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11 Ways to Increase Your Pinterest Click Through Rates

You heard that Pinterest is where it’s at in terms of getting traffic for free, but your monthly page views would beg to differ, am I right?

While Pinterest is great for driving traffic because of it being its own search engine, just like it takes work to rank on Google, it takes some effort to do well on Pinterest.

In this post, I’m going to break down 11 different ways you can increase your Pinterest click-through rate ie how to get more traffic to your site from Pinterest.

1. Have a Call To Action

What more people to go to your website from your pin? Tell them to go. Have a call to action in either the Pin image or description to tell them to go and what they’ll get when they get there.

Don’t be wishy washing about it either, no “check it out when you have a chance” instead use something direct and demanding, it could be as simple as:

Read this post now!

Or a little more coercive:

Your business will miss out if you don’t read this post now, go do it!

You can also use call to actions in the pin image, here is an example:

2. Use Suspense

Suspense piques curiosity, which in turn makes them want to read. It’s why when someone posts a listicle on Facebook with a comment like “#3 blew my mind!” you immediately want to know what #3 was.

That is just one example of keeping someone in suspense of the information so they have to click to get the full details.

Leaving off in an important part of a sentence is another way to do this, for example:

It was amazing earning $1,000 in just one weekend if I’d known I could earn that kind of money just by doing…. Read the post to find out!

Don’t you want to know what they did to earn the $1,000?

I bet you did, would it make you more likely to click? Probably.

Use suspense in your pin descriptions and maybe in conjunction with a call to action.

3. Give a Little but Not All of It

Maybe you have a post of 5 dresses that flatter every body type, you might make a pin of a collage of 3 of the dresses, but not the other two.

Or if you have a list of 50 items to declutter, go ahead and list them but then cover half so they have to click for the full list on your site. Here is an example:

Notice it also has a strong call to action telling them to click.

4. Show, Don’t Tell

If you’re showing something with results, show, don’t tell. That means a screenshot of analytics or an image of the product or download.

People process images a lot faster than text. So rather than saying:

Download the Start Saving Smarter eBook

Just show an image of the eBook and the title with a call to action like this:

I say what it is, it’s a list of tools but thanks to the image it’s clearly not a blog post but rather some kind of pdf.

5. Maximize Your Pinterest SEO

There are so many different places on Pinterest you can maximize your chances of being found in a search on Pinterest by optimizing with keywords, make sure you’re utilizing all of them, including:

  • Your Pin description
  • Board descriptions
  • Profile description
  • Board category
  • Hashtags in Pin Descriptions

Speaking of hashtags…..

6. Use Hashtags

For a long time, hashtags were a big no-no on Pinterest, that is no longer the case and it hasn’t been for quite a while.

Though hashtags on Pinterest are different than those on social media platforms like Instagram.

Where on Instagram you might do #newblogpost or #livingmybestlife those would do very little for you on Pinterest.

Think of hashtags on Pinterest as a way to tell Pinterest exactly what keywords this Pin is about.

So if you have a spaghetti recipe pin you might use: #recipe #spaghetti #dinnerideas #easymeals #pasta

Just like you shouldn’t keyword stuff a pin or board descriptions, you don’t want to hashtag stuff either, try to stay around five hashtags per pin.

If you create more than one pin you could do different hashtags on each pin to see which work best.

7. Get Others to Share Your Pins

There are in fact two places where sharing other’s pins is expected, they are:

  1. Group Boards
  2. Tailwind Tribes

Now if you had to choose between the two then I would recommend Tailwind Tribes because it’s super easy for Tribe owners to tell who is not doing their fair share of sharing. That being said not all Tribe owners bother.

Group boards, on the other hand, are harder to hold other accountable for, but if it is a quality group board, sharing to it can be a great way to get your content out there and shared by others.

(You can use Tailwind Board Insights to see if a Group Board is worth pinning to).

8. Get Others to Share From Your Site

Make it easy for readers to share your content from your site to Pinterest. Do this by having a Pinterest image that is easy to see and telling them to pin it.

Alexis at Fitnancials does a great job of this:

You can also use social share plugins like Social Pug that let you designate which Image gets Pinned when a user clicks on the Pinterest button to share.

9. Be A Regular

Pinterest loves people that are consistently pinning.

To save yourself from being on Pinterest constantly but to also consistently pin every day, I’d recommend using a scheduler. Tailwind is what I use and love.

If you are looking at some other tool, check to see if they are an approved Pinterest Partner. If they aren’t you could be risking your account being labeled as spam, something that happened to a lot of people using Boardbooster in 2018.

Boardbooster had been around for years and then they suddenly went out of business because the practices their tool advocated were considered spammy by Pinterest

So use an approved tool to schedule to Pinterest, like I said I use Tailwind, it’s approved, easy to use and affordable at $10-$15/ month.

10. Join More Group Boards or Tailwind Tribes

Being on more group boards or in more Tailwind Tribes means more people to share your content and therefore giving more opportunities for people to find and click on it.

If your budget is keeping you from joining more Tailwind Tribes, review your Tribe analytics to see if there are any you would be better off leaving in search of a new tribe.

For group boards, keep looking for and applying to group boards, it’s not unusual not to hear back from some.

11. Create More Boards That Are Relevant to Your Brand

Creating more boards helps Pinterest and Pinterest users to understand what you’re all about. Done right it can help give your profile a boost.

Again the more visibility you have the higher likelihood of your pins being clicked on and getting more traffic to your site.

Bottom Line

If you want to increase your click-through rate from Pinterest:

  1. Include a Call to Action on your pins
  2. Use suspense to build curiosity
  3. Give a taste, but don’t give away the meal
  4. Show, don’t tell
  5. Maximize your Pinterest SEO opportunities
  6. Use Hashtags
  7. Get other pinners to share your pins
  8. Get readers on your site to share to Pinterest
  9. Pin consistently
  10. Join more group boards or Tailwind
  11. Create more boards that are relevant to your brand

Do these 11 things and you’ll be on your way to more Pinterest traffic!

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2 Comments

  1. Wow even your pin kept me on suspense so I had to click on it to find how I can increase my click through rate. I love the first example you made.

    Thanks for this tips, will really go a long way.

  2. I’ve read that calls to action are frowned upon by Pinterest but I know they are important in all types of copy to drive an engagement. Do you know of a way around this?

    Your tip about suspense is not something I’ve done and I think many of my pins could benefit from using your approach… they sometimes seem a little flat to me so I need to vamp them up here! this may help.

    I’m still feeling my way around Pinterest and have a lot to learn. Thanks for helping me out!

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