Why Your Awesome Pinterest Image Isn’t Getting a Single Click
I remember when Pinterest was first launched around seven years ago. One of my colleagues said that it would never take off as a social networking site. I have to admit that I agreed at the time, but now realize how wrong we both were. Today, Pinterest is one of the most powerful online marketing platforms in the world and it boasts around 250 million active monthly users.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that Pinterest is guaranteed to drive large amounts of traffic to your website. Many marketers believe they created very high-quality images, but they struggle to get a single click on their images.
Your first inclination is probably to think that Pinterest just isn’t the right website to promote your content. Many marketers heard that it is only good for promoting women’s clothing and jewelry, due to the demographics of the site. This is usually a copout, because they could get a steady supply of quality traffic from the image sharing site with a better optimized strategy.
Why Your Pinterest Images Aren’t Driving Traffic
So, what are you doing wrong? Why aren’t more people clicking on your awesome Pinterest images? Here are some major mistakes that could be holding you back.
Your images don’t have a strong CTA
Aesthetics alone aren’t going to get people clicking your images. You need to provide a compelling reason for people to click them. One case study found that a good CTA can increase traffic by 80% or more. It all starts with creating a great call-to-action (CTA):
- Make sure the tone of your CTA matches your intended audience
- There needs to enough contrast between your CTA and the main image for it to stand out. Design tools like BannerSnack can help you find the right colors for your CTA buttons.
- The CTA should be bold and clear
- It shouldn’t have more than five to six words
Your CTA will make or break your Pinterest campaign. Use it wisely.
You didn’t create an image with broad enough appeal
When you are promoting content with Google or Facebook, you can target your content to a very specific audience; even for something like a/c repair. You can create a niche Facebook group or optimize your web properties for a specific keyword in the search engines.
You can’t target your audience as specifically with Pinterest. It is a much more generalized social networking site. This means that your images need to have a broad focus and appeal to a large base of followers.
You can still design images that relate to your niche. However, you are going to need to find an angle that makes them appealing to a large audience base. For example, if you are running a blog about the Paleo diet, you should make sure your images are related to weight loss, rather than the Paleo diet itself. It will have more interest and attract more clicks.
Your images aren’t optimized for search traffic
Everybody understands the importance of optimizing their main website for SEO. This wisdom usually gets set aside when they are building social media profiles. However, you can get a steadier supply of converting traffic by applying the same SEO principles.
Here are some simple strategies to use:
- Make sure that your profile has keywords that you would like to rank four in Google. You might be able to rank for a few fairly high volume longtail keywords if you optimize it carefully.
- Incorporate keywords into the file name of your images. Google will see the file name when it crawls your Pinterest profile and will likely rank your Pinterest posts higher if the keywords are embedded in the images. However, you obviously don’t want to use the same keywords in every file name, because that could look like keyword stuffing.
- Don’t be afraid to build some links to your Pinterest profile. Linking from your own website and a couple guest posts that you wrote could make a huge difference. You don’t need to build nearly as many links to get your Pinterest profile ranking as you would for your own website, because it is on a website with a high domain authority.
You could increase the traffic to your Pinterest images bye 86% by making sure they are optimized for search engines.
Optimize Your Pinterest Images for More Clicks
Pinterest has become one of the most effective social media platforms in the world. However, you still need to invest time and resources to create quality content that drives clicks to your website. Make sure you know what your audience is looking for and design your images accordingly.