I’ve got a few fresh, current tips here today for using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website.
I’ve shared a lot in the past and have some more detailed eBook guides for sale in the outlet shop here on my site. They are really all about best practices and how to get best results by getting everything right on your blog first, before you pin.
You know, that basic groundwork is really important.
However, I think it is worth mentioning some changes that have occurred fairly recently, with what Pinterest is favoring on their site.
Pinterest drives about half of the traffic to my site every month, number two is Google, which leaves only about 10% other….email list, etc.
I’m no expert, by any means, Pinterest is a very deep platform that still baffles me sometimes. However, I do study and read up on some of what the experts say and I’ve taken a couple of key courses that are highly respected.
The great thing about optimizing your site or blog for Pinterest is that whatever you do for Pinterest works for Google too.
So, when you lay that good basic groundwork, you are basically tilling and feeding the soil for a more fruitful result later on down the road, that works for both.
There is nothing I like better than that. :-)
The Pinterest changes lately have been more about strategy.
Pinterest seems to be doing a lot of cracking down on spam or even a hint of spam.
And that just means, if you spam Pinterest with your own content, pinning an image over and over in a very short window of time, they won’t like it and you run the risk of having your account shut down.
Most Pinterest gurus are recommending spacing your pins out more these days and pinning different images from one URL onto different boards.
Pinterest has also said that they are seeking out fresh content, so new blogposts will have a better chance of being seen in the feed, moving forward.
I’m trying to push out new blog content these days, spacing out different pins to different boards from the same URL, more than 4-7 days apart. Then, I’m laying off that content until a few months later for pinning again, this time to different boards. Overall, this seems to be what the experts are saying, just fyi.
Using Tailwind to plan out your pinning really helps. I have an affiliate link for Tailwind here if you haven’t joined.
What to do with old content on your site
You can see, in this post linked below that I put out recently on my main blog, that I basically took an old project from 2012 and reformatted the content, updated some of the images and created a new post on my blog from that old project.
I deleted the old page that project was located on in my website, it wasn’t even in my blog and wasn’t getting any significant traffic.
While I wouldn’t do that if the project was really dated looking and the images couldn’t be touched up to feel more current, this particular project was ripe for the update. (Nor would I publish a bunch of these one after the other, or my email list might not like the repetitive “throw backs”. :-)
Another option….I sometimes move blogposts in my site (keeping the same URL) to a more current, open date. I just change the date in the back end of my blog.
I can do this because my Squarespace site doesn’t have dates in the blog URL. If yours does, you need to address that, but it cuts down on time spent with content creation (a little bit) and gives that old content a new date that looks better to Pinterest and Google.
I also usually take the time to update the post, change out images or optimize, as typically I’ve learned a lot and algorithms have changed since I posted the first time. I’ve written an in depth post, more about blog maintenance and good practices to start early on in your blog’s lifespan.
A recent example of what I’ve done with old content
I also just pulled this post, from 2014, back into my site on Friday, as a draft, and republished it on Saturday as a new post. It went out to my email list and has gotten a lot of new traffic.
Of course, I worked on it first, updating SEO with image titles, putting in some additional images and adding a little extra content, even reformatting….basically making it a better post and more representative of something I would post today.
I also worked on the two other posts, linked at the end, so that they all looked fresh and would work well together.
It took 3+ hours to do that! Refreshing an old post can send you down a rabbit hole, but really, it is good to do for your blog, traffic, and SEO.
Similar time would have been spent writing a new post and this one already had some Google juice, so it was worth the time and a new, current date.
So, moving forward for the rest of this summer and fall……publish fresh content and space out your pins!
And if you are puzzled about how to lay that foundation on your blog, before you pin, you should check out these eBook guides, linked below.
That Pinterest and Blogging Guide is basically the heavily researched presentation I gave in May, to the Design Hounds in Napa. (And it’s the cheapest guide about best practices on Pinterest today out there, from what I can see. :-)
Simplifying the envelope of this home helped the homeowner’s objects and furnishings shine. See the before and afters of this project I worked on years ago and see if it stood up to the test of time……