Pinterest Referral Traffic Increases Sharply: Get More Traffic

Pinterest traffic has doubled since May 2012, placing it as the 4th largest source of traffic after Google, direct traffic, and Facebook. — Shareholic, 2012-09-06

Pinterest referral traffic grew by 43.7% from June to July and grew again by 33.33% from July to August. In the last 12 months according to Experian it has grown 5,124%.

Getting lots of pins from your blog posts can increase engagement and drive traffic. It can also help boost your performance on search engines because pins to your post are ‘do-follow’ links.

Mitt Ray provides 4 tips to get more traffic to your blog from Pinterest, on SocialMediaExaminer:

1. Share a lot of content
2. Create taller images
3. Add images to every post
4. Add default images to the entire blog

Here are the 4 tips from Mitt’s article:

#1: Share a Lot of Content

One of the best ways to promote your blog is to pin a lot of images onto your boards.

You need to share both your own content and content from other people.

Aim to create content-rich boards where people come searching for articles on your particular topic.

If you have good boards that are followed by people who regularly view and share your pins, you can boost your blog traffic by pinning posts from your own blog.

Make sure you pin content from your blog and other blogs together on the same board so your pins will seem more credible and clickable.

A blog with a great Pinterest brand page is The Next Web.

Their brand page has several boards onto which a lot of content is pinned. And the boards are mainly on topics like technology, social media, mobile, etc.—the subjects The Next Web publishes articles on.

An example is the board Tech & Design, where as the title mentions, they pin articles on the subjects of technology and design. If you look closely, you’ll notice they mix content from their blog and content from other websites.

And this works for The Next Web too. When they pin images of their posts, they can expect likes, repins and increases in traffic.

Another great board is TNW team, where they pin images of writers, staff, editors and contributors who play a big role in creating all of the wonderful content.

This works well as it brings their authors and their fans together and will help them connect as a part of The Next Web. Doing this not only helps them build a good work culture, but it also helps their regular readers get to know their favorite writers better.

#2: Create Taller Images

In a recent post, I wrote about how infographics can get you more pins and repins on Pinterest. In a recent study, Dan Zarrella shows that taller images get more pins and repins.

 

So if you want the images on your blog to be shared more on Pinterest, focus on creating taller images. This doesn’t mean that you need to create more long infographics, but that you need to create taller images in general.

Think of ways in which images can be elongated, either when you combine several images or stretch images wherever possible.

An example is the image on the post Make Your Own Cake Flowers on the Wedding Chicks website.

If you take a look at the image, you can see that this is actually a combination of images. This single long image is very pinnable and repinnable. If you want proof, look at the image below and you’ll find that it’s been pinned more than 49,000 times.

Yes, that’s right. The image above has been pinned more than 49,000 times!

So before you publish that post, take a look at your images and try to figure out if it’s possible to>put all of your images together and create one long image.

#3: Add Images to Every Post

A blog post can be pinned onto a board on Pinterest only if it has at least one image on it. This image should also be a minimum size of 110 x 100 pixels.

If there are no images on your blog post or if the images aren’t big enough, you won’t be able to pin the post. So try to add at least one image to every post.

A great blog with beautiful images in every post is Live Well For Less run by Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s is a chain of grocery stores located all over the UK. On their blog, they post recipes of food made out of affordable ingredients. On the top of their recipes, they have an attractive and big-enough photo of the end product. This makes the recipe pinnable.

For example, take a look at the photo of their Eton Mess recipe. There’s a large and beautiful photo, which is quite prominent. If you click the Pin It button, you’re asked if you want to pin this image and you’ll want to pin it because it looks so good.

So make sure you add images or photos to your post so that people can pin them.

If you want to take it a step further, you could add several images to your post instead of just one.

You can learn more about the advantages of this by reading 6 Ways to Drive More Pinterest Engagement, where I wrote about how Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman adds many images to her posts.

#4: Add Default Images to the Entire Blog

Another option would be to add default images to your blog that will be visible on every page and post.

This way if your post doesn’t have an image or if you forget to add the image, you can always be sure that one image on your posts can always be pinned. This image could be on your blog sidebar, header or footer.

You can see a default image on the header of Ching Ya’s blog Social @ Blogging Tracker where there’s a cute little blue bird on the top.

If you visit every page and every post, you’ll notice that the image of this bird is always present and you can pin it. Click the Pin It button and try it for yourself.

This image is very pinnable and fits perfectly into her blog as it resembles the Twitter bird, which is relevant to the topics they post here on social media. So even though it’s very general, her readers should relate this image to most of the posts.

Don’t just create a default image; create a relevant default image that suits your posts.

These are 4 ways to get your blog to thrive on Pinterest. Follow them all if you want to get the most out of your blog through Pinterest.