How to Explode Your Traffic Using Pinterest for Your Blog- The Complete Beginners Guide

Using Pinterest for your blog is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your site! Pretty much every single Pinterest pin you see on the platform is leading you to someone’s blog. Other common places people link to are YouTube videos and products.

But by far, the most common place people are getting sent to is a blog! So, if you run a blog- you need to be using Pinterest. Most people who go onto Pinterest go there to solve a problem.

Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media site. Meaning, that people don’t (usually) just go to Pinterest to scroll aimlessly through the feed- they use the search bar to look for a solution to their problem.

Which is exactly why using Pinterest for your blog traffic really is a no-brainer! This is going to be a complete guide to helping you set up and use Pinterest for your blog- even if you’re a complete beginner!

SETTING UP YOUR PINTEREST ACCOUNT

First thing’s first, we need to start with setting up your Pinterest account. This is going to be the easy part. Starting with your profile name and bio.

Later on, we’re going to be doing keyword research for the account so it’s likely that what you put here may change. Here is an example of what my account looks like:

-PROFILE NAME

I have keywords in my profile name, this is because you can rank and show up in searches for those words! You probably have seen this if you’ve gone to look up anything on Pinterest and notice that people also show up as well.

However, I noticed when I went to change the words after my name, Pinterest wouldn’t let me. It told me to “Stick to my name or brand name” so Maybe Pinterest is cracking down on people trying to rank for search terms? If that’s the case, you may not be able to do this for a new account. Which is honestly a bummer!

-PROFILE BIO

In my profile bio, I have kept it simple- telling people what my account is about and linking my Pinterest course. I had to keep my profile a bit shorter than I’d like just so the link would show up and people wouldn’t have to click “see more” in order to see it.

In your profile, you can have a bit more information! It really should just be what your account is about, and what keywords you want to rank for. If you have any important links, you can include them as I did.

READ NEXT: The Top 8 Pinterest Questions I get from New Bloggers!

-SETTING UP BOARDS

We’ll really get more in-depth when it comes to setting up your Pinterest boards later, but let’s start with the basics. I recommend that you have 10-15 boards surrounding your topic to start out with. This will help your account look established and not brand new!

When we do keyword research, we’ll be able to come up with better board names and good descriptions. By doing this, you can get your boards to rank in search and help you get found!

What’s more likely to happen though is that it will help individual pins rank in search! (Which is really the most important thing anyway!) Pinterest uses the keywords you have in your board description to find out more about the pins that you’ve posted there.

So, if you have a board about “10 kid-friendly dinner recipes” you want to add keywords that people are searching up in the board description. And, you only want to pin relevant pins to that board in order to not confuse Pinterest. Make sense?

If you need more help, I have a super beginner Pinterest course called Pinterest simplicity! In there, I go way more in-depth on this entire topic- and beyond!

KEYWORD RESEARCH

With that in mind and your account pretty much set up, we can start to refine it by adding keywords! I’m sure you’ve done the research for your blog and the topics you talk about before, so this shouldn’t be too hard. We pretty much just need to tailor the keywords to what people are searching up on Pinterest, instead of Google like you normally would!

-WHERE TO FIND KEYWORDS

As I mentioned, Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media site. Which means, that keywords are essential to use! They will help you get your pins ranked in search, which will help your account get found and grow!

The first, and easiest, place to find keywords is by using the Pinterest search bar. I mentioned this earlier, and I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. When you search something up on Pinterest, it will try to finish your sentence, similar to the way Google does.

These are all the most popular searches for whatever term you are looking for. You’ll notice the accounts showing up too, as I mentioned.

You won’t get many keywords this way, but it is a start!

The next best way is if you just do the same thing, but hit enter and search for the term. You’ll see what I call “Keyword bubbles” up at the top to help you refine your search. The term I looked up doesn’t have many (which isn’t exactly a bad thing!) But some search terms have so many that you need to scroll to see them all!

You can click on each of these “bubbles” to refine your search and sometimes when you do that, you’ll still see more! Once you don’t see anymore, or if there never were any in the first place, that means you’ve narrowed down that keyword as far as it will go.

Once people got to that keyword, they didn’t need to do any more refining. That keyword had everything they were looking for!

It could also mean though, that the keywords you’re looking for aren’t very popular. Unfortunately, there really is no way that you can see the search volume on Pinterest keywords. The closest we can get to that is by using the Pinterest trends tool, but even that really isn’t super helpful!

-PINTEREST TRENDS TOOL

When you’re using this tool, you can search up terms (not everything you look up will be available, so you may have to do some trial and error) and a graph will show you how much that term is searched up at different parts of the year.

It doesn’t really give you a “volume” of keywords, it just ranks it out of 100. So it’s still not the most useful thing out there, but it is something! This tool is mostly perfect for figuring out when you should post-holiday content.

Regardless, it is an interesting tool to try out!

ADDING KEYWORDS TO YOUR PINTEREST ACCOUNT

Once you find all the keywords for your account, we can start placing them in your account. Here’s where I recommend putting them.

-ACCOUNT NAME & BIO

If you can’t put them in your account name anymore, that’s a real bummer but something we just have to deal with! So, at the very least put them in your account bio. These keywords should be very broad and encompass everything you’ll be pinning on your account.

-BOARD TITLES

These can be a little more specific because you’ll be having more than one board. But, one board should equal one topic and it should still be a bit broad. For example- Fall fashion for women, Summer clothes for men ect… Broad enough that it can fit more than one pin, but still specific to keywords people are searching.

-BOARD DESCRIPTION

Now we can narrow down a bit more, especially since we can fit more than one keyword in our board description. You have to be careful here though, you don’t want to just pile on the keywords one after the other. Pinterest considers that to be keyword stuffing. Make the description feel natural, use sentences and explain what you’ll be pinning on the board with popular keywords.

-PIN DESCRIPTIONS & TITLES

Now we can get really specific here. In your pin description/title, you should have the EXACT keyword(s) you want that one specific pin to rank for, and it should be pinned to the board that best fits it.

Done right, all of this will help you explode Pinterest traffic to your blog! The goal here is to get you ranked in search and seen by the most people, and bring clicks back to your blog for people to read your work!

READ NEXT: 7 Rookie Pinterest Mistakes you Could Be Making!

BRANDING YOUR ACCOUNT

Once we’re done with that, we can get to the more fun part of the process. Branding your account! I want to talk about board covers next but I want to warn you, this is honestly the least important aspect of Pinterest. Adding board cover to your account will not skyrocket your account into fame. In fact, I’m not really sure they matter to Pinterest at all.

However, despite that, I still encourage you to make them. Why? Brand awareness and looking professional!

This is what my account looks like:

Not to roast anyone, or to toot my own horn, but how much better does that look than if all my boards were filled with random pins? It looks nice, which is what I’m going for here.

I treat my account a little bit like an Instagram feed. It’s cohesive, looks professional, and most importantly matches my brand.

Board covers may not help me rank in search but, this is an account I am proud to show the world and have associated with my brand. If you want a little help on creating board covers, I have a video about it here!

-PIN DESIGNS

The last thing we need to talk about is the pins themselves. If you don’t have a nice-looking, click-worthy Pinterest pin, this platform will not work out for you!

I have a bunch of videos up on my youtube channel about creating click-worthy Pinterest pins, but let’s go over a few of the basics here.

-DO YOU NEED TO USE YOUR BRAND COLORS?

No, not really. You used to want all of your pins to look similar so that your followers could pick out your pins in the feed easier. But, that is less important now. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your Pinterest pins!

I tend to still stay on brand in terms of colors and fonts when it comes to my pins, but there is always room to make the designs look different, or to be able to switch up different aspects on your pin.

One thing that should not change about your pins is the fact that your website link or logo should be on every single pin. It doesn’t matter where, as long as it is on there. This prevents anyone from claiming their pins as yours (yes, it does happen) and it just brands your pin as yours in general!

-CREATE CLICK-WORTHY TITLES

One thing you really need to master is the art of a click-worthy title. You need to make people want to click on your pin and catch their eye.

The good thing is, that your pin title does not need to be the same as your blog post title. You can, and should, switch them up every so often in order to keep the content fresh. As long as you aren’t completely changing the meaning of the blog post and not click-baiting the reader, then feel free to change up the title!

If you want any more help on Pinterest, I highly recommend checking out my Pinterest course called Pinterest Simplicity! Or, head over to my YouTube channel where I talk all about Pinterest Marketing!