How To Create A Pinterest Account To Grow Traffic

One of the first and easiest ways to drive traffic to your blog is through Pinterest! However, Pinterest has its own formula for success, which is why I created this guide for how to create a Pinterest account to grow traffic!

If you’re brand new, then you’re probably thinking, “okay, but how do I even get people to my site?!” For a beginner blogger, Pinterest should be a top priority! That is the platform that will drive traffic to your site while you’re still waiting for Google to recognize your site as legit, which usually takes about 6 months.

(THIS POST PROBABLY CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. OUR FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY IS REALLY BORING, BUT YOU CAN FIND IT HERE.)

RELATED: 6 CRUCIAL PINTEREST TIPS TO GROW TRAFFIC

Common Platforms Used To Drive Traffic

Google
Pinterest
Facebook
Instagram
Youtube

Now, these are absolutely not the only ways to promote your website, but these are probably the most common. I, personally, only focus on Google and Pinterest. Other bloggers can juggle all 5! One thing to make clear is: there is not a single path to blogging success, but many, many paths (oftentimes with detours) to having a successful blog.

For this article, we’re only going to focus on how to create your Pinterest account specifically with blog success in mind.

What Is Pinterest?

Skip this section if you already feel comfortable with Pinterest and how it works!

Think of Pinterest as a search engine, except most of the results that pop up after your search are from bloggers. It’s basically a blogger dominated search engine! And the goal is to get your content to pop up when people are searching about your blog topics. The more your content pops up, the more traffic you get!

Pinterest uses what they call “pins” for your content. Think of it like this: if you could post a picture to Instagram that when clicked, it brought people to your website. That’s how a pin works.

A pin is a graphic that when clicked will bring people to the appropriate article! Then, you can group pnis of similar topics in a “board.” So if you are blogging about skincare, you may have a board titled “Skincare”, “Skincare Products”, “Skincare On A Budget” and so on.

If you are still feeling lost on what pins or boards are, watch a couple of YouTube videos! A video can probably explain this concept better than words.

Step 1: Create A Pinterest Account

The first rule that many people don’t realize: do not use your personal Pinterest account and try to convert it into your blog account!

Pinterest evaluates your pins and boards to determine what your interests are so it can connect you with pins they think you’ll like. This is important because we want Pinterest to know what your blog is about so it can recommend your content to people who are interested in that topic! Make sense?!

You need the chance to tell Pinterest through your profile what your blog is about, and the two-year-old patio DIY projects may throw off what Pinterest thinks your blog is about!

Sign up for a business profile using your blog email and password. Choose a username that matches your blog name either exactly or close!

After you sign up and verify your email address, the next thing we’ll do is go to your settings in the top right corner.

Step 2: Configure Pinterest Settings

Edit Profile

The first section in settings is “edit profile“. If you have a blog logo already, upload that to your profile picture! If you don’t have a logo yet, then I would choose a nice photo of yourself or something that represents your blog as the profile picture.

Next, your display name should be exactly what your blog name is. I.E. my other site is https://lifestylekate.com, so my display name for that account is Lifestyle Kate.

Do the same thing for your username! If your blog name is already taken on Pinterest, try to use something to break it up. I.E. LifestyleKate was already taken, so I chose LifestylexKate instead!

In the about your profile section, choose something short and simple to describe what your blog is about!

Next is your website URL. This is very important! Put in your URL, because in the next step we’ll claim your site.

Claim

Woo hoo!!!! It’s time to claim your site, yay! This tells Pinterest that your profile and website are the same person. Follow the steps to claim your website!

Privacy and Data

In this section, we want to make sure we UNCHECK “hide your profile from search engines.” Keeping it unchecked will allow Google to show your Pinterest account for relevant searches, aka even more traffic!

Step 3: Learning Pinterest Search

Learning how Pinterest search works will help you when your naming your pins, describing your pins, naming your boards, and describing your boards.

When you search on Pinterest, you will get a list of words that Pinterest associates with that search. For example, when you search Skincare:

This is Pinterest telling you what the popular searches are within this topic. The key is to use these words in each of your pin titles and descriptions, and even in your board title and descriptions! These terms are referred to as “keywords”.

Step 4: Create Boards

Now it’s time to create boards, yay!!!! This part may take a while, so pour yourself a hot cup of coffee (or a glass of wine for that matter) and let’s get going!

The goal will be to have a few boards of the same topic so that you are able to put a pin for the same blog post in multiple boards. Here’s an example of mine:

So, one post about “Amazon Must Haves” can be pinned to all the boards circled in green. Same thing goes for a post about a nighttime skincare routine being able to go in all the boards circled in orange, and for fashion posts in the boards circled in tan.

You will be pinning the same blog post multiple times a month, so you want to be able to pin it to different boards so Pinterest doesn’t mark your account as spam.

Start with creating at least 20 boards with overlapping topics that you feel that you can pin to consistently (and by consistently, I mean at least once a month). If you don’t think you are able to pin to a specific board once a month, challenge yourself to come up with a vaguer board title that allows you to pin more often to it!

Step 5: Board Descriptions

We saw earlier what the keywords are associated with Skincare. Now it’s time to show you how these are important when creating your boards descriptions!

I used the most relevant keywords for this topic in my description on purpose. This tells Pinterest that my board relates to all these popular searches, so they can feel comfortable suggesting the pins in this board to people searching these topics!

Step 6: Get Pinning!

Now all that’s left is pinning your posts! If you are still feeling a bit lost (which if you are, don’t fear, this is a lot to digest!) then I can’t recommend this Pinterest eBook enough! It is super affordable compared to other courses on the market and if you invest in a course about anything from the start, Pinterest should be it.

Happy pinning, people! <3