So it’s no secret that Pinterest is the key to skyrocketing your page views, you’ll find it on every blogger’s blog and Pinterest is full of hacks on how to do it. I read about a thousand of them and then decided to do my own research. Working in social media I nerd out over anything algorithm related and Pinterest was an unconquered land. The rewards were incredible and so so quick.
I’ll start from the beginning and without being patronizing I’m going to quickly go back to basics and explain what Pinterest actually is. Pinterest is like a giant pinboard of ideas, you ‘pin’ your ‘interests’ to different boards, so I have a food board and a fashion board and a skincare board etc. The pins are made up of images that link through to a website, and they are tagged by the pin description and the title of the pin so that when you search for something in Pinterest like you would in google it goes through the tagged images that have been seen as the most relevant because it’s been repinned by other users or it’s been clicked on or if the user that pins the image originally has a large following the pins will be considered more relevant than others
As a blogger it’s pretty straightforward why Pinterest is helpful, it’s a way to keep your images relevant and have all of the images on Pinterest pins link back to your website where is Instagram is a visual social media platform but it’s not directly traffic driving Pinterest is also a visual social media platform that you have the ability to instantly click through to someone’s website and drive traffic.
Another good reason to use Pinterest is that unlike things like Twitter or Instagram a pin can have a longer life so if I pin an image onto three boards all of my followers that follow those three boards will see those pins and they will have the chance to decide whether to pin it to their board and if they do everyone that follows their board will see my pin so even if the pin hasn’t been re-pinned from someone’s board for two or three months if someone searches for something and finds it and re-pin is it the pin is active again and I’ll still get traffic from pins is that I put on Pinterest to 3 years ago and my most popular blog posts are all always the ones that have had good activity on Pinterest.
So to start your Pinterest journey you’re going to need to set up an account and then set up your boards and make sure that your account is a business account so that you’re able to see the analytics and connect a verified website.
The way the Pinterest algorithm works is that it looks at what is most relevant and it will also look at which website it’s coming from to avoid spam so if you pin one image of a leopard-print wrap skirt then the chances of that being the most relevant at that precise time is quite low but if you pinned 10 pictures of a leopard print wrap skirt you’ve got more chance of your of one of your pins being seen because Pinterest will take the most relevant leopard-print wraps pins and show those at the top of the search results, so it’s kind of like a lottery.
So how does Pinterest determine which pins are the most relevant, it goes off of the quality of your website, they’re able to see the strength of it based on the SEO and the domain authority, they also look at pin quality. So it’s important to use a good quality image file and look at the kind of titles you’re using. It’s a very visual platform so it’s important to have graphics that are just that, basically, you need your pin as a blogger, to sum up everything that’s on the webpage that people will go through to come through to.
Pinterest also looks at the pinner quality, so the better and more popular the rest of your content the more likely it is that your newest pins will also get good traction as well. When you’re repinning it’s wise to look to repin popular pins.
For example, if there are two images of the same apple pie but one of them because of a title on it has been repinned 3000 times and the other one has been pinned 100 then it’s it’s you know it’s sensible to re-pin the one that’s been repinned 3000 times because it shows that that’s had a longer journey through the platform and that it’s more compelling to the Pinterest audience and by pinning popular content you’re more likely for your content to then be shared on and then it will come back to you.
In my experience, organic pins are what drive up your impressions. So look to share all of your blog’s images on Pinterest, link them back to relevant pages, keep the descriptions relevant and keyword heavy and you’ll be flying in no time. Strong visuals are what will compel people to repin or click through to your blog, not all blog post Pinterest graphics need to be word heavy, sometimes if its a recipe a compelling image is enough. If you’re going to really start investing in your Pinterest strategy then look at creating a cohesive template for your pins so they become recognisable as you start to build a reputation within the Pinterest space.
So that’s part one of my Pinterest hacking post if there are more questions I’ll happily follow up with part two but hopefully this should help get your pinterest strategy started and help boost your traffic.
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