How to Use Pinterest to Boost Traffic for Your Site

Pinterest is a treasure trove of DIY projects and recipes for mason jar salads, but did you know that it can also be used to drive traffic to your site?

If you’re struggling to grow your blog or website traffic and have never considered Pinterest as a traffic-driving strategy, you’re missing out!

Pinterest is a thriving internet community where many people go to to find great content. On Pinterest, you can share your valuable content with over 200 million people each month. In fact, 67 percent of Pinners say they’ve discovered a new brand or product from business content on Pinterest.

That’s a ton of people you can reach – and it won’t cost you a thing.

When a user finds your pin on Pinterest, it’s like a direct line straight to your website. By sharing your content and growing your website traffic with Pinterest, you’ll generate droves of qualified leads and gain countless new readers and subscribers.

And these new leads, readers and subscribers are likely to become customers for your business.

So, not only can Pinterest boost your website’s traffic, but it can also boost your revenue.

Are you ready to convert pinners into visitors to your website and eventually customers?

If the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’, then let’s get started.

Here’s how to use Pinterest to boost traffic to your site.

1. Create a business account

The first step to growing your traffic is to create a free Pinterest business account or convert your existing personal account into a business one.

With a business account you’ll be able to access Pinterest analytics to see which of your pins are most popular, the number of average monthly users to your profile and how much engagement your pins are receiving, for instance.

A Pinterest business account will also allow you to enable rich pins, which will give your pins more information than regular pins.

There are four different types of rich pins: article, app, product, and recipe. Each type of pin has their own rich pin upgrades like real-time pricing and a link to your website.

Article rich pins will help people find your amazing content and make you stand out in the crowded Pinterest feed by adding a bigger headline, author, logo and story description along with a link back to your website.

You can easily apply for rich pins by downloading the Yoast SEO plugin, visiting the site’s “Rich Pin Validator” and plugging in a link to one of your blog posts.

That’s it – so simple, right?

Now your pins will be optimized to get the most click-throughs to your website, where pinners will be able to find more of your useful, entertaining content.

2. Create boards to attract your target audience

Pinning your content that’s based on financial advice to one giant board called “My Blog Posts” or to a completely random board like “Cleaning Tips” won’t bring in the heaps of traffic you’re hoping for – your content will never get discovered if you hide it within unrelated Pinterest boards.

Plus when a user visits your Pinterest profile, they won’t stick around long if it’s unorganized and they’re unable to find what they’re looking for.

That’s why you need to create Pinterest boards tailored to your audience and the content they would be searching for.

So if you have content that focuses on budgeting tips for moms for example, instead of adding it to a broad “Business Tips” board, create a board dedicated to and titled “Budgeting for Moms” so that your pins will easily be found by your target audience.

Don’t forget to optimize your boards for Pinterest SEO too.

Include keywords related to your content and business in the board title and description to make sure your pins get in front of the eyes of pinners who are seeking it out.

3. Create branded images

Let’s be honest, your success on Pinterest has a lot to do with how you look – how your pins look that is.

Users on Pinterest won’t take a second look at your pin if it’s not visually attention-grabbing – dull, low-quality images will always get passed up. That’s why it’s important to take a bit of extra time to design stunning, branded Pinterest images for your blog.

Beautiful branded images will not only make you stand out, but they’ll look more professional, and your content will be instantly recognizable to users; when someone sees your image in their feed, they’ll know it’s from you, a trusted source.

You can easily create awesome Pinterest images using a free tool like Canva. Whether you’re using your own high-quality images, or using eye-catching, free stock photos, always add large, clear font to display your blog title and include your website on the photo as well.

Another tip is always to create your pin images to be more tall than wide. Pinterest favors vertical pins because 80 percent of their traffic comes from mobile devices.

And the longer your pin image is, the more room it takes up on the feed – making it difficult for your pin to go by unnoticed.

4. Join group boards

It can take a while to build up a following on Pinterest to 50,000 or 100,000 followers, but if you join Pinterest group boards, you can get your content seen by hundreds of thousands of pinners right away.

Active and popular group boards with top collaborators and a large number of followers, will widen your reach on Pinterest and give you more exposure.

By pinning on group boards regularly, your content will be seen by a ton of pinners, and if they like what they see, they’ll become followers of you and check out your website.

Voila! You now have new fans.

By doing a simple search on Pinterest or using a group board directory like Pin Groupie, you can find an abundance of group boards related to your niche.

Follow the instructions of each group on how to become a member and once you’re accepted, start sharing your awesome content to the thousands of new faces at your fingertips.

You can even turn any of your boards into a group board by inviting other influential pinners to collaborate on it. In turn, they’ll promote your group board to their own followers.

Ready to explode your traffic with Pinterest?

Don’t be scared to add another social media platform to your marketing mix. Pinterest is the number one source for social traffic for many blogs and businesses, and now with these simple tips, it can be your number one source for traffic too.

So start pinning, and pin often, and you’ll start to see your website traffic skyrocket.