10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog from Pinterest
You’ve spent ages writing your blog post, you’ve published it on your website, but you aren’t getting much traffic. Does this sound familiar?
One of the highest sources of referral traffic according to a recent study, is from Pinterest. People are seeing high levels of visitors from the social media platform.
There are many things that you need to be doing to maximize the numbers of visitors that you get from Pinterest, and in this article I will show you what you need to be doing on your pinterest page. If you are still using a personal profile for your business, it is very important that first you convert this to a business account here. Instructions for verifying your website with Pinterest the easy way are here, and then you can start using Pinterest analytics. I will show you what steps you need to take to optimize your pins, and website to increase traffic from Pinterest to your blog.
1. Create an Eye-catching Image
Create an image that will serve as the featured image for your article, and also can be pinned to your pinterest boards. This way, there will be some consistency, as the image that people see on your pinterest page, is the same as the one they see when they get to your blog post.
Include the title of the blog post on the image. Use long images, as these are more eye-catching. A couple of very good, and free! tools to use to create images are picmonkey and canva
2. Add Web Address to Pins
Adding your website address to your own images is completely necessary, and is great free advertising! Your pin gets re-pinned, with your web address on it, and could potentially get seen by thousands of people. Make sure it is very visible on the pin, so that people can see it.
Another reason to include your web address, is it prevent people stealing your images. I have seen this many times, where pinners are passing off your image as their own.
There are a few different ways of adding your watermark to your pins. You could add your web address, as in the example from Social Marketing Writing.
You could also add your logo, as in the example below from Tailwind.
3. Create a Blog Board
Create a board specifically for your blog, so you can highlight your articles. Make sure to use your blog name as the board name.
Also, if you are a prolific blogger, then break them down into different categories, by creating a different board for each one. Kim Garst has done this very effectively:
4. Include a Board Description
This is an excellent way of getting found in searches. Include lots of keywords relating to your subject, and don’t use hashtags, as these are not searchable by google!
Cynthia Sanchez from OHSoPinteresting, has done this very effectively on her blog board, as well as being very informative about the subject, she has included a lot of keywords.
5. Add your Website to the Alt Tags
Anyone that pins directly from your website, with a pin it button, will have whichever text you have included in the alt tag show up in the pin description. This is because Pinterests pin it buttons will scrape alt tags for pin descriptions.
Include some text and your website address. The pinner can delete this once they have pinned the image, but they generally don’t bother.
This is a great example from Vincent Ng of MCNG Marketing. He has included the title of the blog post, website address, and a hashtag.
6. Include Pin Descriptions
If you are creating images, and not pinning directly from your website, then you need to include good pin descriptions in your pins. Make sure that you include relevant keywords, as this will enable your pin to get found in searches.
7. Add URL to pin description
Adding your website address to the pin description results in more people clicking through to your website. If they click on the image, the image expands, and then they need to click a second time to get taken to your website. Make it easier, and include the link in the description, which they only need to click once.
Pinterest also don’t like URL shorteners, so if you are trying to track your pins with a shortener, don’t! as pinterest will label this as spam.
8. Include Calls to Action
Often people are a bit reluctant to include calls to action in their text, but they do work! You will get higher click through rates if you ask people to “click on this link” or “follow this for more information” Anna Cadiz Bennett of White Glove Social Media does this very well in her pin descriptions.
9. Link Uploaded Photo to Blog Post
This might seem like a really simple thing, but a lot of pinners forget to link their pins back to the original source. They are missing out on some great traffic. If someone is interested in your blog post, they are going to find it difficult to read!
So don’t forget, once that pin is uploaded, click on the pencil icon, and redirect the pin back to your blog. if you pin directly from your website, this is already done for you.
10. Article Pins
Rich pins add additional information to your pin. Your pins look more visible, and include the story heading, author, description and URL. You can apply for rich pins here and they are easy to setup on your blog. If you have a wordpress site you can add the Yoast SEO plugin. This is a very informative article from Vincent Ng which explains how to add rich pins to your blog.
As you can see in the example above, my pins include the website name, and larger, more visible text to entice those people to click on the pin!
11. Add Pin It button to website
It is possible for people to use the Pin It bookmarklet to pin from your website, but it is far more enticing for people if, when they hover over images, that the pin it button appears. You are more likely to get people pinning your content.
Adding a Pin It button to your website is very easy and quick. A great plugin is the jQuery Pin It button which you can add to your wordpress blog. This is very straightforward to setup, and you can have a hover pin it button on your images within minutes.
I do hope that these tips have been helpful. If you can think of any more ways to drive traffic to your blog from pinterest, or have any questions, just add a comment below.
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