Dealing with Pinterest Traffic | Best Practices?
-
I've not been able to determine what a best practice might be in this situation. Maybe you can help.
One of my sites (built on Wordpress) had a blog post go viral on Pinterest. We went from about 1-200 visits a day to more than 17,000 visits daily. All the traffic was basically coming through this one blog post. The site was not built to accommodate that much traffic. We quickly received a call from the hosting company that they had to take our site down because of the load that was being placed on the server (shared hosting.)
This is a small, niche site. The products & services being advertised are extremely niche. There is no intent to ever have huge amounts of traffic because we know the customer base is so small.
In order to keep the site up, and to reduce the amount of traffic coming from Pinterest, the hosting company modified the .htaccess file to block all traffic coming from pinterest.com.
We know that 99% of all the traffic coming from Pinterest not only were not potential customers, but are in the wrong demographic. So, there's no worry for us in losing that traffic.
I also know we're not the first site this has happened to.
So, what's the best practice here?
-
Hey Cole,
Just a clarification: I am not saying the client should be on dedicated. We purchase from our provider fully dedicated servers that only our clients or our properties are on. So, if we have server A, it may have just one ecommerce client ,etc. Server B could be our site and 10 client sites. Each of these has no other company on it. So, either us or our clients nothing outside of that.
With many companies, they are buying monthly hosting from someone like GoDaddy and then simply marking it up. So they have 50 clients hosted all over GoDaddy, but not on a single or two servers.By keeping all "in the house" we know that there is nothing inappropriate going on.
All the best,
Good question BTW
-
Hi John,
Thanks for your post. I see what you are saying, but the reality is the vast majority of the traffic is definitely not the customer. Plus, they do not have $$ in the budget to upgrade hosting and are not allowed to take 3rd party advertising due to their professional guidelines.
If you can provide any insight into whether or not blocking Pinterest from the .htaccess file would cause any negative SEO, let me know.
Warmly,
Cole
-
Hi there Robert,
Thanks for your response.
The client does not have the $$ to switch to dedicated hosting, nor do they want to, hence the decisions made.
Part of the issue is now, they have 1,000s (literally!) of pins with this excerpt from their blog post, but there's no way to really go back and contact the pinners. (The client started, but Pinterest offered up a warning window saying their activity was self promotional and not allowed.) They were saying something like "Hi NAME, thanks so much for linking to us! We have other resources here (URL) if you are interested and our Facebook page is here (URL.)" They stripped out the URLs to try again, but got another spam warning.
The client can not advertise through AdSense or another 3rd party due to guidelines they follow from their professional associations.
Another aside: the Featured Content Gallery plugin on the homepage was causing some major issues with the onslaught of traffic. I'm not sure if this is from 1,000s of people accessing the homepage at once or what. I do know this hosting company owns its own servers and is not a reseller.
This is probably just one of those things, but just wanted to see if any negative repercussions would come from Pinterest being blocked in the .htaccess file.
Warmly,
Cole
-
Cole,
I think if there were a little more detail it would help, but I do understand the hosts point of view given the gradient of the increase. But, if you can avoid it, do not let a host (that is not your dev company, sem/seo company, etc. into your .htaccess file unless you are highly trusting of them). I have security issues.
If the hosting company is using non dedicated servers for you and their other clients (highly likely) then what they are doing is simply reselling the hosting and they are under fire from GoDaddy, BlueHost, NS, etc. for the spike. But, I would really want to see the agreement you have with them as well as, taking your site down for a traffic spike is a big deal unless they know you are doing something nefarious. As to a WP site "handling" 17K visits a day, it will. The issue is a bandwidth on the other end issue.
So, why is Pinterest a problem is a real curiosity. I could see something like an infographic that is more general could get a lot of traffic to you, but not be your customer. And, while I think John is not unreasonable about Adsense, etc., it is not something I would do as an agency or for any of our properties. (again just a philosophy). But, is there anything you can do with the traffic? Can you get them to like or share something, tweet, G+ with you, etc.? I understand that the traffic is not actually valueless, but not your customer and, possibly, a distraction.
I do like that piece of Pinterest and have seen Pinterest be a really nice social tool.
Hope this was at least helpful in some small way,
Robert
-
I dont believe in block any traffic and I dont think 99% of your traffic is useless. Explain to your host what is going on and work with them about the post going viral. I think it's weak of your host to even suggest blocking your traffic instead of being up the task of handling traffic. Tell the host that you are willing to pay extra to cover the week of the increased traffic lasts and try to gain value from the visitors.
Adsense would be an easy option to compensate the extra hosting bills. Plus tons of other value from visitors. I really want to hear why you think 99% of the traffic is wrong and has no value.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to find out what is the best time to post to your audience on Facebook
We have been using Facebook for some time for our business and are looking to schedule our posts. We want to schedule posts when they would have maximal reach to our audience. How do we find this out? Can it be identified using Facebook Insights? Instructions or guidance here as to how to do this would be most appreciated!
Social Media | | Gavo0 -
5 top things an eCommerce Site Can Do To Improve Rankings and Traffic
Hello, We are a niche eCommerce company with a limited budget but time on our hands to make changes and start projects. For our main keyword we rank 10th. It is a small to medium sized niche. Without knowing the details, I'm looking at the top 5 things I can do for Rankings and Traffic considering on-site, off-site, keeping in mind google updates. Also, what's the best or your favorite Ecommerce ranking/traffic articles? Thanks! Bob
Social Media | | BobGW1 -
Has anyone used Ninjapinner for Pinterest?
Has anyone used Ninjapinner? I'm interested in automating my Pinterest efforts a little, and have seen this tool mentioned. Interested in using it to (carefully) autofollow accounts. TIA!
Social Media | | Coraltoes770 -
Best Way to Promote Self Hosted Videos?
We are soon to launch 25 short videos on one of our websites. They are a little bit different and I think they have a particularly good chance of going viral. The videos will be scattered over the website on our actual sales pages (not tucked away on our blog). We are hoping (expecting) that customers will click on them and subsequently share them mainly due to the surprise / fun factor. I've got a lot of experience promoting our (linkbait) blog posts which usually get between 10,000 and 100,000 hits via social media blogs, however, I have no experience promoting video. We will do the offsite social blog promotions as normal, however, my two main concerns are: 1. I'm unsure how best to use the social buttons (facebook like/share tweet and G+). As I understand it (I could very much be wrong), I can either embed the social buttons on the videos so that they are easily shared across facebook etc... or I can make the the social button make the user 'Like' / 'Share' the page that the video is on. I assume that the latter option is better for website promotion but maybe not good for people sharing the video on Facebook etc. some of the videos do not have pride of place on our pages. An explanation or examples on the best option would be appreciated. 2. Should we hold off from putting the videos on YouTube until the website has earned some of the juice first? Or are we missing out on and opportunity by not offering all avenues at once? Any other tips would be greatly appreciated too! They will hopefully be up and running by the end of the month so I'll come back and let you know how it went. Thank you for your time guys and gals! Richard (Moz Customer 2391745) PS. If it is of interest we are using JW Player
Social Media | | trickshotric0 -
PINTEREST?!!!!!! What is up?! Help, please
I've read, over and over that Pinterest creates no follow links and so is good for virality, traffic and social media but does NOT help with SEO. Is this true? I had an "SEO" tell me recently that this does actually create backlinks. I don't believe them...
Social Media | | WNL0 -
What is the best Practice for Adding Social Buttons to your Sites from SEO Perspective?
Hey Guys, As you all know there are many social buttons out there that can be added to your website. Facebook Like button, Twitter's Tweet and Follow buttons, Google +1, and AddThis buttons are just a few to mention. All of these buttons can be customized, eg. you may choose to point your FB Like button to your homepage, to a specific inner page, or to your Facebook Brand Page. Same with your +1 button. Moreover, you may choose to add Twitter and Google+ Follow buttons to your site's pages, and so on. My questions are very simple: Is there any best practice for adding social buttons to your site from SEO perspective? if yes, Which social buttons to add? Where is the ideal place for them on your page? Where these buttons should be pointing to? your homepage? specific inner page? or to your official brand pages? Thanks in Advance, Yogev.
Social Media | | ShivaS1 -
Best Joomla Facebook LIke Box Plugin
Hello, We want a like box that shows up like the one attached. We've tried several plugins for Joomla 1.6 and none show up consistently in all browsers. Which one do you recommend? like-box-for-seomoz-question.gif
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
What are different strategies to achieve a strong social presence for clients in multiple industries? How do you best leverage your time?
I just finished watching the mozinar on "The End of Search Without Social" mozinar, and I have so many points that I want to implement for our agency. The problem I see is that we have clients in about 20 different industries. How do you create strong social relationships in each of these industries for your clients? It seems that you could have more influence if you built all into your own personal profiles or your SEO company's to create that great fan base. Anyone have success in doing it across the board? Thanks!
Social Media | | esztanyo0