It’s hard to get traffic to a new site, which is why it can be important to use sources like Pinterest when you’re starting out.
Those who rely on traffic from Google know the struggle all too well. It takes time for Google to begin to trust a site, and you won’t see much organic traffic until that trust has been established.
SEOs refer to this as “the Google Sandbox.” And depending on your niche, it may take a few months to even a year to bring in enough traffic to become profitable.
While the potential rewards make this waiting period worth it for many site owners, it also brings uncertainty. Will it take six months, nine months, or even a year to start seeing traffic? Will Google ever really trust your site?
For someone who is investing significant time and money into a site, this is one of the biggest questions on their mind.
Why Pinterest Is the Ideal Social Platform For New Sites
While site owners (as well as those looking to purchase sites) tend to focus on Google traffic, it’s not the only way to bring traffic to a website.
Beyond that, it’s advantageous for site owners to diversify their traffic sources. As anyone who has relied solely on Google knows, it’s unpredictable to say the least. You may wake up one morning to find that the Google algorithm has changed and you’re suddenly bringing in 50% fewer visitors.
There’s no shortage of options for diversifying your traffic. You can focus on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat, just to name a few.
And while many site owners have found ways to build their brand and bring traffic to their site via these social channels, today I want to discuss one that many sites stay away from: Pinterest.
What separates Pinterest from these other social channels is that people visit Pinterest not as a way to connect with their friends but specifically to find information. In other words, Pinterest isn’t as much a social channel as a visual search engine.
The best way to think about Pinterest is that it’s a visual alternative to Google, with a heavy emphasis on certain niches.
Another thing to like about the platform is the fact that there’s no Pinterest sandbox. In many cases, new sites that deploy the right strategies can see a flood of traffic fast.
This can have a host of benefits for site owners. Arguably the most important is that you can start seeing a positive ROI much faster than if you were just waiting around for Google to give you its stamp of approval.
In this post, we’re going to cover:
- How to know if your site is an ideal fit for Pinterest.
- How to get started marketing your site on Pinterest.
- Advanced Pinterest marketing tips (which I have used to bring in over 2.3 million page views to my site since it launched in 2016).
Let’s dive in…
Is Your Site Right For Pinterest?
When most people think of Pinterest — and specifically, when they think about the niches that do well on the platform — home decor, crafts, fashion and recipes are what typically comes to mind.
After all, 7 out of 10 Pinterest users are female, so the site does cater to topics that tend to be popular among women.
At this same time, Pinterest has a much broader scope than those lifestyle niches.
In fact, the 2.3 million page views Pinterest has brought to my site The Ways To Wealth are in the personal finance space — which is not usually thought of as a visual niche.
The Pinterest Trends tool is one you’ll want to get very familiar with. It’s also a starting point for discovering how well your primary niche will do on Pinterest.
Start by entering your primary niche. Let’s use gaming as an example.
You can see there’s a steady increase in the trend itself.
What else is nice about the Pinterest Trends tool is that you can easily compare website niches. So, if I want to see how much traffic gaming gets compared to personal finance, I can just add the keyword.
As it turns out, there’s more demand in the gaming niche than in personal finance:
It’s here you’ll want to play around with the tool yourself, entering primary keywords in your niche and comparing them to other popular niches.
Keep in mind that not 100% of the posts on the website you publish have to be Pinterest-friendly. But there are opportunities in almost any niche to make content that works on the platform.
For example, if you’re in a gaming niche, there’s not a lot of demand for gaming tutorials on Pinterest. However, there is a lot of demand (which you’ll see in Pinterest Trends) for game room design ideas, game desk setup ideas, and even very high-buyer-intent keywords like “Gamer PC.”
Pinterest Marketing 101: Get Down The Basics
There are some fundamentals to Pinterest marketing to familiarize yourself with before getting into the more advanced tips. Here’s what you want to focus on at first.
#1. Set Up Your Profile
You want to start by getting a business account on Pinterest. From there, you’re looking to brand your profile similar to how you brand your website. Specifically, you’re looking to claim your website, set up rich pins, and build out your bio.
Recommended Resource: How to Create a Winning Pinterest Profile.
#2. Create Your Boards
Boards are where you save your Pins. Think of them as being like the subcategories on your blog. In other words, they should be fairly narrowly focused. For example, if you’re a blog that talks a lot about passive income, you might have a category just for passive income apps.
Recommended Resource: How to Make the Best Pinterest Boards For Your Business.
#3. Start Following Influencers Within Your Niche
The best way to learn the strategies and tips that are working in your niche on Pinterest is by following the largest creators in the space.
On the Pinterest search bar, hit the drop-down menu and select “People.” Then, enter your main keyword in the search bar to learn of the biggest influencers in your niche.
You can then click on individual profiles to see how many impressions they get per month, which is a good indicator of how they’re doing as of late.
#4. Create Your First Pins
If you’ve never designed a Pin before, it’s going to take some time to improve your design skills. Yet what’s nice about Pinterest is that the Pins that do well are not necessarily beautifully designed Pins. More so, you can use templates to make your Pins.
Canva has one of the widest selections of free Pinterest templates available. What you’ll want to do is take some of their templates, make them on-brand, and then start pinning them to your boards.
Recommended Resource: How to Create a Successful Pin For Pinterest.
Advanced Pinterest Marketing Tips
With the basics out of the way, let’s get to the tips and strategies that can allow you to gain serious traffic to your site.
#1. Create Pins That Users Like to Save
When you scan Canva’s Pinterest template inventory, you’ll notice that most of the templates look alike. Specifically, they have a title, image, and a few subtle variations such as the brand name.
Now, that certainly is a good start. But what you’ll find on Pinterest is there’s a lot larger variety of Pins on the platform.
In a rare 2019 interview, Omar Seyal, Pinterest’s head of core product, explained:
…Pinterest’s algorithm treats “saves” of a given pin as a much stronger positive signal than clicks. People don’t really save an inflammatory article about the president, but they do save an outfit they want to buy in the future. So we’re biasing toward those types of interactions, and biasing away from interactions with your friends.
The big takeaway for Pinterest creators is to create Pins that aim to be saved. Saves will eventually lead to higher placement in the search engine, which will lead to clicks to your site.
Pinterest users save content for a lot of reasons.
Some save content to read later. And it’s for this reason why really long lists do well on the site. For example, this post on the best travel jobs from a smaller blog (DA 34) ranks very well for keywords related to the best travel jobs.
Pinterest users also save content when the pin contains valuable information itself. This is the case with list posts or simple infographics. For my site, one of the all-time most saved pins is a list of books that Elon Musk Recommends.
Readers can get a lot of information through the Pin itself. While displaying all the information reduces click-through rate, it significantly increases impressions.
#2. Create More Than One Pin Per Post
In Google, you only get one title tag. Your post may cover more than one topic, but at the end of the day, you get one shot at your title tag.
Pinterest is different. You get one title tag per pin. Most importantly, Pinterest doesn’t have a limit to how many pins you can create per post.
Note: While you don’t want to go overboard by any means, for some posts I’ve created more than a dozen successful pins.
For example, say you have a post on your blog about the best gaming chairs. In that post, you talk about the best overall gaming chairs, the best computer gaming chairs and the best floor gaming chairs, and you even get into reviews of the gaming chairs themselves.
Since your post provides value to everyone searching for this information, you can create titles for pins for all of these categories. More so, you can even create different pin types, such as an infographic.
Now, with one post you’re covering multiple keywords on Pinterest without having to invest the resources to create a separate article for each one.
When it comes to link outreach, SEOs will tell you that the success rate is very low. While it certainly depends on the strategy, sending 100 emails and receiving one link is a success for many site owners.
Pinterest, on the other hand, is made for sharing. It’s even best practice to include some high-quality pins of other creators that your audience would benefit from.
In my experience, some of my most clicked-through Pins (according to my analytics) go to other sites within my niche. Vice versa, some of the Pins that bring the most traffic to my site, are because an influencer pinned them to their own board.
Most people don’t think of doing outreach for Pinterest shares, but it works. Influencers are always looking for good content to share, and letting them know you created something valuable is one way to see massive traffic fast.
Final Thoughts
A lot of sites can benefit from taking Pinteret seriously. Not only can you bring a large amount of traffic to your site via Pinterest, you can often do so much faster than through SEO.
Plus, it gives your site more diversification (and therefore, stabilizes its earnings a bit).
Originally published at https://flippa.com on March 15, 2021.
