I see a lot of people saying Pinterest traffic doesn't pay well. And honestly, they're not wrong — it used to be pretty bad for me too. My RPM was sitting around $8-10 for months and I couldn't figure out how to push it higher without switching to a completely different traffic source.
But I didn't want to abandon Pinterest. It's where all my traffic comes from and it converts well for recipe content. So instead of trying to replace it, I focused on two things that ended up making a bigger difference than I expected.
First thing — I submitted my sitemap to Google.
I know it sounds basic. But I was so focused on Pinterest that I never even bothered setting up Google Search Console properly. My site wasn't indexed on half its pages. So I submitted the sitemap and let Google do its thing.
Now, Google traffic is still small for me. Less than 10% of my total. But here's what most people don't realize — even a small percentage of Google traffic changes how ad networks see your site. Google visitors tend to have higher intent. They searched for something specific, landed on your page, and they engage longer. That bumps up your overall site quality signals. Advertisers bid more on sites that have a mix of traffic sources because it looks more natural and the engagement data is better. Even that little slice of search traffic lifted my overall RPM across all visitors — including the Pinterest ones.
Second thing — I added a recipe card to every post using HTML schema.