10 ways to get free traffic from Pinterest

This post may contain affiliate links.We may earn little commission or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Getting traffic from Pinterest is not a new thing. If you have been on Pinterest for a while you must have read tons of blog posts from bloggers talking about how Pinterest changed their blog traffic story.

My story is not far from theirs. Within a month I went from 300 to 5,000 pageviews from Pinterest. This helped me start building my email list and make affiliate sales. For a small blog like mine and starting without experience. I consider this a success story.

It took me a while to understand how to get blog traffic from Pinterest. Now that I figured out Pinterest not only am I getting free traffic to my blog but I also make money on Pinterest without blogging.

Why Pinterest traffic is free traffic

Pinterest is a free blog traffic generator. Why? because free is the opposite of paid and on Pinterest, you do not need to pay a dime to drive massive traffic to your blog.

You just need to understand some little things and how it works. Then you will be able to drive traffic from Pinterest without stress to your blog.

Why your new blog needs traffic from Pinterest.

Except if you are not new to blogging and you know your way around SEO and getting massive traffic. Then you do not need to read this. However, if you are starting out with no experience, then you must have realized that blogging is a lot of this and that.

And you need to start getting some audience for your content no matter how little.

Before you master SEO and other means of getting traffic like from Facebook. You need to consider Pinterest as I did.

I am not saying getting Pinterest traffic is less work. But it is fast results and you will be seeing that shortly.

As of may to June I was struggling with 380 page views.

In July to August I was able to reach 2,000.

And in September I got 5,000 pageviews.

Pinterest Traffic is going nowhere

Have you read one of those blog posts that told you Pinterest traffic is gone? Or you are signed up to a blogger’s email list and they send you a scary email. Talking about how there is no traffic from Pinterest.

Don’t panic, traffic from Pinterest is going nowhere. Even it will go not anytime soon. Here is why, as of 2012 Pinterest had 10 million users. Fast forward to 2020 Pinterest users are 320 million. Read the complete statistics here.

People are just discovering Pinterest like you and new niches are created on Pinterest. So believe me when I say Pinterest traffic is going nowhere.

How I went from 300 to 5,000 blog traffic (the basic)

To generate blog traffic to my blog using Pinterest, I had to start with the basics. I will work you through every step.

Have a business Pinterest account

If you already have a buisness account good. But if your account is not a business account, don’t panic. It only takes a few minutes to get that done.

Click settings,then click on “account settings” and you will see “account changes”. Click “convert to business account”. Mine is already a business account.

The number one importance of having a business Pinterest account is for analytics and secondly for rich pins which we will talk about soon.

Create boards

Start creating boards relevant to your blog niche or topics you plan on publishing.

For instance, your blog is a lifestyle blog and you want to niche down to health and wellness. Create boards with names like self-care tips, health, and wellness, beauty tips, personal development, healthy mindset e.t.c.

Remember I am just giving you ideas to work with. Do not create boards based on my examples.

It is important to create boards with titles and topics that aline with your blog niche because of Pinterest SEO. Which we will look into soon.

Join group boards

Finding good group boards can be easy but joining them can be the challenge.

Every board has rules and procedures to join. Some are easy and a lot are stressful. The owner/admins take too long to aprove or would want you to join groups on Facebook or watch videos on Youtube.

The truth is I do not have time for all that stress, you also don’t have to go through it. Take your time and find good boards with reasonable request procedures.

An easy and fast way of joining group boards is by collaborating with people you follow. Send a message requesting they add you to the group boards they already are a member of.

Hopefully you will get a quick and favourable response.

Start pinning

It is that simple, just start pinning to your boards. Find pins that are having titles of topics you will pin to Pinterest and start pinning them to the boards you created.

If you are very new to Pinterest then for starters 30 quality pins daily are good enough for you to start seeing some growth. In terms of your monthly viewers.

However, because this post is not to show you how to grow your Pinterest viewers rather your blog traffic. You can read how to grow your Pinterest viewers by 100k weekly.

How to pin for traffic from Pinterest

Getting traffic to your blog from Pinterest is not the easiest if I must be sincere. However, it gives quick results. You can literally see your page views jump from 50 to 300 in a day with Pinterest.

Now that you are done with the basics which is having a business account, creating boards, joining group boards and actively pinning.

It is time to start pinning for traffic.

1. Create quality Pinterest pins

Unlike how generating free blog traffic from search engines depends on your post quality. Generating blog traffic from Pinterest depends on your pins.

Your pins are the images you designed for your blog post to share on Pinterest.

Therefore, your pins quality is the major determining factor to gain massive traffic.

Quality pins means a lot of different things on Pinterest.

It could mean the types of design that converts best for a niche or the pin size that works better. Or the titles that get clicked.

If you really want to see results with your pin learn these Pinterest design rules to break.

The pins above had simple designs yet they brought me a good amount of traffic. Hence, it is important to understand pin designs for Pinterest.

2. Write headlines that people click

It is no mistake that writing headlines comes second on this list. On Pinterest your pin title is an important factor to getting people clicking.

I have seen instances where an averagely designed pin went viral because it had the title people want to read.

What I love about Pinterest is you can play with your titles and see what works best. Your blog post title don’t have to be same with your pin title. However, it shouldn’t be misleading.

Personally, my titles have helped me make direct affiliate sales on Pinterest. You can learn more about Pinterest titles that go viral and titles that get clicked.

If you want to make your titles convert for you then you need to learn these 7 Pinterest title traffic hacks for bloggers.

3. Pin to your personal boards first

Just like every search engine keeps changing its algorithm. So has Pinterest.

There is an increase in engagements from personal boards lately. What this means is that my pins get higher saves and clicks even from my personal boards. Unlike how more visibility depends on group boards in the past.

Hence, before sharing to all the group boards I’m in, I save to my own boards first. The results have been great. I learned this myself just by observing my analytics regularly.

4. Pin to relevant group boards

Group boards are very important to help you increase blog traffic. It is not rocket science to understand why. But if you are lost as to why drop a question in the comments.

Moving on…

Join more general group boards, boards that are niche free which means any topic can be shared there.

This does not mean you should neglect niched boards. My blog focuses on personal finance and personal development. In as much as I’m a member of general group boards. I am in a lot of finance and lifestyle group boards too.

There is no one way to do things on Pinterest, hence, diversify.

5. When to pin for effectiveness

Real people are on Pinterest, hence to drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest it is important to know when these people are more active.

Every time I write about Pinterest, I never forget to mention this because it was a game changer for me.

I would pin at a particular time and at that moment I start seeing lifetime clicks on my google analytics dashboard.

Weekends are traffic gold mines on Pinterest starting from friday to sunday.

Pinterest users are majority from the US, read the statistics above.

However, there are active users all around the world. I will give you the American time I use and you change it to the time it is in your region.

4pm to 7pm CAT is what I use when pinning and I get amazing results.

How to pin for traffic

Now that you know the effective time to pin. It is important to know how many numbers of fresh pins a day will bring you traffic.

For starters, one new fresh pin everyday will bring you traffic. As long as you share in good group boards.

As time goes on you can increase to 2 pins everyday. This means you have to keep creating new pins. If you put a good pin out there, traffic from it can last you a long while.

Who told you it was easy work but you get results quick. Which is all that matters.

6. Number of pins to a post

Even though this is tricky to give an exact number of pin images to put in a post. You need to understand something.

On Pinterest, a new blog post is not what determines more traffic to your blog rather new/fresh pins. Hence, fresh pins equal more traffic on Pinterest.

What this means is, even if a post was written two years ago and you designed a new pin for it and pinned it to Pinterest. You will drive fresh traffic to your blog.

I have post with up to 5 pins designed for Pinterest and some with just two.

Hence, if I must give you a number I’ll say at least two pins for a post.

However, if you see a post doing well on Pinterest, design as many pins as you can. Do not worry about your post looking clumsy, there are ways to hide pins in a blog post.

7. Manual Pinning

I went from 300 to 5,000 in blog traffic and page views without scheduling.

Manual pinning on Pinterest does not only gives you more traffic but makes your monthly viewers increase faster.

In case you don’t know, now you do. Pinterest likes it when you spend some time on it and you can only do that through manual pinning.

Do I use a scheduler? Yes. But only for the groups/tribes and when I am done manually pinning to all my relevant boards.

8. Activate Rich pins

Rich pins are when your pins come with your meta descriptions and titles directly from your blog when you save it to Pinterest.

So you don’t have to manually put a title or description for your pins. I discovered Rich pins much later even when I was already getting some traffic from Pinterest.

However, rich pins are important and it takes some few minutes to get that working.

Go to Pinterest Developers, you will land on a page like the one below click on Rich Pins Validator.

Insert a valid URL of any of your blog post and click on validate.

9. Use keywords on Pinterest too

Pinterest is more of a search engine than social media and you can rank on it too.

Hence, use keywords in your titles and pin description. You can do keywords search and see what people are looking for and how they are looking for it on Pinterest.

When you are able to rank on Pinterest just like any other search engine it means long-term traffic coming your way.

I was able to rank few of my pins from the same post with some keywords.

In the image above you see for the Keyword “topic viral on Pinterest” I have 3 pins rank from first place. These same pins also rank on Google.

With a different keyword search I have my pin showing again.

Below, you can see another pin showing up for a different keyword which is “viral on Pinterest”

Use keywords in your group boards too, that’s an all-round SEO on Pinterest. For instance, you name your board “frugal tips” in your board description include keywords relating to word people search for on frugal topics.

Hashtags are used on Pinterest too, it is something new but effective. I see it as a keyword tool.

10. Repin old pins

Some pins don’t perform well from the word go. Either you did not share it the right time or to the wrong audience. Meaning personal boards or group boards.

Do not panic, I have been there but I don’t give up on such pins. I give it a short period of time and repin it again.

The truth is I always get better results. It might not be massive traffic from that pin. But it gives better results than the first time.

The first time I pinned the pin above I got like 20 clicks. After two or three weeks I repinned it again and you can see the results. There are many such pins of mine.

Pinterest might not count it as a new pin but who cares the aim was for traffic and it gave me that.

Some pins do great the first time and even the second time like the example below.

The first time shared the above pin, I got over 720 clicks and it still brings traffic to my blog. A few weeks later I shared it again and you can see the results below.

Resources you need

Even if you just started blogging yesterday you know the importance of tools and resources for productivity.

This resources where game changers for me and they will be same for you.

I am a cheap or call it frugal blogger and I know you don’t need to spend so much to see results but making little investments is most if you want to grow.

Hence I recommend cheap resources that give results. Even if you purchase everything I recommend you won’t spend more than $50. For the value, you get they are cheap because they are created by successful bloggers for bloggers. You can thank me later.

Every resources I am about to list are free or cost below $20:

• You will be creating lots of pin images so you need Canva (free). There is a paid version but starting free is ok so you learn how it works.
• Don’t just create pins, learn how to create pins that work. Pin design rules to break (paid) is all you need.
• If you don’t have so much time on your side you can get Canva pin templates (paid) designed by experts.
• Not contradicting anything I have said but even with a not so good pin design with the right pin titles or headlines you can drive all the traffic you need. Get Pinterest title traffic hacks for bloggers (paid). This helps me make direct affiliate sales on Pinterest. This resource is a best seller.

When your Pinterest viewers drop

Pinterest can be frustrating sometimes and no matter how hard you try some things are inevitable. Such as your viewers dropping.

Pinterest needs you to stay active to keep growing. The moment you stop doing that your monthly views can drastically drop.

However, you have nothing to fear, I am there right now and I still get good traffic from Pinterest doing all I have shared with you.

As long as you create quality pins with click-worthy titles and you are in some good group boards plus followers. Pinterest will not disappoint you.

Some things happen naturally on Pinterest

Thinks like growing your followers. I realize the more pins I put out there the more my followers grow.

I have not done anything towards trying to intentionally grow my followers on Pinterest. However, the more my pins are performing well the more my followers grow.

Hence, for now, just focus on getting traffic to your blog from Pinterest. You will see that the more quality pins you put out there and they perform well. Your followers will naturally grow.

Conclusion…

What Pinterest traffic does for you is it helps you reach your audience even if your blog is brand new and still small.

You might no be getting a huge amount of traffic from the beginning enough to get approved by a big ad network. But you will be able to make affiliate sales.

And that’s what I have been able to achieve within a short while.

Pinterest has come to stay it algorithm may change over time and how it works. But getting traffic to your blog from Pinterest has come to stay. You need only to keep upgrading your knowledge of how it works.