Pinterest is literally a blogger’s best friend when it comes to generating massive traffic to your website! Like most blogging tools, however, it is super important that you fully understand how to use Pinterest for your blog to reap the rewards that it can provide. The following will give you a basic understanding of exactly how to use Pinterest for your blog so you can sit back and enjoy the traffic that will follow.
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How to Use Pinterest for Your Blog
As a blogger, knowing how to use Pinterest for your blog is so important. So many Christian bloggers lose out on massive traffic opportunities because they aren’t using Pinterest in the right way for blog success. Christian content is huge on Pinterest and you can find just about anything you are looking for in that genre. But for yours to be found, there are several things that must be done in order to make it happen.
Setting up Pinterest for Your Blog
Before we even talk about your actual blog, we need to get your Pinterest profile optimized for success. If you don’t already know, Pinterest is NOT a social media platform. It is actually a search engine and works in a similar manner to other search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I’m sure you’ve already read about the benefits of SEO for getting found on Google. Pinterest also works on SEO so it is important that you have your profile optimized for SEO success.
Pinterest Business Account
You may already have a personal Pinterest account where you save things to boards. You have the option of creating a brand new board for your blog or you can simply convert your personal account into a Pinterest business account. As a Christian blogger, I would imagine that you are already saving Christian content on your personal profile so it wouldn’t take much to tidy up the account. Keep in mind that since Pinterest isn’t social media, your followers won’t be spammed with every pin that you save! Once you’ve got your Pinterest business account set up (or converted), you can them optimize your profile.
How to Optimize Your Pinterest
Pinterest works off SEO (search engine optimization) in a similar way to regular search engines. Pinterest SEO is super important for getting your pins found, saved, and clicked.
- Profile settings – Your profile name and description should have keywords to let other Pinterest users know what type of content to expect from your profile. In addition to searching for pins, users can also search for content by “people” so having the most niche-relevant keywords in your name and profile description increases your chances of more visitors to your profile.
- Board Titles – Board titles need to be the most relevant SEO keyword for the content it contains. Avoid using cute titles that only you understand. Users can search for content by searching for boards that contain it based on their chosen keyword.
- Board Descriptions – Every board needs to have a keyword-rich description that applies to the content being saved to that board. Avoid adding scripture and quotes to the description. Instead, use complete sentences such as “Articles about Christian marriage, including how to be a godly wife, conflict resolution in marriage, and honoring God in your marriage. Every Christian marriage faces problems; here you’ll find advice, encouragement, and wisdom from the Scriptures.” (This would be a board titled “Christian Marriage.”)
- What You Pin – Aside from setting up your actual profile and boards, what you pin to the boards is also very important. When you save a pin to a board, ensure if fully fits with the SEO keyword for that board. Some pins might fit on more than one board. Ensure the pins that you save from other people (stuff you find in the feed or save from websites) are of high quality and are in line with the guidance in this post.
- Enable Rich Pins – Another important factor in knowing how to use Pinterest for your blog is to ensure you have Rich pins enabled.
Setting up Your Blog for Pinterest
Now that you have your Pinterest account set up and optimized, you must understand how what you do on your blog affects your Pinterest strategy. When you publish a new post, you want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to share your content to Pinterest. Once the pins reach Pinterest, there are ways to increase their productivity there.
- Pinnable Image – I would say the single most important factor in knowing how to use Pinterest for your blog is to ensure every single post has a pinnable “Pinterest-worthy” image for readers to pin. I’ve come across so many amazing Christian blogs and wanted to save a post to a Pinterest board but they didn’t have an image appropriate for pinning! What makes a “Pinterest-worthy” image?
- Vertical Image 600 x 900 is optimal, however, if using Canva, the Pinterest template is 735 x 1102 which is also great. Avoid making pins longer than 1260 because they can get cut off in the feed.
- Has post title on it – Images without text are just images! They may get saved to a board for pretty images, but no one will click through them to your post (which is the point of having them!). You can add other images to the post but always ensure you have at least one pinnable image on every single post.
- Has the correct Pinterest text in the description – Many bloggers enter their description in the “description” box, but that doesn’t carry over to the image when it is pinned. Some will enter a full description (including hashtags) into the ALT TEXT box which is a huge mistake! (The ALT TEXT box is for blind reader software to “read” an image.” You can add the Pinterest text manually using a snippet of code or you can use the Tasty Pins plugin which makes it much easier.
- Share Buttons – Ensure your social sharing buttons are easy to find! Using a fast and lightweight social plugin such as Grow by Mediavine will enable you to add the sharing buttons to multiple locations, as well as the ability to share your content across all platforms (even if you aren’t on them).
Pinterest SEO
Knowing how to use Pinterest for your blog means understanding Pinterest SEO. In addition to ensuring your Pinterest profile is optimized for SEO, it is super important that your pins are optimized as well. For your pins to get any engagement (people clicking on them), they need 2 things – to have good SEO and to be visually appealing (in that order). Having great SEO will get them in the Pinterest feed and search results more often. (Making them visually appealing will increase the chance of someone clicking on them.)
Locations for Pinterest SEO:
- Pin Title – When you upload the pinnable image into your blog post, ensure you put the full SEO title into the title box. The actual image should also have the blog post title on it as well. You can use different variations of your title on the image as long as the main keyword is still showing.
- Pin Description – Ensure you use complete sentences for your description and that it includes your main SEO keyword plus 1-2 others if applicable. Do NOT keyword stuff the pin description. Do NOT enter the description in the alt text box. Manually enter the Pinterest text description or use the Tasty Pins plugin.
- Hashtags – Include a few relevant hashtags immediately after the pin description.
- Image File Name – When you save the image to your computer, be sure to save it as the SEO keyword. When you upload it to the post, add a description of the image to the alt text box. This step is important for ADA compliance for images.
How to Get Traffic from Pinterest
So how exactly do I get more traffic to my site from Pinterest? Once you’ve fully optimized your blog and your Pinterest profile, the traffic sort of works on auto-pilot. As you publish new blog posts, you will immediately pin the image to your blog board. Having SEO is so important from this point on. But there are a few other ways to boost traffic opportunities as well.
- Your Followers – Your Pinterest followers will see your pins first in their feed. This is why you want to have high-quality images that stand out in a feed. Once they repin the image to their own boards, their followers will see it, and so on. Be sure to regularly follow new people in your niche and repin their content.
- Pinterest SEO – Once a pin in pinned, Pinterest “sees” it based on the SEO of the pin. Those hashtags really help! Ensuring your Pinterest text is correct is important because that SEO will follow the pin once it has been shared to other boards. That means Pinterest will show it more often in feeds and search results – which leads to more people clicking on them and coming to your site.
- Calls to Action – Even though you have your pinnable image on display, tell your readers to pin it! The funny thing about human nature is that we often need to be physically prompted to do something. Simply adding a line of text before or after the image (or at the end of your post) that says “be sure to pin me for later” or something along those lines will go a long way!
- Social Sharing – Having easy-to-find social sharing buttons will also increase the traffic to your site. Aside from all the social channels, ensuring you have a Pinterest share button (and Pinterest-worthy image) will increase the chance of readers sharing your content. For every person that pins your pin, it is now in front of a whole new audience of people (their followers) who can click through to your site.
Understanding How to Use Pinterest for Your Blog
Pinterest, when used correctly, is an amazing tool for Christian bloggers. Getting your Pinterest account and your blog set up and optimized for SEO from the start will help in generating significant traffic to your site. Even if you haven’t mastered SEO for Google, you can still generate a ton of traffic from Pinterest.
If you are still a bit overwhelmed with getting everything set up and optimized, you can check out Pinterest Ninja from Megan @ Love Family Health. This is the very first course I took on Pinterest and really the only one I’d recommend (and I’ve taken a lot of different ones) which literally walks you through setting up your profile and blog, as well as how to create pins that people will click on (and how to do affiliate marketing with Pinterest.
