Learning how to optimize your website for Pinterest pins, repins, and traffic can greatly increase your blog traffic passively – without as much effort on your part. We will also talk about a highly-used plugin we do NOT recommend.
IMPORTANT: If you’re new to these parts, just know that we will be referring to and be including pictures and examples from our health and wellness blog, Avocadu.com.
We grew our health and wellness blog on Pinterest and took it to earning six-figures before we started this website.
We teach more from the standpoint of that blog because we have found that people find the information a little more relatable than general advice that works just in the blogging niche.
That’s right. We don’t just blog about blogging! 😉
Here is what we are going to cover in this article:
- Verifying Your Website with Pinterest
- Enabling Rich Pins
- Using Pinterest on Mobile
- Pinterest-Friendly Images
- Direct Image Shares
- Social Media Buttons
- Pinterest Widgets
- “Follow Us” Buttons
- Email Call-to-Actions
These tips are VITAL to optimizing your website for Pinterest. Missing any of these will hurt your website’s chances of getting repins and followers.
Okay, let’s chat about how to optimize your website for Pinterest pins and traffic!
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Verify your website with Pinterest.
Pinterest has a system to help confirm your website with their platform.
Not confirming your website will lead to less repins, engagements, and pretty much no love from Pinterest.
They do these things to prevent spam, and this is not a skippable step for a serious Pinner.
Here’s the article on how to verify your website from Pinterest (opens in a new window). We also cover it in more detail in our article here. If you don’t know how to access the header and are using WordPress, there’s a free plugin called
If you don’t know how to access the header and are using WordPress, there’s a free plugin called Yoast SEO that can be used for this process.
This is a great plugin because you’ll need it for the next step as well. It also helps with making your website a little more Google SEO friendly.
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Enable rich pins of your website.
Here’s an example of what a pin looks like with and without rich pins:
Aesthetically and professional, that big bold text makes a big difference. There is also another indication of where it is coming from, so you know that it can’t possibly link to spam.
Rich pins are also an indicator to Pinterest that you’re actually taking things seriously and tells them about the content you’re primarily pinning.
Here’s their article on how to install rich pins (opens in a new window). Note** this can be a pain in the ass as the verification process can be a little screwy. We also cover it in more detail in our article here.
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Truly understand the mobile Pinterest experience.
You want to think of your average Pinterest user as a young mother of two curled up on the couch with a glass of wine, enjoying the day’s end going through social media. This person, most of the time, is NOT on a laptop.
In fact, 70%-80% of your Pinterest traffic is going to be coming in from mobile and tablets.
Preparing for mobile traffic is like making sure you have enough chairs at your wedding reception. Here’s what needs to be done:
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Your website needs to be FAST!
Want to crush the chances of ever making it on Pinterest?
It’s simple: Have a Slow Website.
I can’t tell you how many times I have clicked a pin, got impatient with the load time, and bounced. Not only that but when a user is on the Pinterest mobile app, they aren’t even taken OFF the app to view your website!
They are viewing your website IN the app, and that makes it that much easier for them to move on when your website is taking more than 3 seconds to load.
Speed is everything, and our appetite as consumers for fast and easy to read material is only going to get stronger as time goes on. You can use Google’s page speed tool here.
Anything slower than 50 is an issue that should be dealt with immediately. We had this issue once on Avocadu, and our traffic NOTICEABLY increased immediately after we sped things up. This is also impacted by your images…
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Images must be optimized.
Poorly sized and optimized images are the primary culprits behind a slow website.
Stock images especially are very high quality, high resolution, and take up a lot of space on your website.
Resize the image if necessary using a free web-based photo tool like BeFunky, and then upload them to a free image optimizer like Optimizilla (which was recommended to us by our website guy!).
I upload every single photo on our blogs in Optimizilla first, and I use PicMonkey depending on the circumstances and whether images need to be edited at all.
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Your website needs to look clean, readable, and correctly spaced.
Go and check out our website on mobile to get an idea. The real key here is to be a practitioner. We noticed these things from using Pinterest on OUR phones and paying attention to things we need to fix.
Use your phone every now and then, access Pinterest, and check out your own Pins the same was a typical user does.
It may bring more insight than you’d expect.
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Have big, sexy, pinnable images at the beginning of every article.
If you flip through some of the articles at Avocadu or Create and Go, you will notice they all start the same.
Right under the opening paragraph will be a Pin sized image with wrapping text going down the right side. This isn’t by accident.
If you are on a laptop or desktop and you hover the curser over the image with your mouse, you will be prompted with the ability to share the image on social media. This format makes it VERY easy for people to repin our Pinterest pin, leading to more shares and traffic.
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Install a social media plugin for direct image shares.
This is a plugin that we searched high and low for. Some plugins didn’t look good enough, and some of them didn’t have the capabilities that we wanted.
SumoMe offers a free option (pictured in the photo of the pin), but I highly recommend using Social Media Warfare.
The reason for this is because they also allow you to have social media share buttons in your articles, which prevents you from having to download a separate plugin for this (too many plugins can slow down your website).
The “Save” button for Pinterest is also a LOT larger for Social Media Warfare (better call-to-action – pictured on the right).
The paid version of Social Media Warfare is very inexpensive and totally worth it!
You never know what images people are going to share, and that way any potential pinner can pin your images and get you more traffic!
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Install social media on every webpage and at the bottom.
It seems obvious enough, but it’s often missed. The plugin we use to accomplish this is the same as described above – Social Media Warfare.
Most plugins that do this well and look professional are also paid, and grabbing Social Media Warfare allows you to kill two birds with one stone.
The social share buttons look like this:
Also, as people read your articles, they will have a tendency to scroll all the way to the very bottom of the page.
This is strange to me, but I used to track and watch how visitors used our website with hotjar, and it happens A LOT.
This is why we have social media icons at the bottom. We use this opportunity to try to get our visitor to follow us on social media, but you can insert anything from blog posts to products if you like.
Click here to check out the Social Media Warfare plugin for WordPress.
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Be super careful with Pinterest widgets.
When we started, a lot of bloggers were recommending using a Pinterest widget sidebar and many still do on popular blogs.
We tried it and everything seemed fine until I checked our website speed with that plugin… Slower than a sloth in traffic.
Pinterest widgets slow down websites because they pull all of the most recent, huge, and high-quality images from the Pinterest server and add to your page’s loading time.
Not. Good.
Yeah, it looks beautiful in that sidebar, but having a sexy website doesn’t matter if people bounce before the page loads! This is why we opt to not use them and do not recommend them.
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We created our own “Follow Us” button. Here’s what happened…
About 5 months into Avocadu, we got clever and tried creating our own Pinterest follow us button to get more subscribers.
We thought it was genius! We added them to every single one of our blog posts, and we really didn’t see any increase in followers at all.
I think this is because when people browse on their phones/tablets using Pinterest, they technically stay in the app. Pinterest also has other popups that prompt users to follow you once they pin and/or view your content.
I wish I had some measurable data for you on this, but you’re just going to have to trust that Lauren and I are as anal about Pinterest as we come across.
Clever buttons don’t generally work, and they are a waste of time.
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Add a call-to-action in your email newsletter.
Capitalize on your existing traffic and add a CTA in the first email of your newsletter.
You can see it at the bottom of ours:
We mention the number of followers because it adds social proof when other people are following you. You could also say something like: “
You could also say something like: “Follow my amazing Pinterest Account, and I’ll Shower You With Amazing Pins!” or something like that. Again, I’m not sure how many people actually use this method, but I’m sure we have a few and
Again, I’m not sure how many people actually use this method, but I’m sure we have a few and every follower counts. You never know when a super pinner is checking you out.
Additional Resources:
- Pinterest for Business: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide from Actual Power Pinners
- How to Set Up Your Account and Drive Traffic Via Pinterest
- 10 Pinterest Tips and Tricks for Beginners
If you are ready to get serious about growing your blog or business on Pinterest, make sure to sign up for our FREE 4-Day Pinterest Marketing eCourse for beginners.
We discuss topics like WHY Pinterest matters so much, how to get started, how to make your content go viral, and SO much more!
Pinterest is the largest source of traffic for both of our blogs, and it is the reason that we have been able to bring both of our blogs to six figures within just a year!
Click here to sign up for our FREE 4-Day Pinterest eCourse!
Cheers,
Alex Nerney
Co-Founder, Create and Go
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P.S. I want to hear from you today. No for real, get out from behind that keyboard and let us know about yo bad self! Use the comment section and introduce yourself. 🙂
P.S. Why have you not subscribed to our awesome Youtube channel for bloggers yet??? Subscribe here!
Alex & Lauren
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Hello! I love all of your content, it has so much value and I love your authenticity 🙂 It would be really awesome if you made a tutorial or blog post on how you set up the perfect website with X Theme. I purchased it a few days ago and am trying to figure it out, but it would be great if you shared what features and plugins you use on your website. Specifically how you create your main website headers with a clickable button. For example on Avocadu you have the “Start my 21 day challenge” button in your… Read more »
Hey, Courtney! Our Launch Your Blog eCourse has tutorials on X-Theme, and our websites don’t actually have X-Theme on them anymore. We use Genesis Framework now, but only because we hired a website guy to design it and custom code it for us. We do NOT recommend this for beginners. We recommend beginners start with X-Theme and only upgrade to Genesis once you can afford to hire someone to help you design it. So the features you are seeing on our websites now have been custom coded with Genesis and are not available for X-Theme. I hope that clears it… Read more »