goes for if a Pinterest influencer enjoys your content, and decides to pin it.

You should also consider creating 1 extremely shareable image for some of your blog posts.

For example, if you have a blog post on 23 inspiring quotes, you could have an image of one of the best quotes with a “pin it” button.

Lots of people will often pin something like this which can help you get lots of targeted traffic back to your blog.

With all this extra traffic that you can potentially get from doing this, it also makes sense to monetize the articles you are sending people too, or at least collect email addresses so you can follow up with them later.

If you want some ideas on how best to monetize your blog then I recommend you take a look at my article here on profitable affiliate programs for Pinterest bloggers.

If you want some tech help to get the Pin it button on your blog then here’s a great video to help you out.

Use Cover Images On Your Pinterest Boards

The next step is to use cover images on your boards. The reason you’ll want to do this is because it can make your boards look nicer, more professional, and generate a higher Click-through-rate (CTR).

In the long term, you will generate much more traffic from doing this as more people will click on your boards.

For your board cover images, use an image that is attention-grabbing but also represents the topic of the board well.

For example, if your board is about “travel”, you could use a highly appealing image of somewhere like the beaches of Bali.

I also suggest using this opportunity to brand your images with your logo. This will make you look more professional and it will also enable people to become more familiar with your brand. In most cases, familiarity can bring more trust.

If you’re not sure how to add a cover image to your board, check out the instructions below.

1. Head over to “Your boards”
2. Hover over your board, until additional options appear
3. Click “Change Cover” once it appears

On mobile, you should see 3 dots or something similar, which also makes the additional options appear. If you complete this step and have keyword-rich descriptions, your boards are set up for success.

Choose Great, Shareable Images For Your Pins

Sharable content performs the best. This is the case for any social media platform, but especially for Pinterest.

On Pinterest, when users pin your images, they are also sharing it with their followers. This is why you should aim to use images that people will relate to, or want to save for the future.

What is seen as “shareable” or helpful for your audience, depends on them. If you’re in a rather informational niche like crafts, or self-improvement, an eye-catching image + the title of the blog post can perform extremely well as people like to save it to read later.

For example, a Pin that links to a tutorial, and clearly says “How to gain X benefit”, might be pinned by a lot of people who would like to get that result. Think about what your audience would save for later or would also want to share.

A little tip here is to look at some of the profiles in your niche or even from your followers. Look at the boards, and see if there are any common board names, for example, “blogging tips”.

Now if you create content around “blogging tips” your audience is likely to pin them.

How To Get & Create Images

To create and edit images you can use a tool like Canva or Stencil.

For the images, if you don’t have any yourself, you can use stock photos. Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels are good places to get free images. If you don’t mind spending a bit of money to get higher quality images then I recommend using DepositPhotos.

Bonus tip: Your titles don’t have to be understood by Google. So, instead of “How To Lose Weight”, you can make them sound much more interesting like “How I Lost 26kg With This Simple, Weird Trick…”

Basically, you have the freedom to make them more interesting and they don’t have to be identical to your actual blog title, which is something I really like about using Pinterest to drive traffic.

Making The Clickable Pins Obvious

Another quick tip that I have for you to generate more traffic to your website is making it obvious for the user that they should click it.

This can be done by using certain words that pretty much tell the user that there is more to this Pin.

For example, “How To X” as a headline can be quite catchy, as you’re not going to give someone a full tutorial in a simple pin.

I have also seen people explicitly telling the user to click i.e “click for the full tutorial”. Direct calls to action (CTA’s) like this can also work really well.

Use Rich Pins For Your Blog

The next step that will help you drive Pinterest traffic to your blog is using Rich Pins.

If you have experience with SEO, this is similar to rich snippets. Basically, they add a little more interesting info to your Pin.

The Rich Pin is a piece of code that you add to your blog. Pinterest can then pull this info and display it over on their platform.

The cool thing about this is that rich pins look far more professional, and are somewhat dynamic as when you change content on your site that is related to a Rich Pin, your Pin changes too.

Another additional benefit of using Rich Pins that I really like is they also give Pinterest more information about your pins, and in so doing, Pinterest can send more targeted traffic to your pins. If your Pins look good then this should also increase the Click-through-rate (CTR) to your blog.

To set them up, you can use a plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math by simply heading into the advanced settings of the plugin to configure them.

There are different types of Rich Pins that you can use depending on the type of content they relate to on your blog. For example, if you can use a product Rich Pin for a review article. This will enable Pinterest to show more relevant info about your article so your audience knows exactly what it’s about.

Here’s a help doc to show you exactly how to set up your Rich Pins. Alternatively, you can watch the video below to show you exactly how to do it.

Grow Your Pinterest Audience

After completing the previous steps, you have almost set up your Pinterest account for success.

There are just a few more things you need to do.

The first would be to optimize your entire profile to look as stunning as possible.

This would include, using eye-catching images in your profile and header and writing a bio that speaks to, and resonates with your audience.

For example, if you have articles tailored towards helping bloggers get more traffic, you could write a bio like: “Hey my name is X and I help bloggers get more traffic through SEO. Follow me for frequent tips and tutorials on how to get more visitors to your blog.”

Being clear and concise will help people to know exactly what you’re about in the first instance they see your profile.

Try to dig into the wants and pain points of your audience, and offer your profile as a solution by using your bio. Alternatively, if your niche isn’t directly related to solving a problem then you can also just aim to make it sound interesting and fun.

Once you have done this, it’s just a case of getting eyeballs on your profile.

Following Other Accounts

The best way to get off the ground from 0, is to start following other accounts.

Look for profiles that are either similar to yours, or even better, with an audience that matches the one you’re targeting.

From here, scroll through their followers and start following accounts that you think would benefit from your content.

Quite often, they’ll see it and follow you back. I would only recommend following profiles that have profile pictures to make sure they are real people and not bots.

If you want to, you could even be super-picky and only follow accounts that fit your target audience. This might take a little longer, but it may also give you better engagement.

Join Pinterest Group Boards

Something that will help you grow your account and get more eyeballs on your content is to join group boards.

The big benefit of joining group boards, and sharing your pins on them is that they have a lot of followers and so you can, therefore, bring you lots of highly targeted traffic over to your blog.

Plus, they can also get a lot of other people to pin your pins which will enable you get even more reach beyond just that group board.

Bear in mind, just like with most other things, the key here is relevance. If you’re part of a group board that has tens of thousands of followers, it won’t help if they aren’t interested in what you are pinning to that board.

There are a couple of ways you can find group boards to join. One way is to simply search Pinterest for public boards in your niche. Alternatively, you can also check out some of your competitor’s group boards.

Pin Regularly

It only takes 1 pin to go viral and suddenly you could have endless email subscribers and blog readers. But getting to that 1 pin usually takes hundreds or even thousands of attempted pins so don’t expect this to happen over night.

The more you pin, the higher your chances are of getting there.

I would suggest doing at least a minimum of once per day, as this should give you consistent growth.

A lot of people even recommend 10x per day. However, it’s better to set yourself a realistic daily task that you’ll follow. You don’t want it to become cumbersome.

At the end of the day, consistency is more important than frequency.

Although, frequency helps a lot too. Something like 3-5x per day can be a sweet spot for some people. From here, your account will start to grow, if you combine it with 10 minutes of following other accounts.

Create a Routine

You could create some type of daily routine for yourself:

1. Create 3-4x pins per day
2. Follow accounts for 10 minutes
3. Pin 10-20 pins from other accounts
4. Add 1-2 pin(s) to a group board

If you do this consistently for a longer period, I would be very surprised if you don’t start picking up traction before long.

In the beginning, it may seem like you aren’t getting a lot of impressions or pins, but they’ll come soon enough if you stick with it. Just make sure to keep posting pins and follow your routine.

Once you get the right type of eyeballs on your pins, you’ll start getting a lot of clicks to your website.

If this doesn’t sound fun to you then you can easily find a freelancer to do it all for you at a very affordable rate over here on Fiverr.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest isn’t difficult, it just takes a bit of clear thinking around your strategy, and some consistency.

If you follow the steps provided in this article and stay consistent, there shouldn’t be any reason why your account wont grow. And once it does, you’ll start generating a lot more clicks to your website as a result.

These clicks will be super-targeted from people interested in your content. This means that the visitors you bring from Pinterest are much more likely to convert into your blog followers and customers.

If you haven’t tried using Pinterest yet, give it a go, as now you have everything you need to generate some additional traffic to your blog.

If you want to expand your horizons beyond just using Pinterest then I recommend you also read my article here on the best free traffic sources.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that I may receive commissions when you click some of the links in this article and then decide to make a purchase. If you do follow one of my links and purchase a product, thanks! It means a lot to me, and any commissions I do make from this blog enables me to continue to provide you with all this awesome, free content. However, any commissions I do receive does not affect my reviews and comparisons. If I think a product is sub-standard I will either say so in the article or I will not feature it on my blog. I try my best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.

Sam Poyan

Sam Poyan is a writer, blogger, and social media coordinator, with a passion for online commerce. He specialises in researching and writing about digital products online. When he is not writing he enjoys watching football and going on walks with friends.