5 Tips for Getting Those Outbound Clicks on Pinterest

Last updated on 3 December 2024

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So you want to up your Pinterest game and actually use the search engine to grow your blog. Which is a great goal to have. I get most of my traffic from Pinterest, second only to Google itself. But one of the most important metrics to be looking at is those Outbound Clicks on Pinterest. That’s how you’re going to know that people are actually heading to your blog.

Pinterest can be such a game changer for basically any niche. While people tend to think of Pinterest as being for people planning their weddings, or looking for recipes, or their next craft project – and it IS all of those – Pinterest has the power to be so much more for your blog.

Before we get into it, let’s answer some FAQs about Outbound Clicks on Pinterest. Or jump to the 5 tips I have for you.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual search engine, and it’s important that you think of that in that way. It’s not a social media platform. It’s a search engine. People come to Pinterest to look for answers, and chances are, you’ve got them.

What are Outbound Clicks?

Outbound Clicks on Pinterest are the clicks that your Pins get back to your blog or website. These are the most important metrics on Pinterest if you want to grow your blog. You want people to click away from Pinterest and land on your blog. The clicks are going OUT, so they’re called Outbound Clicks.

What’s the difference between Clicks and Outbound Clicks?

A Click metric on Pinterest is when someone sees your Pin in their feed or on your account and Clicks the Pin. There they’ll see the title, description, and the Pin itself. But an Outbound click is when they take it a step further click the link and head away from Pinterest. Someone might click your Pin in their feed, but unless they click the Pin itself and go to where you’re sending them, it’s not counted as an Outbound Link.

How do you see those analytics on Pinterest?

You can see your Outbound Clicks on Pinterest and all other metrics in two ways. By clicking the Pin itself; you’ll see the metrics specific to that Pin so you can see how people are interacting with it. And the other way is by having a free Pinterest business account and diving into your Analytics, which you can find in the top menu bar if you’re looking on your desktop.

Tips for getting Outbound Clicks on Pinterest

So now you know why you want to get those Outbound Clicks on Pinterest, but how do we actually go about setting ourselves up well at the beginning to make that happen? How do we make people click our Pins and get to our blogs (or wherever we’re sending them).

There are a few ways to do this.

Make sure you’re sharing what people want to be reading
Use keywords to get the exact phrases people are using
Creating aesthetic Pins
Mixing up your approach
Setting up a schedule

Let’s dive into them a little bit more.

Make sure you’re sharing what people want to be reading

People aren’t going to click your Pin unless they want to read what you’re offering, right? Which hopefully is pretty obvious. When it comes to creating Pins, we need somewhere to link them to, and for the purposes of this blog post, we’re talking mostly about blog posts. We therefore want to make sure that the blog posts we’re writing and sharing are what people want to read and will translate into creating Pins that people want to click.

If no one is clicking your Pins and heading to your blog, then one reason for that is that they simply don’t care for the topic. And that’s okay! You’re not for everyone, and not everything is for everyone. But we want to make sure that the blog content (and in turn our Pinterest content) is of high quality and that people are interested in the topics, especially this year.

Use keywords to get the exact phrases people are using

Just like our blog posts, we want to ensure that we’re using keywords in a bunch of different places on our Pins. These help Pinterest direct people to our content when they’re looking for answers that we hold.

Here are 4 places you should be putting your keywords when you’re creating your Pins:

File name: When you’re saving your Pins from Canva (or wherever you create them), use keywords for that Pin in the file name.
Title: Keywords are perfect for the titles of our pins
Description: You can mix up your keywords a bit in your description when relevant, but make sure they’re in there
On the Pin: Pinterest can ‘read’ our Pins, meaning any text we put on the graphic, it can. Pop your keywords here too.

Having those keywords on our Pins is a HUGE part of how we’re going to grow our blogs through Outbound Clicks on Pinterest.

Creating aesthetic Pins

No one is going to click a Pin that is fugly looking. They probably won’t even see it. Here is an example of the same Pin, but created in three ways. I know these are a bit extreme, but just for the purpose of this post … which one would you rather click?

Hopefully the one on the right. It’s more eye-catching, more appealing, is more relevant to the topic, the font are easier to read, and has a good call to action on the Pin itself. If people aren’t drawn to our Pins in their feeds – which are FULL of other Pins – then they’re not going to see it, let alone click it and then click again to check out our blog posts.

Graphics are important. Make sure you’re creating visually nice Pins. (Psst I use Canva for this and it’s so super easy. You can create your own templates and reuse them over and over.)

Mixing up your approach

Pinterest loves Fresh Pins. Fresh Pins are a Pin that Pinterest hasn’t seen before. It might lead to the same URL but if the graphic is different then it’s a Fresh Pin. If you’re not getting that traffic to your blog, try creating Fresh Pins from other posts that have done really well.

The other way you can do this is to mix up the style and format of your Pins. We just talked about making them visually appealing, but if you think something is visually appealing, and you’re using all the other tips, you can mix up your approach and try a completely different style for your Pin and see if that makes any difference.

Different people are drawn to different things, so you may find that trying a different style to what you would normally put out there actually draws in other people who may not have paid attention before that.

Setting up a schedule

It may not seem like setting up a schedule is going to help with Outbound Clicks for your Pinterest account but stay with me for a moment.

When we have a schedule and a set time that we’re putting out Pins (for example, 3 x a day), then we’re training the Pinterest algorithm that we’re being consistent with our Pinning. We’re updating our accounts by putting new Pins on them, we’re actively adding to the Pinterest database (for want of a better word), and we’re creating new things for people to enjoy and engage with.

If we create 30 Pins and Pin them all at once, then post nothing for 4 months, then that’s going to seem really spammy to Pinterest, and it’s going to show that you’re not consistent with your posts. Having a schedule and a plan to get new, fresh Pins out there is going to help Pinterest show your content to people, and if more people see it, more people will click.

Not so silly now, hey? 😉

💡 Check out Tailwind for easy Pinterest Scheduling.

Those are just 5 ways that you can work on increasing your clicks to your blog from Pinterest. There are probably more – so if you have any tips or things that have worked for you, drop them in the comments!