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Pinterest: A Great Source of Traffic for Your Blog

This blog post was originally published on April 3, 2012. Today on May 25, 2016, I am reposting this blog post with some updated content and information.

Pinterest, an image-based social networking website is one of those sites that grown up very fast. It is an online virtual pinboard where you can create your own boards and pin various images on them. You can also share your boards with other users, and invite them to pin their image based content as well.

pinterest1

When I first came to know about this particular website, I thought that it may not help me increase my blog traffic but ever since I learned more about it, and started using, I noticed some referral traffic to some of my blog posts.

In 2012, I read a report that said that in the month of February 2012 Pinterest drove more traffic to the websites than Twitter. On that time, Pinterest had only 11.7 million active users as compared to Twitter’s 100 million and still it sent more traffic to sites. That was indeed a great achievement for it.

After reading that report, I started to take Pinterest seriously and have worked so much to promote my content. However, I am not that regular now due to some other work engagements. But, I always pin some of my blog posts in which there are awesome images because when you pin something with an attractive image it performs quite well.

Now, when I check out www.techtricksworld.com’s Analytics, I see that it is getting more traffic from Pinterest than Twitter because I have some pins that have really attractive images, and they are linked to various blog posts of the blog.

pinterest traffic ttw

I got 1,713 referral traffic from Pinterest for the duration of 24-04-2016 to 25-05-2016, which is more than enough because I am not putting much effort on it currently. I just pin some of the posts that have really beautiful images.

Pinterest has now grown up, and it is more famous than what it was in 2012. As you can see, I am getting a good number of visits from it; you can also get the numbers like this as well if you promote your content well over there.

In this blog post, I am going to share some tips that you can implement to get more traffic from Pinterest to your blog.

Create and Organize Pinboards in a proper manner

On Pinterest, you can create boards in which you pin different content. Boards are like categories in which you put relevant content. Suppose, you are working in Tech niche as well as SEO niche, then don’t just mix all the content in one board rather create two separate boards, Tech, and SEO, and pin the content on those boards as per the content type. All the content related to tech should be pinned in Tech, and SEO content should be pinned into SEO board.

This way, the boards are well organized, and people who are interested in one niche, they can follow the relevant board and stay updated. But, if you have mixed boards, you will not get more followers to that. Therefore, create boards and organize them in a good manner because it helps you get more followers to your boards. Thus, you get more traffic to your blog as well.

Use attractive and interesting Images

As I said earlier and you know this fact as well that Pinterest is an image-based social site. So, you must have to use attractive images while uploading a pin to your Pinterest board. And, even if you are directly pinning using your blog post link, make sure you have attractive images in that particular post so that it can fetch them from there.

If you fail to use such images, you may not get the success that you want with Pinterest. Therefore, always try to create some attractive and attention-grabbing images for your pins.

Add Pin It button for images on your blog

As you offer social sharing buttons to your readers so that they can share your content on social media without much hassle, you should also offer them the Pin It button on all the images so that if readers like your images, they can Pin them easily using that.

There are many WordPress plugins out there that offer Pin It button such as Monarch, SumoMe, etc. However, if you still need a guide for it; you should follow this guide by Pinterest itself for adding hover Pin It button for images.

Tag your followers While Pinning (Don’t spam)

Just like you tag your friends on Facebook while sharing some update, you can do on Pinterest as well because it notifies the right pins to right people.

When it comes to tagging, you must be sure that you don’t spam people rather you tag only them whom you think are very interested checking out a particular pin. For example, if one of my Pinterest followers is looking for some South Indian food recipe, and I have something related to that which I am going to pin, then for sure I can pin that follower because he will love it as that is his requirement.

Tagging is same like Facebook, use “@” before a name and that person will be tagged.

Use Hashtags in the description properly

Just as you use Hashtags on Facebook and Twitter for maximum reach of your shares, you can do the same on Pinterest as well by adding them in the Description. But, make sure you don’t add hashtags unnecessarily. Use them when required.

pinterest 3

As you can, see I have added # just before blogging to make it a hashtag, now when you click on this, you will find so many pins tagged with Blogging Hashtag. This is the reason; you need to tag because it helps to appear your pin whenever people use a particular hashtag to search pins. In this case, when you will search pins using blogging Hashtag, this pin will show up as well.

Participate in Group Boards

When you create new boards, you don’t have much audience that will see your pins. In such situation, you can participate in Group boards. Group boards are those in which not a single author but multiple authors can pin their content. You must need to be invited to pin on a particular Group board.

Try to find the group boards of your niche with a good amount of audience, and try to request the owner of the group boards to invite you for contribution.

Before asking the owners, make sure you have an appealing profile on Pinterest such a good bio, good number of boards and having nice pins in them, etc.

As the group has a good number of audience, your pins will be viewed by many that further results into more traffic to your blog.

Pin a small tip image every day within your niche

You can create a board like Tip of the day or Blogging tip of the day or anything that you are into. For example, you can see below that a cooking blog owner shares tip of the day in the form of an image.

pinterest4

This really works because people find something new quickly by looking at the pin. If you do this, you may see your board’s follower will be increasing.

Don’t miss to edit the pin and add a link to your blog post if you have a detailed post related to that tip. If not, you can simply add your blog link in the description. This will increase your blog traffic.

Quick Tip:

If you want to search pins from a specific site then just use this :-

pinterest.com/source/[Web site URL here]/

Example:
http://pinterest.com/source/techtricksworld.com/ This will show pins from The site techtricksworld.com Only.

Inference

As you read a few good tips to help you increase traffic to your blog using Pinterest, you should start practicing of these and see which ones are working well for you.

Pinterest is indeed an amazing website, and if used properly, it is a gold mine of traffic.

I hope you have enjoyed the Post. Let me know if there are any questions.

About the author

Atish Ranjan

Atish Ranjan is an established and independent voice dedicated to providing you with unique, well-researched and original information from the field of technology, SEO, social media, and blogging. He has in-depth knowledge of computers and tech as he pursued computer science.

69 Comments

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  • now social media site will improve your sites traffic. now m also join pintrest.

  • good read, I use Pinterest to drive trafic to my site by uploading infographics mostly. I’ve been mixing content from my site with pins of other relevant things I find on the web, have been able to grow my followers slowly but steadily.

  • Nice Guide Atish. I am also using pinterest from Last Month and very much active but still i am not getting any visitor from Pinterest. I did all things which one you mentioned above.
    I think picture matters on Pinterest if we put quality picture than surity of traffic is high. 🙂
    Thanks for sharing this.

    • I don’t know what the issue. I suggest you to follow more people and repin their pins also. Have patience pinterest will work for you. Yes Image matters a lot.

  • Hey very enlightening guide about Pinterest. Well it has been seen that Pinterest is now one of the most efficient traffic sources, in some cases even surpassing networks like Twitter. Naturally, a lot of social media marketers are embracing Pinterest to increase social media reach and to drive traffic to their sites. Keep sharing such more interesting one.John

  • I agree Atish, Pinterest is the great source of referrels But still Facebook is number one refferrel for my site But Pinterst is also doing great. Nice Post though.

  • I’ve been hearing a lot about Pinterest lately, but just checked their site and you have to request an invitation to join so lets see how it goes.

    Thanks for sharing the tips I can’t wait to try it out.

  • Looks like Pinterest is the next big thing in Social Media! An online pinboard is actually pretty clever idea. Who wouldn’t like it!

    And wow, it has beaten Twitter in February? That’s just amazing! (:

  • Pinterest is definitely where it’s at right now. as far as the invite, i did find the website pinterestinvitelink which gets you invited and signed up pretty quick… could be used if you wanted to set up a couple of accounts to point traffic toward your blog, etc…

  • Hi Atish,

    I’ve heard about Pinterest before and have always been interested so thanks for sharing these tips. I would like to get an invitation and hopefully when I’m not too busy I can also use the site.

    – Cristina

  • Surprising news. Pinterest has beaten Twitter in Feb.
    I’ve joined Pinterest few days ago. Looking very interesting and useful. Hope this new social media site will improve your site’s traffic

  • i think i am little bit lame in this case, Most bloggers are not using pinterest to increase their presence on this new social media site. I am not sure how much traffic it will bring to my site. But defiantly it is a better guide about pinterest.

    • Initially You will not be getting huge traffic but as your follower base increases, traffic will come to the site for sure. By the way thanks that you liked the post.

  • I ve been working on pinterest for quite a while now, and I have found that Pinterest is not only a social media site, but a picture sharing and social bookmarking sort of site. I am glad with the improving situations of pinterest, and am glad at the fact that pinterest is finally on the track with the rest of the site, so I hope we will be able to have a better competition in the social media sites.

  • Hi Atish,
    really nice and detail tip actually i joined pinterest 5-6 month ago but still not able to use it because i even click on pin button they never pin it in my profile so i feel it quit frustrating so not using it but seem have to give again a try

  • I was very much a sceptic when I first saw Pinterest however now I can see it as a great source of traffic. One of our sites is a homewares site with some good images of different items. We are now seeing a lot of people pinning and repinning these items and a continual stream of traffic coming from the Pinterest site.

  • Pinterest is really looks like great resource for business users.. I was using Pinterest for quite long time now and I can say its even better than linkedin for business purpose. Soon You will see this as #1 Social Network for Business.

  • Pinterest is quickly becoming a potent tool for marketing, although you will have to employ a different strategy from the social media that you are accustomed to. It is also interesting to note that most of the pinterest users are women. Pinterest shouldn’t be overlooked because even people who have no pinterest accounts have benefited from it because of users pinning some of the pictures from their sites, consequently generating traffic for them.

  • Hi Atish,

    Thanks for sharing this great post about Pinterest social media stuff. I’d be writing on it as well on my blog. It is one of my recent traffic sources because it is great

  • I want to let you all know that I am getting a few amount of traffic from Pinterest daily But the day I have posted the article “Shoot out at facebook”, that day I got 70+ visits from Pinterest alone in one day. I think its just because of the image in that the father of that gal is shooting the laptop. Whats the reason of getting good clicks from there??

    Nothing just the image looks so catchy and interesting. So its all about the image. if your images look appealing then traffic will come to your blog for sure.

  • Good post, i have know about pinterest for ages but only looked at it for a few moments and dismissed it because it wasnt following the trend of the main social sites and didnt ” appear” as easy to use. But i have signed up and think my initial thoughts about pinterest was wrong, not a learning curve at all. thanks for the kick in the backside to sign up.

  • Interesting to read about Pinterest. I already joined here, but now understood, what should I do with this, to drive traffic to the blog. As this post is clear and informative, hope this would help the newbie bloggers to increase their visitors through pinterest.com. Thanks for sharing n keep writing.

    • Thank you so much Nirmala for appreciating my post. Pinterest is very nice but for this use good image in your blog posts so that while sharing on interst it will take those images.

  • thank you, Atish…I’m using Pinterest for last 6 months and Wow!! now I have lots of traffic. I appreciated that you’ve shared this great article.

  • Hello,

    I agree. Pinterest do bring lot of traffic on your blog for free.

    Specially when you want free backlinks. Pinterest is the best source to get traffic.

    Thanks.

  • Hi Atish,

    It doesn’t surprise me that Pinterest gets you more traffic than Twitter. I really enjoy the time I spend on Pinterest – although to be honest I rather restrict it, because it can just get so addictive (well, for me anyway).

    However, I was pleased to see you update this post because it’s reminded me to check the traffic I’m getting from Pinterest. Even more important, it’s reminded me to be more consistent in working with Pinterest.

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

    • Hello Joy,

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Pinterest. Yes, you must go an be active there to get some more traffic to your blog.

      Have a great weekend ahead.

  • I thought pinterest is not good for driving traffic to a blog/Website, after reading your article I got some new new ideas like group boards I never heard it before, Thank You. I had a Pinterest account but the number of followers is really low and nobody is coming to blog through Pinterest. How can I increase the number of followers in Pinterest.

  • Hello Atish, I love this post!
    Initially I thought pinterest has nothing to do with blog traffic. Last week I read a similar post which convinced me to create a pinterest account for my blog. I’ll struggling to get accustomed to it’s environment. I hope to make good use of it in the future.
    Thanks!

  • Hi Atish,

    This is one platform I’m not on. I see that you as well as so many bloggers and marketers I know do get so much traffic from Pinterest.

    I was on it a few years back, but then my business plan had grown. I had to give up a few social sites. Sorry that Pinterest had to be one of them. I did enjoy my time there and was meeting many new people. But numbers had dictated where I had to put my energies.

    I know one day I’ll be back.

    -Donna

    • Hey Donna,

      Thanks for coming by and I am sad that you had to give up Pinterest along with a few other social sites. I know you will be back once again.

      Enjoy the weekend ahead.

  • So far I did not find any significant traffic from Pinterest. But one thing I have realized that the blogs with good picture quality has better chance in pinterest. E.g. a recipe blog has huge opportunity to attract huge traffic from Pinterest. Anyway, thanks for sharing this. I need to work hard on Pinterest, many bloggers are recommending the same.

  • The last one was good and This updated with content information Article is also great. I’m using Pinterest these days, wow!! it works awesome….getting so much traffic.
    Thanks again Atish, for sharing this Updated post.

  • Yes, agree with you, Pinterest is really a great source of traffic and recently I have join there. But I need to know some more from you how it’s actually bring huge traffic.
    have a nice

  • Hello Atish

    Certainly, Pinterest is the new interest people around the world having right at the moment. If we want to grow our internet business, surely, Pinterest is another great platform to get started.

  • Hey Atish,

    So far now I never knew that Pinterest is such a traffic driven source and I never use that for driving traffic. But your post impress me a lot and am going to try pinterest right away.

  • Hey Atish,
    Glad you wrote this post. I had underestimated Pinterest and concentrated on other social networking sites for my blog promotion, but now after reading this I will focus on Pinterest to bring traffic for my blog. I have a doubt tough should the hashtag be a keyword or we can write any thing that makes sense?

  • Hi Atish,

    Many thanks for sharing your expertise and experience with Pinterest. I’m impressed that in just one month you got more 1713 traffic from Pinterest.

    I just checked my Pinterest account and at this stage I have 2.8K followers but in the last 30 days only got 11 visits to my blog from this source. Previously I have had as much as 500+ per month from this source but lately thigs have become quiet on the traffic front.

    I always add my posts and YouTube videos to my boards but this is a bit disappointing for me.

    One thing I should point out is that the traffic I do get from Pinterest is very interested and targeted – this source of traffic spends more time on my blog than any other social media source of traffic.

    I’ll check out the “group boards” idea you suggested and see what happens – great tip.

    Thank you again Atish – awesome post my man

    Best wishes from the remote Thai village blogger

    Peter

    • Hello Peter,

      I am happy that you liked the post, and you have already good following there on Pinterest. All you need to do is to tap the potential by experimenting something new there on Pinterest.

      Group boards will do great if done right.

      Thanks for coming by. Enjoy the week.

  • Hey Atish,
    Glad you wrote this post. I had underestimated Pinterest and concentrated on other social networking sites for my blog promotion, but now after reading this I will focus on Pinterest to bring traffic for my blog

  • It’s really pleasure to have such a nice platforms to generate the traffic, as of i know Facebook is only the way to getting huge traffic to a website, Thank you for giving useful information about generating traffic through Pinterest..

  • Hi,

    This article is very helpful and informative!! Pinterest is a catalog of ideas! I like the way you have explained every single detail about Pinterest!

    Thanks for sharing 🙂

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