A Beginner’s Guide To Pinterest: How To Set Up & Optimize Your Pinterest Account

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links and I may receive a commission if you purchase through them.

Are you ready to take your blog or business to the next level?

Pinterest marketing is one of the fastest and best ways to market your business and grow your blog at an exponential rate.

If you haven’t utilized Pinterest yet to your advantage, I’ll teach you in this post how to optimize your Pinterest account initially so you can set yourself up for success.

Pinterest marketing is one of the fastest and best ways to market your business and grow your blog traffic. In this post, I'll teach you how to set up and optimize your Pinterest account so you can set yourself up for success. | blog tips | blogging tips | pinterest tips | social media marketing | pinterest business account | set up your pinterest account | pinterest for beginners | blogging for beginners | Pinterest profile optimization | pinterest marketing tips

But before we begin, if you have a Pinterest personal account and don’t have a business account set up yet, head on over to my post on how to convert to a Pinterest business account.  This step is essential for every blogger and entrepreneur!

How To Optimize Your Pinterest Account

Like the foundation of a house, you need to make sure that you start off on the right foot on Pinterest before you can build upwards and start pinning to your account.

Here are the steps you need to follow to complete your Pinterest profile optimization.

1. Fill Out Your Pinterest Profile

Your profile is the first thing that a Pinterest user will see when they first land on your profile so it’s important that you make a great first impression.

To do this, we want to let your viewers know what your site is about and how you can help them within the first few seconds.

blogblossom 2 million pinterest monthly views

Blog name & tagline

Here you can see that I added my blog name as well as a tagline that includes a few keywords describing what my blog is about. 

Make these keywords short and to the point.

Blog description

Next, add your blog description.  Ask yourself what your blog is about and summarize it in a sentence or two.

This is also a great area to add a call to action (CTA).  For example, you can add a link to a freebie on your blog to entice people to visit and collect their email.

Add a logo

Third, add a logo that is unique to your blog.  If you don’t have a logo already made, just create one in Canva yourself or get one made for you on Fiverr.

Pinterest marketing is one of the fastest and best ways to market your business and grow your blog traffic. In this post, I'll teach you how to set up and optimize your Pinterest account so you can set yourself up for success. | blog tips | blogging tips | pinterest tips | social media marketing | pinterest business account | set up your pinterest account | pinterest for beginners | blogging for beginners | Pinterest profile optimization | pinterest marketing tips

2. Claim your site

Next, we want to claim your site on Pinterest.

Claiming your site adds a globe icon next to your URL showing that your site has been verified by Pinterest, which will increase trust with your followers and viewers.

To do this, go to your Pinterest account settings and then click the Claim tab.

Next, enter your site’s URL and click the Claim button.

claim your site on pinterest

Once you’ve clicked Claim, a pop-up will show up.  

Click Add HTML tag and copy and paste the tag into the <head> section of your site’s index.html file.

If you run Genesis on WordPress, you can do this under Appearance –> Customize –> Theme Settings –> Header/Footer Scripts.

pick claim option

When you’ve successfully added the HTML tag to your site, Pinterest will show that your site has been claimed.  This can take up to 24 hours.

claimed on pinterest

3. Enable Rich Pins

rich pins on pinterest

Rich Pins is essential to getting more eyes on your pins and profile and ultimately, increasing your blog traffic.

Rich Pins gives Pinterest users more information about your pin, making it stand out, look more professional, and more enticing to click.

Setting up and enabling rich pins is a simple process that only takes 5 minutes or less but the rewards are infinite once it’s set up.

Read my quick tutorial on how to set up and enable rich pins here.

4. Set Up Personal Boards

Now that everything else on your profile is set up, let’s move onto creating your personal boards.

Personal boards are very important on Pinterest. They are your own boards which you have 100% control of and don’t share with other pinners.

In these boards, you will add your own pins that you create as well as re-pin other people’s pin.

board covers on pinterest

Create a blog board for your best pins

First, let’s create a board that specifically showcases your blogs’ best pins.  You can name it something like “Best Of *Your Blog Name*” or “YourBlog.com.”

In this board, you will only pin your own site’s pins and no one else’s.

It’s best to place this board right at the top of your profile so it’s easily seen.  To change its location, just drag the board to where you want to place it.

Create specific personal boards

Next, create at least 30 boards that are specific and unique to your blog.  The more personal boards, the better!

Ideally, you want to be able to pin to at least 5 personal boards for each of your blog posts so factor that in when you brainstorm board ideas.

For example, if you want to create a variety of personal boards that are related to Christmas decorations, you can create the following 5 boards:

  • Christmas Decor
  • Holiday Decor
  • Christmas Decorating Ideas
  • Christmas DIY Decor
  • Holiday Home Decor

Write great board descriptions

After you create your boards, it’s time to add board descriptions to each board.

What you want to do is add a description that is keyword rich so that Pinterest knows what your board is about.  This is important for Pinterest SEO as it will help your pins to show up more on Pinterest when someone searches your specific keywords.

personal board edit settings

Just click the pencil button above the board name to bring up the settings option.

Don’t forget to also categorize each board while you’re writing the board descriptions.

Add popular pins to your board

Finally, to finish up each board, go to the main Pinterest search bar and search your board names.

Save the first 10 popular pins that first show up in the Pinterest smart feed to your board.  These will help Pinterest categorize your board and give them context of what your pins are about.

Set board covers

board covers on pinterest

Setting board covers is not mandatory and isn’t the most crucial thing to check off on your to-do list but it’s nice to have board covers set just to have a more cohesive looking profile.

To do this, press the pencil button next to the board name to go to the settings option.

In the picture above, you can see how board covers gives my profile a nice look.

Create A Featured Board Carousel

featured boards on pinterest

One fun feature that business accounts have is the featured board carousel located right under your profile.

This area lets you prominently showcase your best 5 boards.

To enable this feature, click the 3 dots at the top right hand corner –> Go to Edit Settings –> Scroll down to Featured Boards –> Click Edit.

Then choose up to 5 of your best boards and click Save.

edit profile on pinterest for featured boards

5. Join Niche Group Boards

Joining group boards is a great way to get your pins circulating to a wider audience. However, it’s important to be picky in which group boards you are a part of.

In the past, you could join a ton of group boards and then get your pins seen to a wide variety of people who weren’t your followers.

Now, Pinterest doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on group boards anymore because they are an easy way for people to spam and they aren’t being used in the way that they were originally intended.

Although personal boards are now becoming increasingly important, group boards can still be a great addition to include in your Pinterest strategy to increase your blog traffic.

What’s important to note is that you should be joining niche groups and not general group boards, which allow you to pin any topic to the board.

Niche group boards vs. General group boards

But why niche group boards instead of general boards?

Well, niche group boards are specifically geared towards your niche.

These boards will help your pins get re-pinned by the right people versus people who aren’t even in your niche and aren’t interested in your pin topic and will probably just gloss over them.

In addition, if the niche group boards have keyword-rich descriptions, this will also help your pin be seen more by people who are searching for specific keywords on Pinterest.

How To Join Group Boards

Joining group boards isn’t hard.  However, the process of applying to them can be quite time consuming.

1. Look up group boards. A great way to find which group boards to join is to look at other people who are in your niche and see which boards they’re a part of.  Make a list of them in an Excel spreadsheet and then move on to the next step.

2. Follow board instructions to join. Read each of the instructions carefully. Very often, the group board owner will require you to follow all of their boards and then either fill out a form or send them an email or message to request access to join.  Also look carefully at the rules of how often you can pin.

3. Email or message board owners. Ask them politely if you can contribute to their board and let them know that you’ll follow their rules if you’re added.

4. Follow up. If you haven’t heard from them in a few weeks, follow up and see if they might have missed your request.

Just take note that it can take a while as getting added is up to the group board owner’s discretion and sometimes they might ignore your request.

Ready to gain massive blog traffic?

Once you’ve finished the steps above and fully optimized your Pinterest account, you’re ready to start creating and scheduling out beautiful stand-out pins to bring in traffic to your blog.

More Pinterest Tips And Tricks

Pinterest marketing is one of the fastest and best ways to market your business and grow your blog traffic. In this post, I'll teach you how to set up and optimize your Pinterest account so you can set yourself up for success. | blog tips | blogging tips | pinterest tips | social media marketing | pinterest business account | set up your pinterest account | pinterest for beginners | blogging for beginners | Pinterest profile optimization | pinterest marketing tips

Liked this post? Please share it!

4 Comments

  1. Wow! I am going to open my Pintrest account and follow all the tips and instructions so that I make a start at getting Pintrest right:) Thank you

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *