If you’re an Instagram Influencer, naturally your area of expertise will be Instagram. But aside from that, you likely also have a website and blog that houses all of your content. You have a large Instagram following but the low traffic to your blog leaves you baffled. So how in the world do you get more website traffic?
Pinterest!
You’ve heard me say it before. Pinterest is a traffic generator. It’s a visual search engine that is designed to get people off Pinterest and to your site. So let’s chat about the different ways to do this.
Keyword Research
If you’ve spent some time on my blog, you know how much I stress the importance of keyword research and SEO optimization. There’s a reason that this is the first thing I do when I start working with a new Pinterest Management client. Because, if you want to be found in search results, it’s imperative that your account is optimized with the keywords that your audience is searching for.
When a user looks for inspiration on Pinterest, they enter a set of words into the search bar. These are the keywords. And you can actually do your keyword research right on Pinterest!
Head to the Pinterest search bar and type in the topics you typically write about. Similar to Google, Pinterest will autofill popular searched terms related to that keyword. These are generally listed in order of popularity. Make a list of the top terms for use in your blog posts as well as on your Pinterest page.
Using these keywords on your website, in your blog post and across your Pinterest profile will help your content rank higher on Pinterest. The higher the ranking, the more opportunity it has to be seen and clicked on, driving the blog traffic we desire!
Optimize your Account – Pinterest SEO
Now that you’ve done your keyword research, you’re ready to optimize your profile and do some Pinterest SEO.
If you’re not optimized, it will be much harder to be “found”.
This applies to all areas of your profile, specifically your boards. For instance, if you write about women’s fashion, your profile shouldn’t be filled with recipe boards. You want to make sure have boards that you that you can pin your content to. If you don’t write about cooking, there’s very little chance you will be pinning your own content to this board. You would then be curating other pinners content. This is ok in small doses, but you want to focus on pinning your own content as much as possible.
This is where we go back to that keyword master list and use those across your profile. You want to optimize your SEO in the following places:
- Profile title
- Profile description
- Board title
- Board description (don’t forget the board description!)
- Pin titles
- Pin descriptions
BONUS: Use these keywords on your website, blog posts and page url for an even higher ranking
When you optimize the use of keywords across all of these areas, you increase your ranking potential which increases your chance of showing up in user searches.
Create New and Fresh Images
I’ve talked about the 2020 Pinterest algorithm updates previously, but it’s important to repeat again! Pinterest wants NEW and FRESH images.
- New = Brand new URL (content) + brand new image never before shared to Pinterest
- Fresh = Old URL (content that has been shared to Pinterest) + brand new image
The first priority and higher ranking will go to the NEW pins while the second priority will be with FRESH pins.
As an influencer, you’re already set up for success here! You have the advantage of having many images at your finger tips to use and implement as FRESH and NEW.
So use those images wisely!
Vary your Pin Types
As an Influencer with a lot of content, you NEED to be using the different pin types to your advantage! For instance, why not take your Instagram Story videos and turn them into a video pin?!
Take your affiliate products and make a Shop the Look pin with links directly to your products!
Use these interchangeably for even greater distribution.
Now, let’s get creative!
As an Instagram Influencer, you have the added benefit of having a lot of images at your finger tips. Remember the NEW and FRESH. You’ve got that covered here. But how can we use those for different pin types?
Say you’re promoting a new travel post. You can include multiple images in a carousel pin that each link to the travel post.
Or maybe you’re promoting holiday gift guides. Try creating a Shop the Pin by adding your affiliate links for the gift guide image right on Pinterest. It’s a win win!
Analytics
I love the numbers! You can’t forget about the analytics because when read correctly, they can tell you exactly what you should do next!
Here’s an example for you. I have an Influencer client that creates a lot of Holiday fashion content. ANd here in 2020, holiday related searches started on Pinterest IN APRIL. Earlier than ever before (thank you COVID). So when I saw that this particular outfit post was getting a lot of clicks, she updated it, I pinned it and BAM. The clicks increased even more.
In fact, because of all the repins and saves, this one post ranked in the top 8 of her top 10 posts for the month! (i.e. top in terms of link clicks).
If you are working through these steps to increase your website traffic, I’d LOVE to hear from you. Where are you stuck? What’s working? What’s not working?
And, if you’d rather not do this on your own, drop me a line and let me know! I’d love to help you meet your website traffic goals with Pinterest!