Pinterest for Bloggers: How I Drive 10,000+ Visitors per Month to My Blog from Pinterest

What is the biggest challenge in blogging?

For me, it’s ‘DRIVING TRAFFIC’. And that’s because I haven’t focused on off-page SEO which is usually related to link-building, social media, and other off-site signals.

And because of this, I didn’t get any traffic from Google.

In fact, I underestimated the power of link-building, even though I knew it could significantly increase my traffic and authority.

I just kept on creating content and focused on On-Page-SEO instead of Off-Page-SEO.

But the sad truth is that you won’t rank on Google just by publishing content.

This is the biggest mistake I have been making for years. The reason is simple; firstly I don’t have time for guest blogging or performing off-site SEO strategies including link-building. And secondly, I don’t have money to outsource link-building. (This is the most expensive SEO technique.)

And because of that, I thought of quitting blogging as I was getting little or no traffic for many months.

But before I give up, I decided to try Pinterest because somewhere along the way I heard that Pinterest is a goldmine for driving traffic to a blog.

And guess what? It did work…

Within 5 months, I was able to generate over 10K visitors to my blog just from PINTEREST.

 

 

In fact, during the month of May 2019, my traffic went up to 35,000+ visitors (from the above screenshot)…

Although it went down again but still drives me OVER 10K+ visitors every month.

And the best part? I didn’t do OFF-PAGE-SEO yet.

So if you are a new blogger and struggling for driving traffic to your blog, you can give PINTEREST a final try.

With that said, I’m going to tell you why you should be starting with PINTEREST and how to start driving at least 10,000 visitors to your new blog for free.

So let’s dive into it…

 

Why Pinterest?

Pinterest is the Grooming visual search engine that has over 478 million monthly active users. It is evolving and has become the first GO-TO search engine for many people including me.

nearly 75 percent of Pinterest search queries are just 1–3 words, and people view an average of 60 Pins per query whereas for google you never go beyond 20 results.  In fact, only 0.78% of total organic searchers click results on the second page of GOOGLE.

That means if one of your pins ranks under 50 for a search term on Pinterest, it can drive huge traffic to your blog. On the other side, even if you rank at 11^th position on Google, it drives little to no traffic to your blog.

It means it’s easy to drive traffic to your blog using Pinterest than Google.

Although Google is smart enough to give you exact results when it comes to FRESH content, I consider PINTEREST a clear winner.

The reason why I said this is because the Google search results for a keyword (let’s say ‘SEO strategies’) almost remain the same whether you search for this keyword today or 1 month later.  You’re more likely to find the content from authority sites that make the competition higher enough so it’s almost impossible to outperform top results.

But if you search for the same keyword on PINTEREST after 1 month, the search results will change completely.

Another reason I choose Pinterest is that it’s beginner-friendly. It means, no matter whether you are a new blogger or an authority blogger, you have an equal chance to rank on the TOP.

In fact, I have found that the high authority sites (like Forbes, Inc., and magazines) are less likely to give you valuable content, they just point out some common things. And most of the time, you find nothing on Authority sites. And the sad thing is that Google prefers authority over quality content.

These are the fewer reasons why I choose PINTEREST over GOOGLE.

Let’s recap everything I’ve discussed above…

Key Points –

• Google has been there for 22 years so the CONTENT is oversaturated. Whereas Pinterest is 11 years old and still evolving.
• In comparison to Google, there is low competition on PINTEREST. It means it’s easier to drive traffic to your blog on PINTEREST than on GOOGLE.
• GOOGLE ranks content based on authority, backlinks, content quality, and other 200+ rankings factors, whereas PINTEREST looks for pin quality, content freshness, number of repins, engagement rate, content quality, keyword relevancy, and consistency.
• It takes months or even years to rank for a medium competition keyword on GOOGLE (if you don’t do OFF-PAGE SEO) whereas on PINTEREST you can rank for medium competitive keywords within a month or two.
• On GOOGLE, you have to show up on the top 10, otherwise, say goodbye to TRAFFIC. On the other hand, you can drive huge traffic from PINTEREST even if you are under 60.
• LINK BUILDING is the most prominent ranking signal on GOOGLE. And if you don’t perform any link-building tactics, you can’t drive traffic. (No matter how quality and long-form content you produce.)
• Pinterest can drive huge traffic to your blog for months or even years to come by focusing on pin quality and consistency.

How I Drive 10,000+ Visitors per Month to My Blog Using Pinterest

I have been using PINTEREST for 2 years and know the secrets of Pinterest for Bloggers.  So in this post, I’m going to share everything that you need to know to start driving 10,000+ Visitors per Month to your blog.

So without further ado, let’s jump right in…

For your convenience, I have classified the entire post into three sections…

1. BASIC
2. INTERMEDIATE
3. ADVANCED

Let’s discuss this here…

BASIC PINTEREST FOR BLOGGERS

If you’re a complete beginner and know nothing about PINTEREST, then better you start from here.

In this section, you’ll learn niche selection techniques, setting up a PINTEREST account, and other basic tools and tactics you need to get started.

1. How to Select a Profitable Niche on Pinterest

NOTE: if you already own a blog or website, you can skip this part.

Pinterest covers people’s interests and you can discover pretty much everything from a cat picture to business strategies here.

But in my opinion, there are a few categories that don’t worth your time on Pinterest. For example, a blog that talks about news are less likely to get exposure on Pinterest.

But some of these broad categories like HOME décor (60 million), Health (20+ million), art (50+ million), gardening (27+ million), Photography (47+ million), DIY and craft (45 million), motivation & inspirational quotes (35 million) can be your PINTEREST niche ideas that can drive insane traffic to your blog.

If any one of the above categories is your interest area, you can end your search here.

But before you do anything else, it’s important to know Pinterest demographics and statistics for batter niche selection.

A few of them are below…

• 71% of Pinterest users are female. It means you can choose feminine niches like parenting, relationship, DIY and craft, cooking, fashion & beauty, and more to drive boatload traffic to your blog.
• Pinterest is the 4^th most popular search platform in the US. In fact, the majority of Pinterest Users come from the United States. It means you can create content that people love to consume in the US.

From above, you can easily narrow down your choices to come up with a few specific niche ideas.

Aside from that, you can also see people’s search behavior on Pinterest. For that, you can simply perform some broad keyword searches on PINTEREST and see what pops out.

And then you can see whether or not you are capable of producing valuable content on that particular topic.

For example, let’s suppose, you want to start with ‘DIY crafts’. Now the first thing you can do is make a few searches related to a seed keyword on Pinterest (say; Paper DIY crafts) and analyze search results.

Repeat the process a few more times to get a better idea about what should be your content criteria.

This is how you can discover the most profitable niche on Pinterest.

Quick Recap:

• Pick a broad niche that is already popular on Pinterest.
• Perform your niche-based searches on Pinterest to see what does it cover?
• And then, narrow down your niche to lower the competition.

BONUS TIP: MONEY, FINANCE, SAVINGS, personal growth, and self-care are also a few high-traffic niches you can choose for Pinterest Growth.

2. Setting up a Pinterest Account

First thing first…

Head over to https://pinterest.com

Upon clicking the ‘sign-up button, a popup will appear.

 

From here click the ‘Create a business account’ instead…

 

Then, enter your email, password, age and click ‘Create Account.

That’s it.

Once you have a business account, next you need to set up a business profile. Here is how my business profile looks like.

 

A few basic tips to optimize your business profile

Cover Picture – Use a compelling VIDEO or cover picture. With this, you can ask people to follow you on Pinterest, check your business or BLOG, and enhance engagement rate.

Profile Picture – You can either add your face or your brand logo to make your profile look genuine. (Quick tip:  – Adding your real face works great.)

Profile Name – Keep it simple and keyword-rich. For example, I’ve included my BLOG name at the beginning, and two relevant keywords at the end of my profile name.

Claim Your Domain – Don’t forget to claim your domain name. (Go to the Account Setting option and Claim your domain.)

About profile – Add a little description to help people know what exactly they’re going to learn from here. You can sprinkle a few keywords to optimize your description. Make it short, sweet, and to the point.

 

3. TOOLS

So far, you have set up your business account on Pinterest. And now you are ready to create PINS.

I USE CANVA for designing all kinds of graphics for my blog, PINTEREST, and Instagram profile.

It’s one of the few popular graphic designing tools you can use to create anything from a simple thumbnail to a high-quality pin.

SEE a few of the pins I’ve created earlier using CANVA PRO.

 

Alternative – Adobe Photoshop and Pic-monkey

You can use any one of these tools I’ve mentioned above to create PINS.

Now you need to publish it on Pinterest. For this, you have two options. The first option is Manual Pinning and the second one is ‘by using a pin scheduler. (Like Tailwind).

I prefer the second option because it takes off the heavy lifting. All you need to do is create pins in bulk using CANVA and schedule them for a day, week, or month using Tailwind. No further action is required.

Pin-Inspector: It’s a Keyword Research tool for Pinterest. A powerful software that uncovers top trending keywords, search volume, CPC, and competition. With Pin Inspector, you can always find fresh keyword ideas to get a better search ranking on Pinterest. It’s the only tool that can make the Pinterest keyword research process easier.

Every blogger who wants to succeed on PINTEREST must have these tools.

 

INTERMEDIATE PINTEREST FOR BLOGGERS

Here I’m going to talk about Pinterest SEO. It includes – Pin image optimization, setting up rich pins, Title & description optimization, and keyword research.

You can incorporate some of these Pinterest SEO tactics to boost your pin reach and engagement rate to drive more people to your Business or BLOG.

So let’s dive into it…

1. SETTING UP RICH PINS

According to Pinterest, ‘Rich pins are a free product available for anyone on Pinterest. They automatically sync information from your website to pins.’

What are THE benefits of using rich pins?

• It adds more attributes to your pin to make it more authentic and click-worthy.
• It helps Pinterest find your pins easily.
• Boost user experience and rankings.

How to set up rich pins on Pinterest?

Here is an easy picture guide that can help you learn how to set up rich pins on Pinterest.

To validate and apply for rich pins, you need two things. The first one is the YOAST SEO plugin and the second one is the Meta tag.

(NOTE: YOAST SEO plugin is a must)

First…

Head over to YOAST SEO > Social > Facebook

From here, enable the Metadata option to allow Facebook and other social media platforms to show a preview with images and text excerpts when a link to your site is shared.

(This is because Pinterest also uses Open graph metadata just like Facebook.)

 

After that, go to your PINTEREST > SETTING > CLAIM

 

From here, copy the HTML Meta tag.

Now switch back to YOAST SEO > SOCIAL > PINTEREST and paste the Meta Tag (15cb89fexxxxxxxxxxxxaxxxx52cdaf4) in the Pinterest Confirmation section and save the changes.

Once everything is done, you are ready to apply for RICH PINS.

To start with this, first head over to Rich Pin Validator and enter a valid page/post URL of your blog.

For example – https://yourdomain.com/your-post

Hit the ‘VALIDATE’ button.

If everything goes fine, you see something like this.

 

If you see green ticks, it means your pins are successfully validated.

2. PIN OPTIMIZATION

It’s an important part of ON-PAGE SEO on Pinterest. You can’t grow on Pinterest without optimizing your pin designs.

Let’s break down the pin optimization process.

It consists of –

Size of your pin – standard size; 1000×1500; Aspect ratio – 2:3 (recommended), 1:2, 1:3

In fact, pins with an aspect ratio of 2:3 and 4:5 get 60% more repins than other pins

Don’t create below 600 x 900 pixels.

Title – Include keywords, statistics, numbers, and urgency in your title

Font Style – Use simple and readable fonts with proper line spacing.

Color – Use red, purple, and Pink with a light color background.  In fact, pin with the multiple dominant colors got 3x times more shares.

Background – Use relevant background with light colors on your pins. Don’t use overly dark backgrounds.

A/B test your PIN design & colors

Add focus keyword to your pin file name – (ex:  your-keyword.jpg)

 

3. TITLE & DESCRIPTION OPTIMIZATION

To be honest, there is no hard and fast rule for creating high-performing Titles and descriptions. It’s all about A/B testing.

SEE what I mean by A/B testing here…

A/B Testing is an optimization process to identify the best performing TITLE and description. (Same goes with PIN designs.)

For example, let’s say you publish a PIN titled ‘How to make money online’. So you can publish similar pins with a different title and description. And keep on monitoring PIN matrices (number of Outbound clicks, close-ups, and repins, and pin reach) to find the best.

Once you find the best-performing PINS, you can then make more pins with those titles and descriptions to boost pin reach and engagement.

That’s all you need to know…

But here are some of the tips you can use to optimize your title and description…

1. Use focus keywords in the title and description. Don’t overdo it!
2. Use 3 – 5 relevant hashtags.
3. Use specific numbers with decimal – ex: $23.56, 12456, etc.
4. Use urgency – ex: Hurry up, limited time offer, secret tips, and more.
5. Add a few related tags to help people find your content.

 

4. KEYWORD RESEARCH (Use Pin-Inspector)

Here I’m going to talk about the exact keyword research process you can perform to rank higher on Pinterest.

Here are four tools that can help you with Pinterest Keyword Research

#1. Pinterest Autocomplete

Similar to Google, Pinterest also gives you popular keyword suggestions in the dropdown.

Something like this…

 

These are a handful of keywords you can incorporate with your focus keyword. You can use different-2 phrases to add more keywords to your spreadsheet.

#2. Pinterest Keyword Planner Tool (Available With Pinterest Ads) or Use Pin-Inspector 

Pinterest has a simple keyword planner tool available with a Pinterest business ad account. It’s the only keyword tool available out there.

To start with this, first head over to ‘ads.pinterest.com’. And from here, Go to Ads > Create Ads

 

And then go to targeting > Keyword

 

Here you can do keyword research for Pinterest.

 

To be honest, this tool doesn’t give you specific keyword ideas but you can still use it to narrow your keyword choices.

Try Pininspector

 

#3. Pinterest Brick Recommendation below the Search Bar

It’s another feature that comes with Pinterest that can help you identify the search intent of a keyword.

For example, if I search for a seed keyword that says ‘Keto’ in the search bar, a bubble or brick bar is popped up just under the search bar.

Something like this…

 

With this, you can identify the search intent of a seed keyword. For example, if you don’t know what types of queries are being made on Pinterest for a particular keyword like Keto or something else?

From the above screenshot, you can clearly get the search intent. And add this intent with your keyword to get specific keyword ideas.

For example – keto recipes, keto diet for beginners, keto dinner recipes, keto dessert, keto breakfast, and more.

Well, these are highly competitive keywords. So to find the low competition keywords, you can click those bubbles or bricks to find long-tail keywords.

 

 

#4. Pinterest Trends

If you are from the US, UK, or Canada, then you have access to Pinterest Trends; a tool that shows a historic view of searches made within the past 12 months.

This tool is pretty much similar to Google Trends. With this, you can compare terms, view related terms, and view the popular pins as well.

It’s not a powerful keyword tool but can help you know the current trends and popular topics that you can cover to drive insane traffic to your blog.

 

ADVANCED PINTEREST FOR BLOGGERS

So far I have covered how to start with Pinterest and a few Pinterest SEO hacks to optimize your profile and pins.

Now it’s time to reveal some advanced Pinterest hacks for bloggers to skyrocket their Pinterest success.

In fact, these are the exact strategies I’ve been using for months to generate at least 10,000 readers from Pinterest to my blog.

 

 

 

And you can replicate the same stats on your google analytics by applying these strategies. So stick with me till the end.

Let’s get started…

 

1. FOCUS ON PIN QUALITY AND FRESHNESS

When I was new to Pinterest, I used to publish 40+ Pins every day. But since June 2020, Pinterest has changed the way how they major the quality of a pinner and pins. And with this in mind, they introduced a new algorithm that focuses on the quality and freshness of Pins.

And if you want to comply with Pinterest’s new algorithm, you have to focus on pin quality and freshness over quantity.

This is why I decided to pin 10 -15 pins a day. In this way, I focused on the quality of pins.

You can even go up to 20 pins a day but for this, you must have enough fresh content on your blog to deliver fresh content to Pinterest.

This is something Pinterest want from you in long run to maintain high-quality standard on the platform.

 

2. BEST PIN RE-CREATION

“Best Pin Recreation” is the second advanced Pinterest traffic growth strategy I often used to drive consistent traffic to my blog.

It’s like updating your high-performing posts to drive consistent traffic from Google.

Well on Pinterest, you don’t need to update your content but you have to update your PIN.

SEE what I mean by UPDATING your pins…

It means creating a very similar pin to your popular pins.

I don’t recommend you to update existing pins, this won’t work anymore. Rather I encourage you to create slightly different pin designs of your high-performing pins with almost the same title and description.

Once you have it, publish it on Pinterest. It will help you drive consistent traffic to your blog post.

 

3. PIN CONSISTENCY

Like any other digital platform, you need to be consistent. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Instagram or FACEBOOK.

Similarly, on Pinterest, you need to add more value over time. Create fresh content daily, post video, or pin ideas to let Pinterest know that you love their platform.

You get nothing if you give up too early. So make sure you give it some time to see significant results.

A few tips to stay consistent

1. It may seem to be boring in the beginning but if you stick to it for at least 21 days, you are going to see a significant increase in your stats. It will encourage you to stay consistent for more time.
2. You can create less but curate more in the beginning. In this way, you can get much time for creating your stuff. (You can follow the 50/50 rule initially. Accordingly, post 50% of others and 50% of yours.)

Once you start seeing some chattering in your pin stats. You can then focus on your own content.

After 6 months of consistent work on Pinterest, you can start driving significant traffic to your blog.

Benefits

Doing hyperbolic stretching for 2 hours only for one day not going to help you, but doing it for 15 minutes daily can do wonders.

Similarly, consistency can give you long-term success on Pinterest. And the best part? You never realize these little efforts can help you so much in long run. So never underestimate the power of being consistent.

 

4. GET INSPIRATION FROM PINTEREST SMART FEED

There are times when it feels impossible to come up with new content ideas for your blog.

If that’s the case, you can use Pinterest smart feed to find the most trending and popular pin ideas for your blog.

SEE how you can do so…

First head over to the Pinterest search feed and perform a search for a raw keyword (let’s say ‘Pinterest marketing’).

As you hit enter, Pinterest smart feed brings up some of the high-performing pin ideas. And from there you can analyze the top 20 – 30 pins to get the best content ideas.

What you can analyze from pins on the smart feed?

1. You can get pin design ideas
2. Analyze title & Pin overlay title
3. Description
4. Keyword
5. Hashtags

5. CREATE CONTENT FOR PINTEREST

The user search intent on Pinterest is completely different from Google. You can’t expect much from Pinterest if you optimize your content only for Google.

In my opinion, the users on Pinterest are open-minded, they don’t perform specific searches. Instead, they are more likely to explore new ideas.

On the flip side, the users on Google often perform a specific search like a solution to a problem or answer to a question.

So make sure you create content for Pinterest to get the maximum possible results.

6. CREATE A NICHE-FOCUSED BOARD

Boards can be used to organize, separate or group your content on Pinterest.

For example, you can have a board about the ‘KETO diet’ or ‘make money online’ to help Pinterest distinguish two different types of content.

Not just that, a dedicated pinboard can rank your content well on Pinterest. Well, it’s not so true because Pinterest now focuses on fresh content.

So it doesn’t really matter whether you have 10 boards or 100 boards unless you produce fresh content.

But what does really matter is having a few (up to 10 boards) niche-focused boards that talk about specific topics.

Let’s suppose, your blog about the keto diet, so you can have boards like –

• Keto diet plan
• keto recipes
• keto for beginners
• ketogenic diet
• Keto for weight loss
• Keto for women
• Keto benefits

 

7. USE PINTEREST BUSINESS TOOLS

Pinterest has so many creative tools that you can use to grow your blog or business. For example, you can use the Pinterest shop feature to get more people to your e-commerce business.

Or you can use the VIDEO PIN feature to create compelling short videos to help people learn more about your business or blog.

Or you can also use the idea pin feature to share your story just like Instagram.

Using all features can help you achieve the maximum possible exposure on Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest talks about ‘Controllable Distribution’. It’s an algorithm update that encourages creators to use all content formats available on Pinterest to get more eyeballs on your content.

8. USE PREMIUM IMAGES ON PIN (Free Stock Images Are Overloaded)

There are 240 Billion pins are saved on Pinterest. It’s a big number. Right?

Almost all free stock images have already been published on Pinterest. So if you are still using free stock images, your pins may get a slightly lower reach than the pins with premium images.

So try premium images from CANVA PRO, Shutterstock, or other similar platforms.

 

FAQs…

I’m getting almost zero traction on my pins, are they stagnated?

That’s because, when you’re new to Pinterest, it treats your content as fresh and your stats can go off the roof.

But once your content reaches its maximum potential, Pinterest freezes your Pin reach until you create more new Pins and publish new content on your blog.

This is how Pinterest keeps its search feed fresh and free of duplicate content.

You can simply create new fresh content on your blog and publish it on Pinterest to improve your stats.

What is the maximum traffic limit on Pinterest?

In short, huge! If you work continuously then you can bring tremendous traffic to your blog.

It is quite difficult to estimate the exact traffic volume as it depends on the type of niche, pin quality, content strategy, popularity, and account age.

If you’re just starting out, you’re new, you have no content strategy and no popularity, so your account is less likely to gain consistent traction.

Although some pins may go viral initially, they will not drive you consistent traffic.

But if you keep creating new content on Pinterest, it builds authority over time and you can get more traffic to your blog than ever before.

In fact, I’ve seen people drive over 500K traffic from their 5-year-old Pinterest account to their blog. (It’s not that easy but it is possible)

Not only that, my blog used to generate 25K – 50K page views on my blog in its initial year on Pinterest. 

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Recommended: How I unblock my domain from Pinterest within a week

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Having multiple traffic sources can help you drive consistent traffic to your blog. And Pinterest can be one of those sources.

Whether you’re a blogger or a business, you can’t ignore Pinterest. This is a gold mine.

If didn’t use Pinterest before or want to get started with today, you can bookmark this “basic to advanced Pinterest for bloggers” guide to succeed on Pinterest.

Trust me, if you follow this guide, you can literally drive over 10,000 visitors to your blog in the next 6 months.

If you liked this post, I would ask you to share it with your fellow bloggers to help them bring in an additional 10,000 visitors for free.