Pinterest for bloggers/ how to boost your traffic using pinterest

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Pinterest for bloggers/ how to boost your traffic with Pinterest.
Before I started my first blog, I was addicted to Pinterest. I used this platform to search for crochet patterns so that I make some items for my baby, but I never considered how Pinterest could help those with a business.
One day by a chance a post about making money blogging popped up in my Pinterest smart feed.
I read the post carefully and I liked the idea of making a blog as a work from home, and to satisfy my passion for writing at the same time.
If you haven’t started your self-hosted blog, I wrote a step by step tutorial to help you start your own blog.
As soon as I started my first blog, almost 80% of the traffic was coming from Pinterest. All I did is that I converted my personal account to a business account, verified my domain, enabled rich pins, created new pins to every article I published, implemented a pinning strategy and joined some Pinterest group boards.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

Should you start using Pinterest for your blog?

The answer is yes. I you want to boost your blog traffic, I highly recommend using Pinterest. It’s a very important platform to help grow your blog.

• Pinterest easy to use and can get hundreds_thousands of new eyes on your pages every day.
• Pinterest has more than 200 million active monthly users.
• Pinterest audience is really global with more than 50% of all Pinterest users, and 75% of all signups coming from outside of the US.
• You don’t need a ton of followers to be successful on this platform.

So if you want to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, I’ll save your time and explain to you in steps: All in one Pinterest for bloggers/ the ultimate guide to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

 

Step 1// Setup pretty Pinterest boards

Create a profile, fill in the usual and create boards. You want these Pinterest boards to look pleasing. Lots of older bloggers suggest that you arrange your boards in a plan that make the first board is your blog board.

Create multiple boards in your niches and fill them of related pins, and let the first board on your Pinterest profile is your blog board ( you will fill it with your own pins that linked to your blog).

For example// if you are blogging about motherhood, you can create some boards that related to motherhood like: parenting tips, pregnancy tips, baby food, new baby essentials, baby showers, breastfeeding, baby activities, and so on.

In the beginning, you will fill your own boards with the other blogger’s pins. After you create your own pins, you’ll share both your pins and the others pins.


Step 2// Change Pinterest board covers

Custom board covers can help with your branding, encourage viewers to stay on your profile longer, and helps to increase the number of followers you get.

You can easily custom Pinterest board covers using canva, just follow the following steps:

  • Go to canva website, click on (custom dimensions) in the top right-hand corner of the website.
  • Plug in these dimensions: 564px X 564px
  • Click (design) and it will open to a new window for you to start creating in.
  • On the left side of your screen, you will notice different options for layouts, elements, backgrounds and more.
  • You can use your favourite background colour, and create your own design.
  • For an effective and professional Pinterest board cover, make the title of your board as large as possible.
  • Save your design to your photo library.

Now, after you created your own design, you can change your board cover images by following these step:

  • Log in to your user account using your favourite web browser.
  • At the top right of the browser window, click the button with your profile name.
  • From the drop-down menu that opens, choose your boards.
  • Roll your cursor over the board you want to edit, you’ll see options appear on the one you choose.
  • Click the change cover button that appears, the change cover dialogue box opens.
  • Click the right or left arrows in the change board cover window.
  • Keep clicking until you find the pin that you want to use as the cover of your board.
  • Click the red (save changes) button to select the new cover.
  • Now, the new cover is displayed on the board in your main profile.

 


[bctt tweet=”The complete guide for using Pinterest to boost your blog traffic.” username=”@perfectmommy100″]


Step 3// Convert your Pinterest personal to a business account.

You need a business account because you’ll have access to Pinterest analytics, so that you can implement your own pining strategy depending on the analytics results.

You also can enable rich pins if you have a business account, and you can promote your pins if you like.

If you already have a Pinterest personal account, you can convert it to a business account here.

  • Go to Pinterest for business. Click the ( convert your existing account) box.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use pinterest to boost your blog traffic

  • Choose your business type. For the bloggers choose (professional).

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  • A new tab will open, fill in your information that you want to be displayed publically.
  • Now read the agreement, agree with it. Click (convert account).

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Now your account is converted to a business account.


Step 4// Claim your website

When you’ve converted your account to a business account, you need to claim your website analytics with Pinterest, and to apply for rich pins.

To claim your website, simply follow these steps:

  • Go to your Pinterest account settings, then scroll down to where it says (claim website).
  • Enter your blog URL and click (claim website).
  • You will get an option of verifying your blog by entering a line of HTML or uploading a file. Select ( add HTML ). The next screen will supply you with the HTML code to copy and paste.
  • Open a new tab and log in to your WordPress dashboard. Install and activate ( Header and footer plugin ).
  • Open the (header and footer plugin) from the settings section on the dashboard menu. Paste the code you copied from Pinterest into the (header) section, then (save).
  • Now, go back to Pinterest, click (next) and then (submit). You will get a message telling you to stay tuned and wait for an email from Pinterest and a green tick will appear next to your blog address in your settings.

Now, your website is claimed successfully and you can enable rich pins in the following step.


Step 5// Enable rich pins

Rich pins add extra details to pins from your website, which means that the pin will show your branding title of your blog post and description. Without rich pins, your blog seems unprofessional.

There are four types of rich pins:

  • Recipe
  • Article
  • Product
  • App

To the bloggers, the most appropriate one is the article.

How to enable rich pins?

It’s very simple, just follow the instructions:

  • If you are a WordPress user, then simply install Yoast SEO plugin. You can do that by selecting (plugin) from your Pinterest dashboard, then (add new). Type (Yoast SEO) in search feed and download the plugin. Activate it.
  • Now open your (Yoast) plugin, head to the (social) tab on the Yoast plugin, then select (Facebook) and make sure the (add open graph metadata slider) is enabled.
  • After that you need to activate your rich pins. To do that just enter the URL of one of your blog posts ( not your blog URL ) in the rich pin validator.
  • When the rich pin validation is successful, click the (apply now) button to apply for your rich pins to be activated.
  • You will get a success message and your pins should be displaying as rich pins within a couple of days.,

Step 6// Create multiple pins for each blog post

Each time I publish a new article, I always create multiple pins for it. This let me tell the world that my article has landed.
Pins with nice images and catchy titles do well on Pinterest. For example ( 10 things you will regret for not doing during pregnancy ).

This pin went viral in just 4 days after I published it. The reason is that it has a catchy title that makes everyone wants to know what are these things.
And after more than three months of publishing this pin, it still drives more than a thousand page views to my blog.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use pinterest to boost your blog traffic

I also add a pinnable image to my blog post, to do that I upload the Canva template sized pin to my blog. But, make sure that you installed pin jQuery plugin, and social warshare plugin.

Also make sure to add keywords to the alt tag section of the image, so that each time someone pins from your blog post, it will be a rich pin.

If you leave the meta description blank, your rich pins will show the first couple of lines of your post.

And finally, I write at the end of my article a suggestion that the writers save this pins to their boards.

But, before all, you should know how to create a perfect pin.

Toni Dash wrote a beautiful tutorial on how to create a Pinterest image for beginners.


step 7// Optimize your Pinterest SEO:

One of the biggest ways to grow your Pinterest account is to treat the platform like a search engine. People use Pinterest to search for ideas, or to find solutions, they don’t use it for chatting like other social media platforms.

There are 3 areas on Pinterest that benefit from search engine optimization:

  • Your profile
  • Your boards
  • Individual pins

 Profile SEO

Pinterest allows you to include up to 30 characters in your name, so there’s not a whole lot of space for SEO there, just stick with your name and your business name.

So my suggestion is that you can use the limited space given for the business description to include key phrases that will make it easier for your target audience to find your pins.

Look at my profile:

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

 

Pinterest Board SEO

If you want to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, don’t name your Pinterest boards artsy and creative names. You should have clear names that tell Pinterest users exactly what they are going to find on them.

People search for thing like: pasta recipe ideas, start a blog, saving money for the wedding, toddler snacks ideas….etc, all of these are clear and not cute sentences.

You should also include long tail keywords in your board descriptions. Make sure to write a content not just keywords, so that your board’s description will be helpful and readable.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

 

Individual pin SEO

Pins have several parts. For starters, they typically have a beautiful, eye-catching, and rather a tall image. There are a pin name and description, and you can make comments on the pin.

Every single bit of that is open for SEO, even the wording on the image.

 

How to find relevant keywords?

The easiest way to find relevant keywords to put in your pin description is right on Pinterest. Simply do a Pinterest search with a focus key phrase such as (baby shower).

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

As you seen above, Pinterest suggest other popular keywords that a pinner can use in their pin descriptions.

What I do normally is that I take a couple of those extra added keywords and put them in my pin descriptions.


Step 8// Implement your own pinning strategy:

For more than a year, I read tens of blog posts about the best Pinterest pinning strategy. Every post recommend a number of pins a day, some prefer manual pinning and others prefer using a scheduler like Tailwind.

I can here give you some tips of the pinning strategy I use, if you like it you can use it as well and if you didn’t like it you can use another strategy. It’s up to you!!

  • As I mentioned earlier, I create 3-4 pins for each blog post I publish.
  • I add at least one pinnable image to my blog post and installed (jQuery pin it) plugin to make it easier for my blog readers to pin the images.
  • I make sure to use keywords in the metadata and description boxes of the image settings.
  • I pin manually 5-6 times a day, each time 10 pins. The first 5 pins are my own pins, I repin them to my own boards and to the group boards. The second 5 pins are the other blogger’s pins, I pin them from the group boards I contribute in, the Facebook threads I participate in and from Pinterest smart feed.
  • I also make sure to add at least 3 new pins each week.
  • I use my mobile phone for manually pinning, which is easier for me with an active toddler.
  • I don’t repin the same pin again and again at the same time, instead I make at least 12 hours gap before I repin the same pin.

Remember, you should always pin other people’s contents not only your own pins, because Pinterest may flag your account as a spammy if you only pin your own staff. It also makes your boards richer with new and worthy content, so you may gain more followers. It’s also a way to help other bloggers just like you want other bloggers help you and share your content.


Step 9// Join Pinterest group boards in your niche:

Pinterest group boards are basically just a board used by multiple people called collaborators to pin content to.

If you are sent an invite, you can now contribute to this group board by adding pins.

The more group boards you join, the more pins you can contribute and the more your blog get seen!

Ok, I explained in details everything about Pinterest group boards and I mentioned more than 400 Pinterest group boards are accepting contributors in another post. You can simply check the post, choose the group boards you want to contribute in, and send an email to the group board owner.


Step 10// Facebook groups:

Facebook group play a great role in growing your Pinterest account, and helping your pins to spread through the world.

If you participate in a repinning thread, you have to repin the other blogger’s pins to your own boards. In addition, the other bloggers repin your pins to their own boards.

I’ll share with you the threads that I personally participate in. But, make sure if you participate in a thread, you should follow the rules carefully, not just dropping your link and go.

Facebook groups that help you grow your Pinterest account:

 

pinterest for bloggers/ how to boost your blog traffic using pinterest.. If you found this post is helpful, please repin the verticle image..thanks.

Pinterest for bloggers/ how to use Pinterest to boost your blog traffic

 

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22 thoughts on “Pinterest for bloggers/ how to boost your traffic using pinterest”

  1. This post was very helpful ! I’ve read a ton on manually pinning for beginner bloggers and no one gets down to the science of it quite as you did here. I have been pinning 10X per day, 1 pin for each of my 10 boards. I am mostly pinning other people’s content, as I don’t have enough posts yet. Is it necessary to pin evenly, meaning, I would manually pin one time to each board daily, or does that even matter to Pinterest? I worry that some of my more popular boards will be more active the others if I don’t pin evenly.

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