How do I Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic To My Blog
When I started to use Pinterest, I wondered how to use it to drive traffic to my blog. So I did some research and took some classes to find out the steps I needed to take. So how do I use Pinterest to drive traffic to my blog?
- I pin my new blog articles to Pinterest. Each article will have 2 to 5 images.
- I then wait a day before pinning a different image to another Pinterest board.
- I share my pins to my Tailwind Tribes.
- I share my pin to my Pinterest share groups on Facebook.
- I create a new batch of images to pin only after waiting 60 days since the last time I pinned the images to my boards.
Pinterest is a visual search engine. After google, Pinterest will be the top source of traffic for your website. SEO typically takes between 9 and 12 months to kick in. Pinterest allows you to drive traffic from when you hit publish on your post to months after.
Some speculate that Pinterest traffic’s shelf life is 24 months. Pinning images to your Pinterest boards should be a weekly habit and below you will find a 20 step checklist to guide you through the process.
A 20 step checklist to help you skyrocket your Pinterest Traffic
Before You Start Pinning
1. Structure your blog post so that it provides a solution for the reader.
Readers are looking for solutions. The reason why they are on Pinterest is because they are collecting knowledge that is going to help them in a facet of their lives. When you write your blog post, ask yourself, what is the trajectory that you want to take your readers through?
Visitors to your article tend to scan the article first – before they decide to read the full article. I always ask myself if all the reader did was to scan it – would they be able to understand the message you are relaying in your article? Therefore break up your content into easy to read headers.
An easy way to communicate this to your readers is through your blog title and H1 Header.
– Is it catchy
– Does it quantify how it will solve the problem they are seeking
– Is it short enough to display in Google Search (63 characters)
If you want some ideas on titles – read this blog article that lists 190 catchy headlines.
The typical structure I use is to have the H1 Header, as the top header and then all the other supporting Headers will be H2 and I will end the conclusion with an H3 Header.
After each blog article is complete I submit my article to Google for crawling.
Also in your Pinterest set up – make sure your website is connected to your Pinterest account so that rich pins are enabled. You may be able to do this yourself or you might need help from your webmaster. Pinterest has a section to walk you through how to do this.
2. Create a meta description which is the snippet that will capture the reader’s attention
I use the YOAST plug in to edit the meta description that Google will use when displaying my article. Typically it will answer the reader’s question. If you don’t use Yoast, it will be the first sentence or two of your blog article.
I learned how to write my meta description from Brandon Gaille.
The meta description is what readers look at to decide if they will click through. It provides clues if your article is relevant and actionable to their search query.
– Use the right number of characters in the meta description (156 characters)
– Is it actionable?
– Is it unique to competing articles? (Conduct a simple google search to see what the meta descriptions are to the topic you are covering)
– Does it make the reader want to click through to read more?
3. Make sure the page load speed is as fast as possible for your page
There is nothing worse than clicking through to an article and experiencing a slow page load speed. A potential reader will often not wait and click back to leave your article before it even loads. The easiest way to increase page load speed is to make sure your images are not bogging down the system. I use TinyPNG [TinyPNG – Compress PNG images while preserving transparency] to decrease all my photos so that they are as close or smaller than 100KB in size.
Also make sure all of the images in your post have the correct file names, title + alt tags. If you want to learn more, do a search online about about SEO image optimization.
4. Consider a social sharing plug in that will encourage more social media shares
I use Social Warfare [Social Warfare: Your Ultimate Social Sharing Arsenal] so that I would have the graphics that encourage readers to pin to Pinterest or to share to social media. I installed this plug in – in August and have not had any problems with it. That said some bloggers have reported that updating the plug in caused their blog to crash. Be sure to do your research.
I also like that within the plug in I am able to create and upload additional images and descriptions that will be used when readers share to Facebook or Twitter.
An alternative that other bloggers are using is Tasty Pins.
Both of these platforms also enable you to add images to your blog post that are only visible when a reader clicks the Pinterest Icon on your article. You can learn how to do this through code as well. I happen to not know any code so the plug in has been extremely useful for me.
Boogie
December 21, 2018This such a great comprehensive list! Thanks for sharing.
My one question: how do you submit the article to Google for crawling? I assumed Google did this automatically.
Thank you!
xx
MaggieLovesOrbit
January 24, 2019I do submit it for crawling. I watched a webinar once and since then have been doing it as soon as I hit publish.
Michelle & Watson
January 2, 2019Damn these are seriously amazing tips! I haven’t heard of a lot of this so you’ve given me some homework to do 🙂 I’m excited! Officially pinning this post too hehe.
Woof Xo,
Michelle & Watson
https://www.watsonandwalls.com/blog/sedona