How Pinterest can Increase your Web Traffic

Tips to optimise your Pinterest posts and profile to increase discoverability and website traffic.

Pinterest has me obsessed for obvious reasons with its general doses of inspiration and creating the vision board of my dream life — hello minimal, mid-century, seaside vibes. But aside from getting lost in a visual oasis that is Pinterest, it’s actually a very powerful tool to help drive traffic to your site!

Alongside my business The Binding I have a blog called The Essentials Club where I mainly share DIY tutorials and sewing tips. To help build awareness, every time I had a new vlog/blog post I started casually sharing this on Pinterest. Fast forward 2 years of keeping this up and my stats are now at the time of writing this: 5.2 million monthly viewers and 20.6 thousand followers on Pinterest, and out of the 188,000 visitors to my site monthly, Pinterest helps generate 62,000 of those (that’s about a third of all my traffic).

So today I wanted to share some tips around how you could benefit from utilising this incredible platform also!

A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE PLATFORM

First up, think of Pinterest as more of a creative search engine rather than a regular ‘social media platform’. Its best asset is that people are most likely going there to search for a specific topic. So it’s up to us to help fill in the gaps for them! (This could be recipes, health or fitness programs, business or styling tips or even how to groom your cat — people are on there searching for just about everything)

If you’re not familiar with how it works, on your profile you can create boards which you then add pins into — normally categorised into similar themes. (checkout the video version of this post for visual reference)

There’s then two main types of pins:

  • First being re-pins of other people’s content — generally useful for helping build a general moodboard of your vibe/aesthetic.

  • And then there’s original content — which you’re uploading and linking back to your site/original source.

And custom content is what’s going to help drive traffic to your site — especially if it has a call to action or people are going to benefit by clicking through the link to learn more.

TIPS FOR CREATING CUSTOM POSTS

So every time I create a new blog/vlog to promote, I do the following simple steps which you can also put in place to help ensure a pin is discoverable:

  • I use a template that has my branding on it — this way it’s instantly recognisable to my audience and is less likely to be stolen. (This includes consistent colours, font and layout style)

  • I make sure these final posts are vertical as they stand out more when people are scrolling.

  • I’ll add a bold and punchy title — so that it stands out when people are scrolling and hopefully creates interest enough to click through and see more.

  • I fill the description section of the post full to the brim with information all about what the blog/vlog goes over — remember Pinterest is more like a search engine and all these key words will help people on their seeking journey.

  • I then tend to create and share multiple promo posts, that way it has more potential to appeal to different audiences and reach more accounts. I do this by experimenting with the different wording in the title or feature images and post 2–4 varying styles linking back to the same vlog/blog.

HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR ACCOUNT IN GENERAL

There’s other adjustments you can make to your Pinterest account to help it become more discoverable:

  • Update your profile description (remember this platform is more of a search engine and the need to utilise keywords wherever possible).

  • Add a description to each of your boards (or at the very least your main boards relevant to your business/blog).

  • Put all your branded content into one board. That way it’s super easy for people to discover more of your custom content.

  • Categorise the rest of your boards to niche subjects and continue to fill them with relevant repins.

NEW POST IDEAS THAT YOU MIGHT ALREADY HAVE CONTENT FOR

It’s definitely worthwhile creating a content plan moving forward that considers the creation of new blogposts that can easily be promoted on Pinterest to help build traffic and brand awareness. But that can also be overwhelming knowing that’s not going to be ready overnight. So here’s some post ideas you could already have the content laying around and ready to start sharing in the meantime:

  • What are some existing services/products that you could easily promote in new branded pins that link back to the shop/enquiry page?

  • Are there questions that commonly get thrown around and you could link to your FAQ page?

  • If you have a blog already find some posts you think you would benefit from sharing.

  • Do you have an about or values page that you could extract interesting subjects from to create a visually compelling pin?

  • Is there anything about your business/project that might add value or encourage action?

Remember content that does well should help add value or entertainment for the reader!

Obviously people just visiting your blog or other website pages won’t always end in sales. But it does build brand awareness and trust and these people who stumbled across you on Pinterest could then go on to follow your journey on Instagram (or other preferred social media platforms) and one day convert to a life long customer!

 
 

ENJOY THE VIDEO VERSION OF THIS BLOGPOST

 
 

I hope this blogpost helped! Let me know in the comments any tips you plan to put into place :)

 
Madeline RawlingsComment