How I Grew My Pinterest Traffic by 130%

December 26, 2019

One of my favorite topics to blog about is Pinterest. I’ve covered Pinterest tips and tricks in a previous blog post earlier this year and now I am back today to share even more helpful advice to grow your Pinterest page! I’ve relied on Pinterest to draw in thousands of blog traffic views, bring in hundreds of dollars in affiliate sales, and just spread the word about all things Affordable by Amanda. Over 55% of social media users shop for products on Pinterest, too. In fact, there are over 51 million users on Pinterest as of 2019 which means there is SO much potential with this platform to convert active pinners into blog visitors, Instagram followers, e-mail subscribers, and more!

pink floral background with big black font that reads "How I Grew My Pinterest Traffic by 130%" on the blog Affordable by Amanda.

Pinterest has the ability to make your blog posts thrive online because Pinterest is a search engine that acts very similar to Google. People use Pinterest for a couple of reasons. Discovery, aspiration, and change are a few reasons why people use the Pinterest platform as opposed to Google. I not only use Pinterest for my personal life (ie: finding cute dresses to wear for holidays or for looking up simple baking recipes) but I also use Pinterest every. single. day. to promote my blog posts.

1. I Signed Up for a Pinterest Business Account

One of the easiest things you can do right now for your Pinterest page to grow is to by signing up for a Pinterest Business Account. The business account gives you a lot of detailed analytics behind each of your most popular pins. The business hub on your Pinterest account will reveal how much monthly traffic your page receives in addition to a break down of saves and link clicks.

The Pinterest business hub also shows you your top-performing pins and how your recent pins are doing.

You will see the “impressions” which mean how many times your pin has been seen across Pinterest. I will typically keep in mind my top-performing pins when I create new pins in the future. For example, if one of my pins has a great title I will use a variation of that title for a new pin from the same blog post. I have a pin from my Thanksgiving outfit ideas blog post that has 13,000 impressions which are amazing! I will repin this same successful image a couple more times to new boards on my Pinterest page to keep the momentum going. See below for this example image from one of my blog posts where I shared Thanksgiving outfit inspiration.

How I Grew My Pinterest Traffic by 130%- Amanda Burrows of Affordable by Amanda shares her best Pinterest tips and tricks for growing traffic.

Impressions, saves, and link clicks according to the business hub

A business account gives you more insight than ever before on exactly how well your pins are performing.
Use the analytics tab to your advantage to see what pins are seeing the most number of impressions, link clicks and saves. Pinterest has become VERY detailed these days and you can carefully take note of each pin that you post once you have a business account set up in place.

THESE ARE THE STEPS I TOOK TO GROW MY PINTEREST TRAFFIC BY 130%:

2. I Optimize All of My Blog Post Images

When you write a new blog post out there is a high chance that you will also include a few images to go along with your text.

PSST…Do you know how to optimize your blog images for Pinterest yet?

No worries if you don’t!

I will go into detail next outlining how to optimize your blog images for success on Pinterest. This is another way I grew my Pinterest traffic by 130% this year. Pay close to attention to the following steps to improve the quality of your pins as soon as possible.

Stick to VERTICAL IMAGES with an aspect ratio of 2:3 and 4:5. These dimensions on Canva would measure out to be 1000 x 1500 px. This is the ideal aspect ratio for someone scrolling through Pinterest on their phones! Before I add a pretty new image to a blog post, I ensure that the image is optimized for Pinterest. I often use Canva to resize my image and prepare to upload it to my blog post. With Canva, I resize my pin to the perfect 2:3 ratio that will work for Pinterest. Pinterest is a huge visual platform and you need to adhere to their rules to see any response from your audience.

Brand images without faces are also popular to post to your Pinterest and are repined 23% more than images with faces. This means if you have taken a beautiful flat lay image of beauty products you should definitely post it over to Pinterest for a chance to see higher impressions.

Add “alt text” to ALL of your blog images before you hit publish. What is the alt text? The alt text can be found when you click on the “properties” on your image and it’s what shows up in a search when the image fails to load. The “alternative text” allows search engines to crawl and rank your website. Adding in a description of the image will come in handy when it’s posted to Pinterest. The alt text can describe exactly what’s going on when you look at an image. For example, if I posted a photo of myself wearing a floral dress and boots I would write something like “Tampa blogger Amanda Burrows of Affordable by Amanda is wearing a floral mini dress from Forever 21 and a pair of tall brown boots from Target.” The alt text should be super descriptive so Pinterest can understand what the image contains! See the image I post below on where to insert the alt text for your blog post image.

Type in a description of your image where it reads “alt text”. For example, most of the images within this blog post contain a lengthy description in the alt text pertaining to growing my Pinterest traffic by 130% and my blog name, Affordable by Amanda.

3. I Started Running Ads on My Rich Pins Every Month

One of the latest and greatest things I’ve been doing to improve my Pinterest traffic by 130% is by running ads. Ads can seriously help your pins do well if you set them up for success in the first place. Find some of your best pins (the ones with the most impressions) and choose to promote them. I will typically spend anywhere between $5-$15 on one pin at a time. I run a couple of ads per month depending on the season (the holidays are a great opportunity to promote gift guides) and then Pinterest takes it from there.

Pinterest tips for running ads. When you run an ad using the Pinterest business hub you can see impressions, link clicks, and saves.

When you run an ad using the Pinterest business hub, you can discover all of the best information pertaining to your pin once the ad finishes up. For example, with New Year’s Eve coming up, I chose to run an ad using an image I created for a new blog post containing holiday party dresses under $100. I made my image using a combination of Canva font and shapes and added a styled stock image from Haute Stock. I ran the ad for holiday dresses (see above) for $15 for 5 days and saw this result:

4. I Include 3-5 Keywords in My Pin Image Description

Keywords and SEO are two major aspects of Pinterest! Keywords and SEO (search engine optimization) are important for a few reasons. One of these reasons includes ranking your images/pins much higher. I will show you an example with some recent pins I’ve made for New Year’s Eve. I added a couple of keywords and a lengthy image description to make sure Pinterest understands exactly what my pin (and image URL link) is all about.

Keywords and SEO (search engine optimization) are important for a few reasons. One of these reasons includes ranking your images/pins much higher. Tips for adding keywords to your Pinterest pins. How to Style Sequins for NYE pin on Affordable by Amanda Pinterest page.

You can see with this pin how I included a couple of hashtags that are secondary keywords as well as a very detailed description for the pin to help Pinterest show my pin to people searching for anything related to New Year’s Eve and Sequins.

PRO TIP: Add keywords specific to your blog niche in your profile and your bio! This will also help Pinterest identify your blog niche and send people searching for pins your way. I have my profile name set up to read Affordable by Amanda – Affordable Fashion + Drugstore Beauty and my profile bio section repeats this information (affordable fashion + drugstore beauty) with a couple of relevant hashtags such as #affordablefashion and #drugstorebeauty.

Keywords help Pinterest categorize new and old pins. Pinterest recommends a certain pin to pinners based on the main topic of it and keywords can help ease the search process AND ensure that your pins show up!

During a search, Pinterest visually scans all of the millions of pins out there and looks for helpful keywords so it can send people to the right place. If someone is searching for a New Year’s Eve dress then it would be an excellent idea to add a keyword in your image description with the keyword “New Year’s Eve dress options”. Whenever I post a brand new pin, I make sure to include 3-5 keywords within the image description box.

When I typed in “new years” into the Pinterest search bar, I also saw some similar keywords such as quotes, resolutions, outfit, Christmas, eve, goals, nails, party and so on. These are secondary keywords that you should include in an image description if your pin has anything to do with New Year’s. PRO TIP: always INCLUDE a couple secondary keywords within your image description for even better impressions!

How I Grew My Pinterest Traffic by 130%. I also recently downloaded a FREE Pinterest Keyword extension for Google Chrome.

I also recently downloaded a FREE Pinterest Keyword extension for Google Chrome that helps me determine what keywords to include in my image description area. You can type in a keyword and the tool gives you more popular keywords to include in your image description box. The keyword tool ranked the keyword I inserted for “new year’s eve” and found a ton of similar keywords with all sorts of rankings from highest to lowest. I also love Elna’s keywords blog post where she goes into more detail on how to find keywords and achieve a higher rank on Pinterest.

Some Last Minute Thoughts on How I Grew My Pinterest Traffic by 130%

1.Study your Pinterest Analytics

See what types of pins are performing the best on your page once you change your Pinterest account to a business one. Instead of straying away from the style of your successful pins and creating brand new images, go ahead and continue posting what’s been working. Post similar pictures and change up the title, keywords, and hashtags a bit.

2. Use Professional, Styled Stock Photos

I also started a subscription to Haute Stock where they release new gorgeous styled stock photos each week that are perfect for Pinterest. So far I have been very satisfied with the collection of beautifully styled stock photos offered on Haute Stock for members. This is another business investment that I am making to grow my business and I highly recommend it. These high-quality images are fantastic for improving my pins and I even included one at the top of this blog post today! Having stunning and captivating styled stock photos is another tool to gain more followers on Pinterest and ultimately generate more blog + Pinterest traffic. Attractive images from your blog are the key to success over on Pinterest because Pinterest is a major visual platform.

Thanks for reading this blog post, feel free to “pin” these images. Keep searching Affordable by Amanda under the “blogging tips” tab for even more information about growing your Pinterest traffic.