Since its official launch in January 2010, Pinterest currently has over 537 million monthly users. But despite the fact that it is one of the best platforms for businesses due to the kind of users, Pinterest is highly underutilised by many businesses. Every business owner wants to learn how to drive traffic to their website using Pinterest because of targeted the users are.
Pinterest has the kind of audience that businesses need. The platform users are goal-driven and intentional. They know what they want and are ready to grab it when they see it.
Businesses that provide the right content that Pinterest loves will be rewarded with quality traffic.
Before discussing how to use Pinterest to drive traffic and grow your business, we need to understand how the traffic works.
How Does Pinterest Traffic Work?
Pinterest has social media features but is actually a highly efficient but underrated search engine. The significant difference between Pinterest and other search engines like Google and Bing is their result format. While Google and most other search engines show mostly text results upfront, Pinterest shows virtual content known as pins.
Pins are graphical contents such as banners, graphs, tables, posters, flyers, etc. Pins make it easy for businesses to be discovered by their target audience.
Firstly, to benefit from free traffic from Pinterest, you must have a blog post, which can be informational or transactional, or you have a product page. You need a place to send people to when they click on your pins. When people make searches on Pinterest, they are shown pins based on the keywords they have entered.
When your pins rank for a keyword, it will appear in the search result when the pin’s keyword or related keywords are searched.
Pinterest uses pins to connect users to content or products that solve their problems. One of the best things about Pinterest traffic is that it is high quality because people search for what’s important to them. Therefore, they are willing to follow the results to their destination if it solves their problems. They are also more likely to take action.
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How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic and Grow Your Business
The goal is to convert Pinterest users to your business audience. Lead them from Pinterest to your blog post or product page, and you will get conversions, and your business will grow.
We learned earlier that the platform has social media features, but it is largely a search engine. Millions of people go to Pinterest every day to search for one thing or another.
If you want to grow your business using Pinterest, there are a couple of things you must do.
Define Your Niche
The first step to using Pinterest to drive traffic and grow your business is defining your niche. I assume that you already have a business; therefore, you have a niche you are serving already.
To use Pinterest, you must have an account on the platform. You have to create an account bearing in mind your business niche.
If your business serves more than one niche but they are related, then you can create an account, and it would serve the related niches. For instance, if your business serves the home decor and organisation markets, they can be merged into one account.
But, in a case where your business serves two or more distinct niches, it would take a longer time to get results from Pinterest. That is because it will be harder for the algorithm to study and understand your account’s interests.
Be Helpful
No one would click on your pin if it doesn’t provide value. Remember that people search for solutions to their problems, whether on Pinterest, Google, Bing, etc. The problem can be technical, such as ‘How to upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 11?’ or non-technical, like ‘How many types of meditation techniques do we have?’ Whatever the problem is, the user wants a solution.
To be successful on Pinterest, you should provide solutions to people’s problems. When you create posts and the accompanying pins, always aim to solve issues. Value is found in solving problems, and value attracts money. People pay for value and nothing more; therefore, ensure you are valuable to your target audience.
Pay Attention to Your Pin Designs
Pinterest is a virtual search engine, and you are not the only one creating pins on the platform. Why should people click on yours? Pinterest is underrated as a traffic source, but still, there is competition. When you create a pin, it competes with other pins for a focus keyword or related keywords.
Every niche has what works for them. For instance, while product images may work best for the home decor niche, it may not be a criterion for the accounting niche. You must pay attention to the unique demands of your business niche.
When starting out on Pinterest as a beginner, you may not know what works for your niche yet. The formula is to get ideas from other pins but not copy them. When you copy a pin instead of taking ideas from it, you create a duplicate version of it. This action will likely make the algorithm treat your pin as a mistake and will not suggest it to users.
When designing a pin, pay attention to the font style and size, colour, pin size and shape, images, etc.
Be patient with the algorithm, as it may take time for it to study and understand your account’s niche. Also, be open to testing different pin designs to see what works for you.
Optimise Your Pins to Rank on Pinterest Search Results
If your pins are not optimised in order to rank on search results, you can’t tap from the free traffic. Pinterest is a graphic-centric search engine; therefore, you should approach it as a search engine.
There are three crucial elements of a pin: the pin image, text, title, and description.
These elements highly impact a pin search performance. As a search engine, Pinterest works with keywords. Keywords are those words or phrases people type into the search bar when they are looking for something.
While designing your pin, ensure that you add your keyword to the image text. Also, when writing your title, it should include your targeted keyword and also be attention-grabbing. Finally, your pin description should be able to explain what the pin is about and also contain other keywords related to the focus keyword.
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Conclusion
If you want to grow your business, you should take Pinterest traffic seriously. As an underutilised traffic source, the competition is still quite low.
To drive traffic and grow your business using Pinterest, you must be ready to do it the right way. Doing it the right way starts with a mindset. Many think of Pinterest as a social media platform, and that’s where they start failing. You should think of Pinterest as a search engine.
Create helpful pins that solve problems for your audience. When starting out and unsure of what works for you, get ideas from pins in your niche. Finally, optimize for discovery by using searched keywords in your image text, title, and description.
Pinterest is one of the best traffic sources today; it provides quality traffic that converts.
