Fight the Cubicle

How to build an online business and escape from the cubicle for good

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Bluehost vs. Siteground: Which Web Hosting Service is Better?

In the market for web hosting, two companies seem to consistently compete end of on people’s shortlists: Bluehost vs Siteground.

These web hosting companies are among the leaders in affordable shared hosting for blogs, online stores, and business websites. However, they couldn’t be more different when it comes to factors like reliability, speed, security, and customer service.

I have used both Bluehost and Siteground and experienced the pros and cons of each. I’ve also done a ton of research on consumer review sites, Facebook groups, and web hosting forums to gather more information. In this Bluehost vs Siteground comparison, I’ll give you a rundown of how both web hosting services fare in key areas. That way, you can make an informed decision about which web hosting service would be best for your business.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links as explained in my disclosure policy.

Bluehost vs Siteground: what we’re comparing

For this comparison of Bluehost and Siteground, we’ll be comparing these web hosting services in seven important areas. These are among the most important factors to consider when choosing a web hosting service for your website:

  1. Speed
  2. Uptime
  3. Security
  4. Server quality
  5. Customer service
  6. User experience
  7. Pricing

1. Speed

People are impatient. If your site doesn’t load quickly, visitors will just exit and go find what they’re looking for elsewhere. In fact, a 2018 Google study found that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

Furthermore, Google has indicated that site speed is one of the ranking factors it considers. That means your site speed impacts your search engine rankings. As you can see, site speed is extremely important. Let’s take a look at how Bluehost and Siteground compare when it comes to loading times.

Siteground and Bluehost loading times
Siteground and Bluehost loading times

2. Uptime

Uptime refers to the percentage of time within a given period (month or year) that the server hosting your website is up and running. The closer to 100% this number is, the better. All web hosting companies aim for 100% uptime, but having a perfect uptime is highly unlikely. Technical glitches and server problems are bound to happen. The best that web hosting companies can do is to keep those issues at a minimum.

Why is uptime important? You want your site to be up and running whenever visitors land on it. Otherwise, all the time and effort you put into producing content, curating products, or optimizing for lead generation will be in vain.  If your web hosting service is constantly down, so will your website. This is terrible for business because consumers won’t return to your website if they have a negative experience. This results in lost leads, lost affiliate sales, lost ad revenue, and other missed opportunities. In a nutshell, you won’t be in business for long if your web host’s uptime is low. That’s why you should most definitely pay attention to the uptime of any web hosting service you choose.

Siteground uptime chart
Siteground uptime chart

3. Security

Hackers and malware constantly lurk on the internet. That’s why it’s important to choose a web hosting service that will protect your site from security threats. Both Bluehost and Siteground have security features to protect your site. But which web hosting service actually does a better job of keeping your website secure?

Siteground has in-built software to protect websites from spam. These include a free SSL certificate, weekly security scans, a spam filtering system, and an anti-bot AI. Bluehost also provides a free SSL certificate and a feature called SiteLock.

Siteground weekly scans
Siteground weekly scans

4. Server quality

A server is the digital storage space where all your website files are kept. Signing up for shared hosting means your website will be sharing a single server with multiple websites. That’s fine as long as your web hosting service doesn’t pack too many websites on the same server. Doing that can lead to slow loading times, more downtime, and other technical problems.

Server quality to the performance of the servers that your web hosting companies use to store your website. A high-quality server can handle a large number of visitors at the same time without problems. On the other hand, a low-quality server may crash when it receives the number of visitors. When it comes to server performance, Siteground wins. Bluehost is known to have frequent crashes and problems because of the way it manages its servers.

The root of Bluehost’s server problems is EIG, the company that manages Bluehost, along with HostGator and 80 other hosting companies. To reduce their costs, EIG programmers pack tons of websites into one server. Sometimes the server just can’t handle so many websites so it crashes. The programmers get it back up, but the underlying problem, too many websites, is still there. Of course, the server crashes again somewhere down the road, and the cycle continues.

5. Customer service

As you navigate the process of creating and running your site, issues will come up. You will have questions. Technical glitches may arise. That’s why it’s super important to choose a web hosting company with a well-trained, responsive, and personal customer support team. This will make a tremendous difference in your experience. I can tell you that from first-hand experience.

I switched to Siteground partly because of my horrible experience with Bluehost’s customer service team. Frankly, it’s the worst customer service I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with anywhere on the internet. It took sometimes as much as 45 minutes to get in touch with a customer support representative via chat. When I finally did get in touch with someone, they were often disinterested, impersonal, or just downright rude.

The final straw was when my site was hacked. I contacted Bluehost support and waited 30+ minutes as usual. When I finally got in contact with a representative and explained what was happening he blamed me for the problem. With a couldn’t-be-bothered manner, he told me that My SSL certificate had expired. My site was hacked because I had failed to renew my SSL certificate. There was no empathy and no desire to help. At that point, I had had enough. 

After switching to Siteground, I was amazed by how different the customer service was. When I reach out to the support team, it typically takes 30-45 seconds to get in touch with someone on chat. I’ve also used Siteground’s phone support a few times. I got through to a person in less than a minute. I love that Siteground’s support team actually treats you like a person and takes great care in resolving any issues you have. It’s a joy to contact Siteground support because the representatives are so personable and helpful.

Siteground customer service
Siteground customer service

Based on my own experiences with Siteground and Bluehost, I would say that Siteground wins in the customer service department. But don’t just take my word for it. Let’s see what other users have to say. 

6. User experience

How do users rates their experience with Bluehost and Siteground? Let’s hear direvctlt from those users, Webhostinggeeks.com collects verified customer reviews and rates web hosting services on five criteria: user-friendliness, price, reliability, tech support, and software. Out of 748 reviewers, 57% gave Bluehost 1 or 2 stars. On the flip side, only 22% gave it 4 or 5 stars. Let that process for a minute. Almost 60% of customers were dissatisfied with Bluehost!

On the flipside, 788 customers rated Siteground on the same five categories as Bluehost. Here are the results: 92% gave Siteground 4 or 5 stars while only 4.5% gave it 1 or 2 stars. More than 90% of customers are satisfied with Siteground!

Here’s a side by side comparison of Bluehost and Siteground. The numbers don’t lie: Siteground is light years ahead of Bluehost in every single category.

7. Pricing

Let’s take a look at the shared hosting pricing plans that Bluehost and Siteground offer.

Bluehost Hosting Plans
Bluehost hosting plans
Siteground hosting plans
Siteground hosting plans

When it comes to pricing, Bluehost clearly wins. Its basic package starts at $3.95/month compared to $6.99/month for Siteground. Bluehost is clearly the more affordable option between the two web hosting services. Its prices make it particularly attractive to new bloggers and online store owners, which explains its popularity.

The verdict (Bluehost vs Siteground)

Let’s tally the results. Here are the seven categories we’ve compared and the winner in each category.

  • Speed – Siteground 
  • Uptime  – Siteground
  • Security  – Siteground 
  • Server quality – Siteground 
  • Customer service – Siteground 
  • User experience – Siteground 
  • Pricing – Bluehost 

Siteground beat Bluehost six out of the seven categories. That makes Siteground the clear winner of this comparison. Siteground is a superior web hosting service to Bluehost. With its top-notch security, attentive customer service, and fast speed, Siteground makes website management easy. From personal experience, I can attest that Siteground is more reliable and overall a better web hosting company to work with. Given the rave reviews that Siteground receives, it’s safe to say that thousands of other users agree.

I hope you found this Bluehost vs Siteground helpful. Are you weighing between Bluehost and Siteground? If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments.

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6 Features To Make a Pin Go Viral on Pinterest

What does it take to make a viral pin Pinterest? This is a question that many bloggers and online business owners who use Pinterest ponder. I myself was fixated on this question for months as I experimented with different pin designs and pinning strategies to find an answer. In the end, I narrowed down seven characteristics that make the odds of a pin going viral high.  

Anatomy of a viral pin

What is a viral pin?

Generally speaking, a viral pin is a pinnable image on Pinterest that gets saved many times and/or drives a ton of clicks to a blog/website. For the purpose of this post, we will define a viral pin as a pin that drives at least 1,000 pageviews to a blog within a 30-day period. We’re not concerned with the number of impressions or saves, just the clicks. At the end of the day, the goal of Pinterest is to drive page views so that’s the metric we’ll evaluate. 

Viral Pin Formula

Over the past two and a half years, I have created over 1,000 pins for my own blogs as well as for clients. After experimenting with hundreds of pin designs, I have identified seven key features that make a pin go viral.

1. A popular topic 

The first factor that determines the likelihood that your pin will go viral is the topic. Not all topics do well on Pinterest. That’s because Pinterest emphasizes pins that teach and inspire. Its primary goal is to help users not only find what they’re searching for but also discover new ideas. Accordingly, topics like travel, home decor, food, fashion, and DIY are popular on Pinterest. These topics lend themselves to new ideas and inspiration.  

How do you discover what topics are popular on Pinterest? One way is to use the  Pinterest Trends tool. It shows you the search history of different keywords on Pinterest over time. If you search for a term, you can see whether the searches for that term are on the rise, on the decline, or flat. That can help you decide what content to promote. For instance, in October, Pinterest users start searching for Christmas gifts and decor ideas. This would be a good time to start introducing your holiday pins to give time to gain traction and increase their chances of going viral. 

2. Long and vertical shape 

The dimensions of your pin also play an important role in determining whether it goes viral. You’ve probably already noticed that pins on Pinterest tend to be long and vertical. There’s a reason for that. Pinterest recommends 600 x 900 or a 2:3 ratio for pins. Vertical pins take up enough space to stand out on a user’s home feed. On the other hand, horizontal pins would get lost among the sea of pins.  

I create pins of different sizes to see which one does best. No matter the dimension, the pins are always long and vertical. Pin dimensions that I’ve found to have major viral potential include:

  • 600 x 900
  • 1000 x 1500 
  • 735 x 1102
  • 750 x 1125
  • 600 x 1250

My pins don’t get bigger than 735 x 1,400 unless it’s an infographic. Those can get as long as 735 x 2000. Note that if a pin is too long, Pinterest may cut off the bottom portion of it when displaying it on home feeds and search results. Although pins that don’t follow the recommended 2:3 ratio can do well, be careful not to make your pins long. What is too long? I would say a pin with a length greater than 2000 pixels is too long.

3. High-resolution images

Pinterest is a visual search engine so images are absolutely critical to your success on the platform. Unless you’re a professional photographer, I recommend you invest in paid stock photos. They are better than the free stock photos you find on sites like Pixabay and Pexels. This is because paid stock photos tend to be more unique, professional, and aesthetically pleasing. I have a subscription with Deposit Photos for $29/month, and it’s worth every penny. Since I started using professional stock photos, my pins went from 20-50 repins to 1,000+ repins. Unique, high-quality photos make a big difference. That’s why I highly recommend you invest in professional stock photos instead of using free stock photos.

Another issue with free stock photos is that they are ubiquitous on Pinterest. Your pins will blend in with thousands of other pins that use the same images. With paid stock photos, however, you get access to high-quality images that not many other people are using. That way your pins stand out. Using professional stock photos has been one of the biggest game-changers in my Pinterest strategy. If you’re serious about driving traffic to your blog with Pinterest, I would seriously consider using paid stock photos. 

4. Proper use of keywords

Keywords will make or break your success on Pinterest. They are extremely important! Remember that Pinterest is a visual search engine. Just like Google, it relies on SEO to determine how to categorize and display not only pins, but also boards and profiles. The Pinterest algorithm primarily considers your keywords, pin image(s), and boards to determine what your pin is about and decide when to show it.

Keywords are search phrases that people use to find what they’re looking for on Pinterest. If you want the right people to find your pin, you need to describe your pin using the keywords they’re searching for. Keyword research is so important that I devoted an entire chapter to show you how to do it (lesson 7).

The great thing is that identifying those keywords is quite simple. When you search for the topic you’re writing about in the Pinterest search bar, Pinterest will show you the most searched keywords related to that topic.

Once you have the keywords people are searching for, you need to place them in strategic places so that your content can come up in search results and smart feeds.

To make your pin go viral, you absolutely have to teach Pinterest what it’s about. This 

5. A click-worthy title 

The content creator who can grab the most people’s attention and convert that to action wins on Pinterest. In addition to using high-quality images, your pin needs to communicate what Pinterest users can gain by clicking it. This is where pin titles come in. You want to include a title that communicates the benefit of reading your post in a way that piques the user’s curiosity. These titles should be specific, descriptive, and answer the question: ‘What’s in it for me?’ Here are five title formats that drive clicks and examples of them in action.

  1. The List – tells the reader exactly what they’re getting and how long it’ll be.
  • 50 Simple Ways To Save More Money
  • 10 Budgeting Mistakes You’re Probably Making 

2. How To –  gives the reader a concrete solution to a problem or question.

  • How To Prepare a Keto Meal in 30 Minutes
  • Or, How To Spend 3 Days in Barcelona 

3. The Question – a thought-provoking question that entices someone to find out more.

  • Are You Making These 5 Pinterest Mistakes?
  • Is Your Mindset Making 

4. The Case Study – offers a real-life example of how someone accomplished a goal of interest to the reader

  • How Michelle Went From $0 to $50,000 a Month With Affiliate Marketing
  • 3 Simple Changes That Doubled My Traffic in 30 Days 

5. REASONS WHY – offers an explanation for why something is the way it is. This could be why something happens, works, or doesn’t work.

  • Here’s Why Pinterest Isn’t Sending You Traffic
  • 5 Reasons Why Bluehost is a Terrible Hosting Service for Your Blog

Note that the title that appears on a pin doesn’t have to match the exact title of the blog post or landing page it leads to. For instance, you can create three separate pins for one blog post using three different title formats. This is a great way to appeal to different users on Pinterest and increase your chances of getting a viral pin.

6. Easy-to-read fonts 

For Pinterest users to read your click-worthy title, you to use legible fonts. Be careful with fancy script fonts. They can work, but make sure they are legible. I don’t usually use script fonts for travel pins because I’ve found that regular, block fonts, like Playfair Display, Montserrat, and Oswald perform better. and text that tells viewers exactly what they’ll get. Be careful with fancy script fonts. They can work, but make sure they are legible.

A bonus incentive

When you include something extra, like a checklist, worksheet, printable, or some other kind of download, you increase the incentive for people to click on your pin. When you write a post, think about a bonus you can add to it.

For instance, if you write an itinerary post, you can use Google Maps to pinpoint all the places in the itinerary and embed it in the post. Take a screenshot of the map and include it in at least one pin. If you write about things to pack for a long flight, you can quickly make a checklist on Canva and include it in your post. Then include a blurb about the checklist in at least one pin.

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How To Enable Rich Pins on Pinterest in 2021

You’ve created a Pinterest business account and claimed your website. Now, it’s time for the next key step: enabling rich pins.

Enabling rich pins is a must to unlock all the Pinterest business features. 

In this post, you’ll learn and quick and straightforward way to enable rich pins on your Pinterest business account. That way, you can use Pinterest to grow your traffic, get more leads, and make more sales.

What are rich pins?

Rich pins contain extra information about the content being shown, such as the website it’s from and a short summary. A regular pin just shows the pin title and author. There are four types of rich pins: app, article. recipe, and product. 

For most bloggers, rich pins will appear as article pins. Article pins contain a headline, author, and a short description of the post. This gives Pinterest users a sneak peek at what the post is about, helping them decide whether or not to click on it.

Recipe pins are designed for food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers who write about food, and other content creators in the food niche. These pins allow Pinterest users to see the ingredients, cooking times, and serving information for the dish in question. That way, they don’t actually have to leave Pinterest to get the necessary information 

Product pins are for e-commerce businesses, like Shopify and Etsy store owners. These pins show important information about the product featured, such as price and availability. Product pins are also called ‘Buyable Pins’ because they make it easier for Pinterest users to make buying decisions. That said, you cannot buy a product directly on Pinterest. You have to click on the product pin to be taken to the website of the business, where you can make a purchase. 

Lastly, app pins, which are the least common, are used to showcase apps for download. These pins are geared towards app developers. They contain a title and description of the app and the price.

Why should you enable rich pins?

Enabling rich pins on your Pinterest business account will help your Pinterest SEO, which makes it easier for your content to get found. Remember that Pinterest is a visual search engine. To get discovered on the platform, you have to teach Pinterest what your pins are about using keywords. Whenever Pinterest gives you an opportunity to use keywords, you should definitely take it!

When you enable rich pins, Pinterest pulls metadata from your website or online store. Metadata refers to your post title and meta description, or SEO description. Pinterest is able to pull your metadata because you’ve claimed your website. This allows Pinterest to access your website information and the description for every blog post you share on Pinterest. Let’s take a look at one of my article pins to see how this works. 

This is a pin I created for my blog post, 5 Pinterest Myths You Should Ignore

On WordPress, you can see the meta description and SEO title of the blog post that has been entered into the Yoast SEO plugin.

5 Pinterest myths meta description

Now, let’s take a look at what the pin looks like on Pinterest. As you can see the blog post title and meta description are listed as part of the details for the pin. Pinterest does this for every pin you share once you’ve enabled rich pins. 

5 Pinterest Myths Pinterest layout

Rich pin example

Without rich pins, your pins would only include the information you provide to Pinterest – a title and a pin description. With rich pins, however, your pins contain extra information. This means that you have double the opportunity to showcase what your content is about and rank highly on Pinterest search results. 

How to enable rich pins on WordPress?

As mentioned before, you first need to claim your website before you can enable rich pins. Pinterest is only able to pull data from your website once you’ve verified that you own it and allowed Pinterest access to your website data. 

Steps to enable rich pins on WordPress

You can enable rich pins once you’ve claimed your website. You’ll only need to do this once for your site. Follow these steps.

  1. Download the Yoast SEO plugin (if you don’t already have it.) The Yoast SEO plugin will allow you to skip dealing with code. It automates the process of enabling rich pins. 
  2. Under Yoast SEO, go to Social > Facebook and check “add open graph metadata.”
  3. Choose any blog post from your website and copy the URL.
  4. Go to the Rich Pins Validator page.
  5. Enter the blog post URL you’ve copied into the box provided. Make sure you post the URL of a blog post and not your homepage. 
  6. Click validate
Rich Pins Validator

Then just wait for your confirmation email from Pinterest. It could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Pinterest can be unpredictable in that way. The first time I validated rich pins, it took about 24 hours. The last time, it took about five minutes. 

How to enable rich pins for your Shopify store?

As with a WordPress blog, you need to claim your Shopify store before you can enable rich pins. Once you do that, then Pinterest can pull product information to display on your pins, 

Steps to enable rich pins for your Shopify store

  1. Open a specific product URL on your Shopify site. This is a page that has a Buy or Add to bag button.
  2. Copy and paste this product URL into the Rich Pin validator and type .oembed at the end of your product URL. You’ll see all the Rich Pin information for your product.
  3. Click Validate.
  4. After the preview appears, click Apply. You only need to apply with a single product URL from your website.
  5. Your product Pins will become Rich Pins within 24 hours.

Pinterest rich pins not working?

If you followed the steps above and your rich pins aren’t working, there are some troubleshooting steps you can take. The first step is to contact Pinterest support to see if they can diagnose the problem on their end. Pinterest can be glitchy at times so you want to first make sure that the problem isn’t coming from Pinterest.

If you check in with Pinterest support and things are fine on their end, then the other possible culprit could be your web host. Contact your web hosting provider to see if there could be any error preventing Pinterest from accessing your metadata. 

Helpful Pinterest Tools and Resources 

If you want to grow your traffic with Pinterest, here are some additional tools and resources I would recommend.

  • PicMonkey – I use PicMonkey to make professional-looking pins to promote my blog posts and affiliate products. It comes with a wide variety of fonts, templates, and many cool features.
  • Canva – I use this to make pins in addition to PicMonkey. It’s easier to use if you’re new to graphic design but isn’t as sophisticated as PicMonkey. It does come with 400,000 premium photos, which is 100x more than PicMonkey.
  • DepositPhotos – This is my go-to source for high-quality stock photos that I use in both blog posts and pins. The website has over 70 million stock photos, covering virtually every topic you can think of! Deposit Photos is one essential tool that has improved my blog’s appearance and skyrocketed my traffic. I can’t recommend it enough!
  • Pinterest Ninja – This beginner Pinterest course teaches you the fundamentals of keyword research, pin design, and branding. It’s taught by Pinterest marketing expert, Megan Johnson, who gets 8-10k page views a day from Pinterest.
  • Pinteresting Strategies – Want to learn how to get massive traffic from Pinterest without a scheduler? This is by far the best course for that. It’s taught my mommy blogger, Carly Carly Campbell gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. 

If you found the post valuable, don’t hesitate to share!

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How To Claim Your Website on Pinterest The Easy Way

Pinterest gives you multiple options to verify your website, but there’s one that beats the rest in terms of speed and simplicity. If you have a WordPress blog, you can claim your website in a few simple steps on Pinterest. This task has been a source of frustration for a lot of bloggers and business owners. But I promise – it’s not that complicated! 

We’ll go over the most straightforward way to verify your website and start using Pinterest to grow your business. 

Why you should claim your website on Pinterest?

What’s the purpose of claiming your website? This is an important step to unlock all of Pinterest’s business features. First, it confirms that you’re actually who you say you are. We don’t want any imposters out there using your business name, do we? 

Once you’ve verified that you’re the true owner of the website, then Pinterest will see your account as a legitimate business. Pinterest loves content creators and places an emphasis on distributing pins from verified accounts. Pinterest encouraged users to discover new ideas through images that lead to other websites. That’s what makes it different from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. These traditional media platforms want people to stay on their site and make it more difficult to click away. 

When you claim your website, your domain name will be listed in the bio section at the top of your profile. Also, all pins that are shared from your website to Pinterest – by you or any other person – will automatically be attributed to your account. Your profile picture and business name will appear at the bottom of your pins. That’s great for visibility and brand awareness. As a business owner, you get access to the following benefits:

Rich Pins

Once you’ve verified your website, you can now apply for Rich Pins. These are pins that contain extra information, such as a short description and a title. Enabling your website allows Pinterest to pull the metadata from your blog posts – the title and meta description. This helps with your Pinterest SEO, allowing your content to be discovered more easily. Keywords are the foundation for getting found on Pinterest so any step you can take

Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest has an analytics dashboard that provides information about how your account is performing. You can see the number of impressions, engagements, link clicks, close-ups, and saves your pins have received over the past 30 days (or any time period you select.) In addition, you’ll find your top-performing boards by impressions and clicks. You can see all the pins people are sharing from your website and how many times they’ve been saved. This data is invaluable for maintaining an effective Pinterest strategy to grow your account. 

Pinterest Ads

When you claim your website, you can now run Pinterest ads, or promoted pin campaigns. These are a fraction of the cost of Facebook ads and greatly improve the impressions and clicks your pins receive. You can use promoted pin campaigns to grow your email list, sell an online course, drive sales to your online store, and more. When you’re running ads, you can create a custom audience to target previous website visitors, allowing you to reach a warm audience. 

How to claim your website on Pinterest using the Yoast SEO plugin

  • Step 1: Download the Yoast SEO plugin if you don’t already have it.
  • Step 2: Go to Settings and Choose ‘Claim’ on the left-hand corner
  • Step 3: Select the “Add HTML tag” option and click “Next.” Then copy the code provided and click “Next” again. 
  • Step 4: On WordPress, go to the “Settings” page of the Yoast SEO plugin.
  • Step 5: Click on the “Social” tab that appears on the left.
  • Step 6: Click on the Pinterest tab.
  • Step 7: Paste the metadata into the Pinterest box provided. Then click save changes.
  • Step 8: Go back to the Claim Your Website page on Pinterest and click ‘Finish.’

It may take up to 24 hours for Pinterest to validate your website. On the other hand, your website could also be verified instantly or within a few minutes. That was my experience when I verified this website on Pinterest. Once your website is validated, you will see your website name with a green check next to it on the Claim Your Website page.

What if your Pinterest website verification is not working?

The Yoast SEO plugin method is a sure-fire way to get your website verified. If you follow the steps listed above and your website verification is still not working here’s how to troubleshoot. 

  • Ensure that you have copied and pasted the right code into Yoast SEO

Remember that you only need to paste the middle part of the code. You need the full code if you plan to add it to the header section of your site.  

  • If you verified that the code is correct but still can’t claim your website, then you can use plan B. This is the more manual approach, but it still works. Instead of using the Yoast SEO plugin, you’re going to copy and paste the code into the header script of your website theme.

How to claim your website on Pinterest using the header script method

  • Step 1: Go to Settings and Choose ‘Claim’ on the left-hand corner
  • Step 2: Select the “Add HTML tag” option and click “Next.” Then copy the code provided and click “Next” again. 
  • Step 3: On your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Customize > Theme Settings
  • Step 4: Select the Header/Footer Script
  • Step 5: Enter the full Pinterest code in the Header Scripts section

It’s okay if there are already other tags in your header section. The Pinterest tag will still work.

You can also use a plugin called Insert Headers and Footers to automatically insert your Pinterest tag to your header section. However, I don’t like that option because I like to use as few plugins as possible.

There you have it. Within minutes you can verify your website and unlock all the amazing Pinterest business features. Any questions? Drop them in the comment section below. 

Helpful Pinterest Tools

If you want to grow your traffic with Pinterest, here are some additional tools and resources I would recommend.

  • PicMonkey – I use PicMonkey to make professional-looking pins to promote my blog posts and affiliate products. It comes with a wide variety of fonts, templates, and many cool features.
  • Canva – I use this to make pins in addition to PicMonkey. It’s easier to use if you’re new to graphic design but isn’t as sophisticated as PicMonkey. It does come with 400,000 premium photos, which is 100x more than PicMonkey.
  • DepositPhotos – This is my go-to source for high-quality stock photos that I use in both blog posts and pins. The website has over 70 million stock photos, covering virtually every topic you can think of! Deposit Photos is one essential tool that has improved my blog’s appearance and skyrocketed my traffic. I can’t recommend it enough!
  • Pinterest Ninja – This beginner Pinterest course teaches you the fundamentals of keyword research, pin design, and branding. It’s taught by Pinterest marketing expert, Megan Johnson, who gets 8-10k page views a day from Pinterest.
  • Pinteresting Strategies – Want to learn how to get massive traffic from Pinterest without a scheduler? This is by far the best course for that. It’s taught my mommy blogger, Carly Carly Campbell gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. 

One more thing: if you found this post helpful, be sure to share it!

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Pinterest Account Suspended? Get it Reactivated

I’ve had my Pinterest account suspended twice. The first time was back in March 2018, when I had just hired a new Pinterest account manager.

Pinterest flagged my account for suspicious activity and suspended it. It took about a week of back and forth with Pinterest support to get my account reactivated.

The second account suspension happened just last month. This time, Pinterest said it was “because of some activity that goes against our spam policies.”

I hadn’t done anything different than usual or engaged in any spammy activity so I was confused. But I took one simple action and got my account reactivated within a few days. 

If you find your account suspended by Pinterest, don’t panic. You’re not alone. This happens quite often, even to accounts that follow all the rules. There are simple steps you can take to reactivate your account. Let’s go over them.

Ways to appeal a Pinterest account suspension

There are two paths to follow to appeal your Pinterest account suspension. The first step is passive while the second requires a bit more work.

Option 1: Request an account review and wait

The first time my Pinterest account was suspended, I panicked and contacted Pinterest support every day. This last time, I just shrugged, thinking ‘here we go again.” I didn’t reach out to Pinterest support. Rather, I simply took one step that Pinterest suggested. Then, I just sat back and waited.

In the account suspension email I received from Pinterest, they included a link that I could click if I believed they made a mistake. The Pinterest team would review my account within 48 hours to check if I had indeed been spammy. So I just clicked the link and went back to work on other things. I knew I hadn’t been spammy so it was just a matter of time before I got my account back. In the meantime, I put all my Pinterest activities on hold. Four days later, I got this email.

Pinterest reactivated my account, and I went back to business as usual. In the end, it was just a glitch on Pinterest’s part, which is typically the case with account suspensions. 

Option 2: Contact Pinterest support

The second option is to click the link sent in your email AND contact Pinterest support, also known as the Pinterest Help Center. Contacting Pinterest support may help you get your account reactivated faster by speeding up the account review process. Here are the steps to contact Pinterest support.

Go to https://help.pinterest.com/en/article/account-suspension

Fill out your personal information – your name, Pinterest username, and business email. Next, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this. 

This is your opportunity to plead your case. However, it doesn’t mean you should get mad or go on a rant (even though you may be tempted to.) Take a deep breathe. Then write a message that is polite and professional. There’s a real person on the Pinterest support team who will be reviewing your message. Here are three things you want to address in your message:

  1. Briefly explain the situation.
  2. State that you have never knowingly been spammy (the wording here is important. Don’t say that you definitely weren’t spammy as it would be defensive.)
  3. Acknowledge that you’ve read the Pinterest Community Guidelines.
  4. Thank the Pinterest representative for their assistance. 

Why does Pinterest suspend accounts for no apparent reason?

Pinterest is a visual search engine. Like any search engine, it has bots that crawl through the content it has indexed. These bots also monitor users’ activities, like the frequency of pinning and the types of content pinned. 

Pinterest’s main goal is to ensure a good user experience. It takes its community guidelines seriously.  This means that it performs regular sweeps to track down accounts whose actions could result in a negative user experience. Posting the same pin 50 times or pinning inappropriate content can turn users away. That’s why Pinterest’s bots and teams are at work 24/7 to prevent spammy content and get rid of spammy accounts.

While Pinterest’s anti-spam activities help protect the community, sometimes rule-abiding accounts are incorrectly flagged. There are hundreds of different signals that can trigger the Pinterest algorithm to mark you as spam. For instance, if you pin more than usual, that can cause Pinterest to believe your spamming. I believe this might have been the reason my account got suspended the last time. And, I had logged in and pinned some content to my boards for the first time in about a week. I had Tailwind automatically scheduling my pins and Pinterest ads running. Other than that, I hadn’t been as active on Pinterest. 

Do you need to message Pinterest support multiple times?

Some bloggers suggest that you should keep messaging Pinterest until it reinstates your account. I don’t believe that this is necessary. The first time my account was suspended, I messaged Pinterest support every day. Still, it took more than a week to get my account reactivated. 

The Pinterest team receives thousands of requests and messages every day. Pinterest representatives must sort through those requests and respond to them in the order in which they came. I think submitting your support ticket once is sufficient. Just be patient. Your account will get reinstated. It could take anywhere from a few hours to 10 days, but it will be reactivated 

How to prevent your Pinterest account from getting suspended again 

We don’t have 100% control over what Pinterest does to our accounts. Bots can be glitchy and mistakenly flag out content. That, said we can take steps to ensure that we’re following Pinterest best practices to reduce the likelihood of getting suspended. Here are some suggestions:

1. Follow a solid pinning strategy. 

You must have an effective pinning strategy in place to succeed on Pinterest. Whether you’re using Tailwind or pinning manually, you don’t want to pin too much or too little. Pinning too much get your account suspended. Pinning too little can prevent you from maximizing your traffic from Pinterest. 

With the 2020 Pinterest algorithm updates, Pinterest is looking for more fresh content and fewer pins from us. When I first joined Pinterest in 2018, you could get away with pinning 100 times a day. You could also share the same pin to multiple boards. Nowadays, that would be marked as spam. Pinning the same pin to multiple boards creates duplicate content, which Pinterest doesn’t want. You only need to save a new pin to one board, and it’s best to stay within 15-20 pins a day. 

2. Stay up-to-date on Pinterest best practices

Pinterest is always evolving. The Pinterest of today is vastly different from the one I joined in 2018. That means that Pinterest users must keep up with changes to remain compliant with best practices.

If you use Tailwind and want to ensure that your pinning strategy follows best practices, I would recommend the course Pinterest Ninja. It covers the Taiwind strategy that Pinterest expert, Megan Johnson, uses to get 200,000 monthly pageviews from Pinterest. On the other hand, if you don’t want to use Tailwind, I would recommend Pinteresting Strategies. This course explains how mommy blogger, Carly Campbell, gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. Both of these courses are updated regularly so you’ll know whenever Pinterest introduces new rules or algorithm changes. 

3. Understand Pinterest’s community guidelines 

As I mentioned before, Pinterest takes its community guidelines seriously. If you haven’t already, take the time to review these guidelines and become intimately familiar with them. They lay out all the rules and regulations that keep Pinterest running smoothly. These are essential all the things you need to do (and not do) to stay on Pinterest’s good side.  

Well, there you have it. These are the steps you can follow to get out of Pinterest jail and stay out of it. Have you had your Pinterest account suspended lately? What was your experience? Comment below. 

Helpful Pinterest Tools and Resources 

If you want to grow your business with Pinterest, here are some additional tools and resources I would recommend.

  • PicMonkey – I use PicMonkey to make professional-looking pins to promote my blog posts and affiliate products. It comes with a wide variety of fonts, templates, and many cool features.
  • Canva – I use this design tool to make pins in addition to PicMonkey. It’s easier to use if you’re new to graphic design but isn’t as sophisticated as PicMonkey. It does come with 400,000 premium photos, which is 100x more than PicMonkey.
  • DepositPhotos – This is my go-to source for high-quality stock photos that I use in both blog posts and pins. The website has over 70 million stock photos, covering virtually every topic you can think of! Deposit Photos is one essential tool that has improved my blog’s appearance and skyrocketed my traffic. I can’t recommend it enough!
  • Pinterest Ninja – This beginner Pinterest course teaches you the fundamentals of keyword research, pin design, and branding. It’s taught by Pinterest marketing expert, Megan Johnson, who gets 8-10k page views a day from Pinterest.
  • Pinteresting Strategies – Want to learn how to get massive traffic from Pinterest without a scheduler? This is by far the best course for that. It’s taught my mommy blogger, Carly Carly Campbell gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. 

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The Most Common Bluehost Problems That Users Usually Experience

Oh, Bluehost. The problems just don’t stop, do they? In my in-depth Bluehost review, I’ve already documented my nightmarish experience with Bluehost.

But I wanted to go a step further to outline all the Bluehost problems that users often experience.

If you’re currently using Bluehost or considering signing up for Bluehost, I want you to understand the real cost of using their hosting services. Don’t be lured by a low starting price for their basic plan or the recommendations of established bloggers and entrepreneurs. Likewise, don’t stick with Bluehost if you’re experiencing nonstop problems. It’s not worth the trouble, and there are much better alternatives out there.

In this post, I’m going to outline the most common Bluehost problems and offer alternatives for hosting, whether you’re just starting a blog or looking to switch your web host.

Let’s jump right in. 

Bluehost Support

Among the top problems that Bluehost users experience is lackluster customer support. The customer service team is simply ill-equipped to provide timely, quality assistance to Bluehost users. It’s the norm to wait 45 minutes to an hour to get in contact with a representative. Once you do get a representative on chat or on the phone, they are often indifferent, lazy, or downright rude. They won’t give you a proper answer to your question or try to actually help you resolve the issue. Don’t expect any empathy or assistance from the Bluehost support team. They have a couldn’t-be-bothered attitude as if someone forced them to be there. 

I experienced the horror of Bluehost’s customer service countless times during my one-year subscription.  Case in point: let’s talk about my nightmare security experience. Bluehost provides a free SSL certificate when you sign up. That’s what makes your URL ‘https’ instead of ‘http’ – it’s an added layer of security against hackers and viruses. One afternoon, I tried to visit my blog and ran into a page like this one:

Terrified that my website had been hacked, I contacted customer support immediately. I logged into my account and started a support chat. It took a good 50 minutes for someone to finally respond. This blogger had the exact same problem and had to wait 45 minutes to get a hold of someone.

I was in a panic! When a customer service representative finally responded, he had a couldn’t-be-bothered attitude. He essentially blamed me for the problem. It turned out that my SSL certificate had expired and the auto-renewal wasn’t on. Apparently, it was my fault that I didn’t know their free SSL came with an expiration date! Fixing this issue should have been simple, but I had to wait a couple of more hours before they could resolve it. In the end, I was just relieved that my website was back to normal.

Thinking my dilemma was over, I continued my work on WordPress. I asked two blogging friends to provide some feedback on my content and logged off to take a break. When I came back, they had both sent me messages stating that they couldn’t access my website due to a security warning. I checked my website, and the same warning from before was there! Ugh, I was able to pull my braids out! That was the last straw. I put in my final support request and then switched to Siteground.

Security Problems

In addition to server problems, Bluehost is also prone to security problems. We’re not just talking about unrenewed SSL certificates. The security problems are rooted in Bluehost’s internal configuration. A 2019 study conducted by Paulos Yibelo, an independent researcher, found vulnerabilities in Bluehost’s system that would allow cybercriminals to easily take over customer’s accounts in one click. Yibelo also found a lack of password verification and potential for customer information leaks. 

Bluehost of course responded by saying it would take the study seriously and investigate the problem. However, after my own experience with multiple website hacks, I wouldn’t take any chances. It’s not like the customer service would help you resolve the security issue should it arise. Security problems are anxiety-provoking and outright pain in the neck, especially when you can’t get anyone to help you resolve them. This was the main reason why I left Bluehost. I want to run my business with some semblance of peace of mind, and Bluehost couldn’t give me that. 

Bluehost 503 service temporarily unavailable-Downtime issues

Uptime refers to the percentage of time within a given period (month or year) that the server hosting your website is up and running. The closer to 100% this number is, the better. All web hosting companies aim for 100% uptime, but having a perfect uptime is highly unlikely. Technical glitches and server problems happen usually. The best that web hosting companies can do is to keep those issues at a minimum.

Downtime is the opposite of uptime. It refers to the percentage of time within a given period the server hosting your website is down. Naturally, web hosting companies want to keep downtime as close to zero as possible. However, occasional maintenance and technical issues mean that any web hosting company will experience downtime once in a while. The best web hosting companies have the least amount of down time. 

Why does downtime matter? You want your site to be up and running whenever visitors land on it. Otherwise, all the time and effort you put into producing content, curating products, or optimizing for lead generation will be in vain.  If your web hosting service is constantly down, so will your website. This is terrible for business because consumers won’t return to your website if they have a negative experience. This results in lost leads, lost affiliate sales, lost ad revenue, and other missed opportunities. In a nutshell, you won’t be in business for long if your web host’s uptime is low. That’s why you should most definitely pay attention to the uptime of any web hosting service you choose.

Billing Issues

It’s also quite common to hear about people getting charged unexpected fees or being overcharged for their plan. Billing issues are among the major complaints that Bluehost users have. Unauthorized autorenewals of hosting plans seem to be a recurring issue. Take, for instance, this recent comment on my Bluehost review post:

While I personally never experienced any billing issues when I used Bluehost, many other people have. This is just something to keep in mind if you’re considering their services. 

Is Bluehost Good for Beginners?

Bluehost has an affordable starting price ($3.95/month), which makes it appealing to beginners. However, you have to factor in the cost of frequent downtime, security problems, server problems, unhelpful customer service, and other limitations. When you consider what you don’t get from Bluehost, you’ll understand that it’s better to pay an additional $2-$3 a month for a better web hosting service.  

How Reliable is Bluehost?

According to Trustpilot, Bluehost’s reliability has a poor rating. Its web hosting services have an overall rating of 2.2 out of 5.0 out of 800 reviews. A total of 78% of users rated Bluehost as poor or bad. The low ratings and regular complaints from Bluehost users about downtime, server problems, security problems, and poor customer service indicate that Bluehost is not a reliable web hosting platform. 

What is Better than Bluehost?

There are many web hosting services that are better than Bluehost in terms of customer service, uptime, security, and other important criteria.

They web hosting services include:

Out of the aforementioned hosting companies, I would recommend Siteground. I haven’t used the other companies so I’d recommend you research them as well. I have been using Siteground for nearly three years, and it has exceeded all my expectations. From the uptime to the customer service, Siteground is in a class of its own. But don’t just take my word for it. Look at the reviews on Trustpilot. Siteground has an excellent rating of 4.8 out of 5.0 stars. 

Right after I switched from Bluehost, I knew I had made the right decision. The customer service team was timely, attentive, and incredibly helpful. They made my transition seamless. It takes about 30 seconds to get in contact with a customer service representative, and they are properly trained and courteous. Working with them is a joy! Read my full Siteground review to learn more about the pros and cons of their services.