Pinterest for Bloggers: How to Get Traffic in 2023

Pinterest is an awesome traffic source for blogs – and yet many new bloggers completely ignore Pinterest altogether. Big mistake!

In this beginner’s guide to Pinterest for bloggers, I’ll show you how to set up your Pinterest account to start bringing explosive traffic to your blog.

Giddy up, let’s get started.

Pinterest for bloggers FAQ

Before I show you the 18 steps to get traffic to your blog from Pinterest, let me go over a few basic facts about Pinterest.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual search engine where users save ideas to try later. Think of it like Google search but with images instead of text.

An easier way to think of Pinterest is like a digital version of an old-school corkboard where you can pin ideas to.

When people search on Pinterest, they’re looking to find inspiration or to find a solution. Either way, they’re looking for help. So if your blog provides solutions or inspiration, your content needs to be on Pinterest!

How does Pinterest work?

On Pinterest, the images are called pins. These pins are linked to the source of the image.

Take a recipe pin, for example. The pin image will show you a picture of the final product and may tell you it’s a 15 minute, 4 ingredient recipe. The blog post the pin is linked to has the ingredients and cooking instructions.

Users on Pinterest save these pins to their boards.

For example, a keto recipe might go in someone’s “Keto Recipes” board and someone else’s “Weight Loss Goals” board.

The best tip I can give you is this: Use the platform as a regular user to understand how people use Pinterest.

Understand what makes someone save a pin to a board, click on a pin or follow a user.

When you begin to see how Pinterest is used, you can get a better understanding of how to market your blog on Pinterest.

Who’s better for blog traffic, Pinterest or Google?

If you have a new blog, you can forget about getting Google search traffic – not gonna happen!

Google will not show love to new blogs, period. New blogs lack quality backlinks, lots of content, social media shares, domain age, trust, and authority – all-important Google ranking factors (source).

You can expect to wait at least 6 months before you start seeing any traffic from Google (source). In contrast, a new blog can get traffic from Pinterest much faster.

This is because Google looks at your website to determine where to rank you, whereas Pinterest looks at your pin engagement to determine where to rank you.

What blogging niches work on Pinterest?

You might think your niche isn’t suited for Pinterest. Think again. Many niches can be successful on Pinterest.

In my how to pick a blog niche article, most of the profitable niches I listed do very well on Pinterest.

While home decor, crafts, recipes, and weddings are big on Pinterest – there’s also a community of members who are passionate about marketing, travel, parenting, health & fitness, and personal finance.

The bottom line is this:

If your niche is about helping people improve their lives, it will do very well on Pinterest.

Who uses Pinterest? Demographics

If you’re still not convinced that Pinterest is the traffic source you should focus on, maybe these numbers will change your mind. Data is from this earnings report and this source.

• Pinterest has 459 million active users.
• 71% of users on Pinterest are women.
• 40% of dads in the US are on Pinterest.
• 52% of millennials use Pinterest every month.
• Only 28% of marketers use Pinterest. (There’s plenty of room for you)
• 80% of users access Pinterest via mobile. (Is your blog design mobile-friendly?)

Why new bloggers should focus on Pinterest first

So you start a blog, write a few blog posts, put some ads on your blog, and what happens? Crickets.

For many bloggers, getting traffic is the most challenging part of blogging.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough traffic sources, but that there are too many!

When you’re a new blogger, you will be tempted to try everything to get traffic to your new blog.

That’s where the problem lies. When you try to be everywhere, you end up being nowhere.

If you try to learn them all, you will end up knowing a little bit about everything – but you will not master anything!

Instead, focus ALL of your energy on ONE traffic source.. and DOMINATE it!

Hopefully, by now, you see the power of Pinterest marketing for bloggers.

Can you automate Pinterest marketing?

Many traffic sources require you to be present and more active to benefit from any kind of free organic traffic. For example, Google wants freshly-updated content, YouTube wants new videos weekly, and Instagram wants daily posts with high engagement.

Pinterest likes activity too. However, you can use a scheduler to appear present without actually spending time manually pinning.

With a Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind, you can mass-schedule your images to be posted at peak hours months ahead of time.

Why is Pinterest good for blog traffic?

Remember, Pinterest is a search and discovery platform, which means its users are looking for new ideas or solutions to problems.

Unlike social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, Pinterest is designed to send you traffic.

Pinterest rewards new content

Pinterest is perfect for new bloggers because you can start getting traffic from Pinterest from the jump.

There’s nothing in the Pinterest algorithm that punishes new users or new pins.

On the contrary, fresh pins are exactly what Pinterest wants!

Pinterest traffic is free and plentiful

Forget about trying to pry Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter users off the platform. It’s not going to happen.

Social media sites have a lot of traffic – but they aren’t designed to send you any of it. Instead, their number one goal is to keep you on the platform to show you more ads.

But Pinterest? Pinterest traffic is free, and there are 459 million active users as of 2021 looking for ideas and solutions (source).

Your content can go viral

Just one pin that takes off can send loads of free traffic to your blog.

While Pinterest is more search engine than social media, there exists a virality factor that can skyrocket your pin distribution across the platform.

Pins stay on the platform forever

Pinterest is a search engine – not a social media network. This means one pin can remain in the search results for years to come.

Think of the average lifespan of a tweet, Instagram post, or Facebook update. It can be a few hours – tops.

And as far as your reach goes, you’re lucky if even 5% of your followers see your post.

On Pinterest, the exact opposite happens. The pins you post to Pinterest will stay on the platform forever.

I have actually deleted old ugly pins I made years ago, but they keep popping back up as users continue to share them. These old ugly pins are still making their way through Pinterest years after first posting them.

Ready to get started with Pinterest? Let’s start by setting up your Pinterest account.

Pinterest for bloggers: How to get traffic from Pinterest

1. Set up a Pinterest business account

If you already have a Pinterest account, you can convert your personal account to a business account here.

If you go that route, be sure to set your non-business-related boards to Private.

To start fresh, you can sign up for a Pinterest business account here.

2. Build your Pinterest profile

Add a username

Choose a username that matches your blog title. Mine is dosixfigures.

Choose a profile image

Add your website’s logo or a headshot.

Set your display name

Since Pinterest is a search engine, keywords matter. Add a couple of keywords to describe what you do.

Add a keyword-rich bio

Write a one or two-sentence description of what your business is about. The best bios focus on how you can help your ideal reader.

As with everything Pinterest, use keywords in your bio.

Mine reads:

Hi, I’m Edwin! I help people start money-making blogs. Take my free 4-day Blogging Bootcamp to get started!

3. Claim your domain name

Go to the Claim section in your account settings and add your domain name.

Select the “Add HTML tag” option.

Copy the meta tag; we’ll be adding it to your blog next.

This next step requires you to install the free Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. It is on my list of must-have plugins for WordPress.

Once installed and activated, go to SEO > Social > Pinterest and paste the tag there.

4. Set up rich pins

Not all pins look the same. Rich pins stand out and will drive more traffic to your blog.

With rich pins enabled, your profile picture, title, and description are prominently displayed.

To get rich pins enabled on your account, you’ll have to take the following steps.

Add Open Graph tags

To get rich pins, your blog needs to output “open graph metadata” so Pinterest can grab data from your blog post like your blog icon, the date, title, and description.

To add them, again in WordPress, go to SEO > Social > Facebook and enable Open Graph metadata.

Apply for rich pins

Submit any live blog post to the Rich Pins Validator tool. If you claimed your blog and added open graph tags, it will pass validation.

After it has been validated, your rich pins should show up shortly.

5. Set up your Pinterest boards

As I mentioned earlier, Pinterest is made up of pins that are saved to boards. Before you can start making and saving pins, you need a place to put them.

Create 10-15 niche-specific boards

Use your blog categories to help you create your 10 to 15 boards that relate to your niche.

You should create boards about topics you write about or plan to write about.

Don’t be afraid to really niche down into smaller sub-niches. The more specific you can make your board, the better.

Here are some of my niche-specific board titles:

• Start a Blog and Make Money
• Blogging Tips for Beginners
• Pinterest Marketing
• Blog Traffic Tips for Bloggers

Use keywords in your board titles and descriptions

The board title, description, and category impact how your content shows up on Pinterest (source), so don’t mess this up!

Use the board title to clearly describe what the board is about. Fill out the board description with additional related keywords.

For example, on my Pinterest Marketing board, my description reads:

Pinterest marketing tips and strategies to get more traffic to your blog from Pinterest. Only the best Pinterest marketing tips for bloggers.

6. Populate your boards with relevant pins

When you’re new on Pinterest, you might not have any pinnable content yet. That’s perfectly fine.

Start by saving other people’s content on Pinterest. We want Pinterest to see us as a curator of great content.

The Pinterest algorithm rewards accounts that consistently post pins that receive good engagement (source).

As you create more content, you can start prioritizing posting your content instead.

7. Follow similar accounts in your niche

To populate your Pinterest home page with relevant pins to share, you need to follow a few accounts first.

Do a keyword search for your niche and follow the accounts with pins at the top of the search results.

You will probably end up getting a few followers of your own by following a few accounts first. You can follow my Pinterest account here.

The real benefit of following high-quality accounts is that your Pinterest feed will be populated with only high-quality pins you can save on your newly created Pinterest boards.

8. Design a pin image for Pinterest using Canva

Now that your Pinterest account set up, it’s time to start creating your own pins.

There are a few ways to create pins.

• Pay a graphic designer on fiverr.com (expensive)
• Hire a freelance designer on upwork.com (expensive)
• Buy photoshop and learn how to use it (expensive and time-consuming)
• Use Canva and use their free Pinterest templates (free and easy)

Clearly, the best option is to create the pins on Canva and use their pre-made Pinterest templates. All you have to do is change out the image, edit the font and text, save the file and upload it to Pinterest.

Easy peasy!

9. Design multiple pin images for each blog post

Even if your blog is new and you don’t have much content, you can still be successful with Pinterest.

The trick is to create multiple pins for each of your blog posts. To make each pin unique, use a different image and pin description but link to the same URL.

I create anywhere from 5-10 different pins for each of my blog posts. This isn’t spamming. This is creating the fresh new content (images) that Pinterest wants on its platform.

For a while, really long vertical pins worked best on Pinterest. But now, Pinterest has been clear they want a 2:3 aspect ratio or 1000 x 1500 pixels.

Anything longer, and it may be cut off.

10. Publish your pins on Pinterest

There are a few ways to add a pin on Pinterest.

Directly on Pinterest

Click on the red and white plus sign on the upper right-hand corner on Pinterest. Upload your image, add a title, description, and URL.

With the Pinterest save button

Install the Chrome extension to pin from your blog.

From your share icons

Use the Social Warfare WordPress plugin to add share icons to your blog post. You need this plugin to help your readers to share your content on Pinterest.

With the Tailwind app

With the Tailwind browser extension, you can schedule your pins in bulk to be posted on a schedule (Available for Chrome | Safari | Firefox).

11. Join relevant group boards

Posting pins on your account can get you some traffic. But if you really want more exposure on Pinterest, you need to put your pins in front of a larger audience.

That’s where group boards come in to play.

What are group boards anyway?

As I mentioned earlier, a group board is a collaborative board where different members can add content to the board.

Originally, it was intended for a small group of people to contribute ideas to a project.

For example, a wedding planner could invite a bride on a group board to share ideas.

Marketers sort of took over group boards, and now they’ve become a way to get more exposure to your content.

Pinterest group boards are not dead. But what has changed is the way to benefit from them has evolved.

To be successful with group boards, you need to be selective and only post on Pinterest boards where your pins get engagement.

You can find pin engagement data on your Pinterest analytics here.

12. Find niche group boards to join

While Pinterest group boards aren’t as useful as they once were, you should still join curated boards within your niche.

To find group boards, you can search on Pinterest and search in board names.

You can also search for keyword + group boards to get better results.

You can identify when a board is a group board by the circle in the lower left-hand corner showing multiple users.

Once you find a group board you like, send a message to the board owner asking to join their group board. The owner of the group board will be the first person listed under Group members.

Be selective and only join boards where the pins posted closely align with your own content.

If you find a board full of spam or off-topic pins, do not join these boards. What will happen is pins you post will get zero engagement, and you’ll actually be hurting your entire account.

13. Sign up with Tailwind

If you don’t use a Pinterest scheduler, you will end up spending too much time manually pinning every day.

The Pinterest scheduler I recommend, Tailwind, actually partners with Pinterest to ensure their tool conforms to Pinterest’s best practices (source).

In other words, using Tailwind to automate your Pinterest marketing is not spamming or tricking Pinterest in any way.

14. Using the smart scheduler

Pinterest wants you to be active on the platform. According to Pinterest’s own best practices page, they recommend and reward creators for being consistent:

“Add new Pins over time rather than uploading a bunch at once. This helps you reach a wider audience. You can schedule Pins up to two weeks in advance with our scheduling tools, or plan even further out with tools from approved Marketing Partners.”

The Tailwind Scheduler is great because you can create content in batches and then schedule your pins to be shared months in advance. Best of all, Tailwind will actually recommend the best time slots to post when your audience is most engaged.

15. Dive deeper with Tailwind analytics

The only way to succeed on Pinterest is to see what is working and do more of it.

Using Tailwind’s Analytics, you can see so much data about your account, pins, and boards.

If you see a certain group board doing well, post more often in it. If you see a group board doing poorly, leave it altogether.

The same applies to your pins. If you see a certain style doing well, add more with the same style. And if you see a blog post doing well, create additional pins for that post only.

16. Use Smartloop to recycle your best pins

Looping your pins is when you recycle your old pins and post them again. While it’s important to create new content for Pinterest, if you have good-performing pins, they deserve to be shared again.

With the Tailwind Smartloop feature, you can schedule your best pins to post again and again to the boards you specify.

Smartloop is not spamming and is not against Pinterest’s TOS (source). In addition, there are built-in controls within Smartloop to prevent you from saving the same image to the same board within 3 months to prevent you from overdoing it.

You can see the performance of each of your looped pins too. So if any are not performing well, you can just remove them from the loop.

As you continue to do this throughout the months ahead, you will eventually be pinning only high-quality pins that receive engagement.

17. Get your pins shared with Tailwind Communities

Tailwind Communities are groups you can join within Tailwind, where users share each others’ content.

The way it works is like this:

Let’s say there’s a group of fitness bloggers who started a Fitness community. You have a fitness blog too, so you join the Community.

You can add a pin to the community, and the other community members can share your pin with their audience. Can you see just how valuable this is for a new blogger?

Each Community has its’ own rules, but most of the time, the rule is for every pin of yours you add to the group, you have to share a pin from your other community members.

Tailwind Communities is by far the best way to get traffic to a new blog.

If you use this link to sign up with Tailwind, you can schedule up to 100 pins for free (no payment info required). Plus, you can join up to 5 Communities and add up to 30 pins to your Communities per month.

18. Focus on creating fresh content

Pinterest, unlike Google, has been very open about what they want from content creators.

Pinterest has made it abundantly clear: they want fresh pins.

Here are some frequently asked questions about fresh pins.

What is a fresh pin?

A fresh pin is an image that has never been published on Pinterest before.

Can I still save (or re-pin) my older pins?

While the focus should be to create new images, this doesn’t mean you can’t republish some of your best-performing pins again. It just means Pinterest prefers brand new images.

Who will suffer from the fresh pin algorithm change?

Older established accounts that have been running republishing their old content over and over again will suffer.

Who will benefit from the push for fresh content?

Pinterest will reward content creators who are actively creating new content for their platform.

Where can I get the latest on Pinterest marketing for bloggers?

You can follow the Tailwind Facebook page here. It’s a great resource to learn about the latest Pinterest algorithm updates.

Thanks for reading! If you found this post helpful, please save it on Pinterest in your Blogging or Pinterest marketing boards!