Last Updated on December 6, 2020 by ellduclos
Are you making Pinterest mistakes? If you have been trying to grow your blog traffic using Pinterest, but no matter what you do, you can’t get the results you want then you might be making these Pinterest errors.
Recently Pinterest went through some changes with their algorithm and I have received so many questions in regards to why bloggers are seeing a decline in their pin impressions and blog traffic.
Usually when I do a brief Pinterest audit for bloggers to see where they might be going wrong with Pinterest, I see the same Pinterest mistakes consistently happening. That’s why I am using this post to share some of the major Pinterest mistakes that might be causing you to see a decline in your blog traffic from Pinterest.
If you want to grow your blog traffic using Pinterest marketing then keep reading!
Disclaimer: Affiliate links are used. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
8 Pinterest Mistakes That Are Bringing Your Pin Impressions Down!
Re-pinning others’ content
One Pinterest mistake that you are probably making is re-pinning others’ content. You might be thinking, what?! Isn’t Pinterest’s purpose to RE-PIN content? Yes. For PERSONAL users. If you have a business account and use it to grow your website traffic then you need to make sure you are pinning YOUR content.
Pinterest sent out e-mails stating that re-pinning others’ content and re-pinning your own content to multiple boards is hurting your reach more than helping. I only pin my own content and this has brought me the best results.
Re-pinning your own content to multiple boards
Another Pinterest mistake I see a lot of bloggers make is re-pinning their old pins constantly. Pinterest doesn’t want you to re-pin old pins. They want you to create FRESH pins consistently. If you aren’t creating new pins consistently and you keep recycling your old pins, you aren’t going to get the link clicks you want.
It’s a pain in the butt to create new pins, I know… BUT, it makes a difference. I try to pin 5-10 new pins a day. If you want to learn more about my pinning strategy then you need this course. I get over 100,000 blog views most months using Pinterest.
I created this fresh pin NOT EVEN 24 hours ago and it’s already brought my blog almost 500 page views. FRESH PINS ARE KEY.
I create all of my pins using Canva pro and I also use stock photos on my pins otherwise I run out of new images.
Some of my favorite feminine stock photo sites:
REMEMBER: Don’t pin the same pin image to the same board more than once. You can pin the same link to the same board as long as you switch up the pin image.
You can also check out my manual pinning strategy in this Pinterest course too.
Pinning without using proper SEO strategies
Pinterest is a visual search engine which means it’s SO IMPORTANT to practice good SEO. If you are pinning your pins without keyword optimized descriptions then Pinterest isn’t going to know how to rank and categorize your pin.
You also want to make sure your board descriptions and titles are keyword optimized as well. When you pin your pins, you don’t want to pin a pin about dinner recipes to a beauty board. It just doesn’t make sense. Pin your content to related, relevant boards only.
Creating pins that aren’t click worthy
I know we don’t want to accept the fact that our pin designs slack, but sometimes that’s a huge reason as to why our pins don’t perform the way we want them to.
What makes a click worthy pin?
- easy to read text overlay (if your pin is just an image with no text overlay, your link clicks will be lower most of the time)
- make sure to use POWER words in your titles
- at least 600 x 900 (horizontal pins don’t perform as well as vertical)
- colors aren’t too harsh on the eyes
- images are high quality and clear
Canva also has tons of Pinterest templates you can easily customize to your liking. I also have a yearly membership to Pixistock what comes with customizable Pinterest templates too!
PAUSE & grab a free list of over 100 POWER words and a Pinterest audit check list!
Being inconsistent
A huge Pinterest mistake that I see bloggers make is not staying consistent. If you aren’t pinning consistently then you won’t get the results you want. I recommend pinning at least 5 pins a day. Pinterest has a free scheduling tool built into their platform if you struggle with manually pinning.
Using group boards
I used to be ALL ABOUT group boards. However, they aren’t needed and they aren’t as effective as they used to be.
Pinterest sees group boards as spammy now because they aren’t being used the way they were originally intended. Pinterest created this feature for people to collaborate together and share ideas.
For example, let’s say you are planning a wedding…You could create a wedding planning board and add your wedding planner as a collaborator to that board so you both can share ideas for your wedding to that board. That’s the purpose of creating a board to collaborate on Pinterest.
Once Pinterest noticed bloggers were using group boards to boost their reach they cut the reach of group boards. Now they push personal boards.
A lot of group boards aren’t niche related and have hundreds of collaborators with random content being pinned to that group board. This also messes with Pinterest SEO.
Focusing on Pinterest monthly views
Here’s the thing, impressions are nice…BUT they don’t matter. An impression isn’t blog traffic. You could have millions of Pinterest views, but if you aren’t pinning strategically then those impressions will equal very little blog traffic.
Link clicks matter more. The goal is to create pins that bring you link clicks and drive traffic to your blog.
When your pins take off and start bringing you link clicks, your monthly Pinterest views will usually go up.
If your Pinterest account has 500,000 monthly views, it’s very doubtful that your blog traffic is over 100,000 monthly. So don’t stress your monthly views as they never equal out to blog traffic. Focus on increasing your link clicks and your monthly views will follow.
I know it’s frustrating when you see a dip in your monthly views because they are public for everyone to see, but I promise monthly views will go up and down all the time. If you panic every time they drop you’ll never be satisfied.
Expecting results over night
I see this happen ALL THE TIME. Bloggers will learn Pinterest marketing and implement the strategies for a week and get discouraged when they don’t have 50,000 blog views within that first week. Just like anything else Pinterest marketing takes time. You need to give it time. Stay consistent with your pinning strategies for at least 3-6 months. Over night success is rare.
I hope you found this post helpful! Hopefully you can fix some of the Pinterest mistakes you are making and find that your blog traffic will start to increase again!
Thanks, Ell. Your posts are always so helpful! xo Nipa
Thank you so much Nipa!
Thank you so much for this post Ell!
Thanks Emi! So glad you found it helpful 🙂
I needed this advice because I am doing everything wrong lol. Thanks for the tips. I have a hard time getting clicks but now I see why.
So glad you found these tips helpful! Thank you Jacqueline! Here’s to more link clicks soon 🙂
As always, you’re so helpful! Thank you for trying to make our lives easier!! Your advice is always right on point and makes me feel like I can do this!
Thank you so much Calie!
Wow,Ell thank you so much for sharing this, I never knew that group board is not relevant anymore. Thank you so much for sharing.am bookmarking this
Thank you so much Constance!
This has been extremely helpful, thank you so much! I can’t believe how much Pinterest has changed, it’s difficult to keep up xx
It’s crazy right?! So glad you found these tips helpful!
Thanks Ell for this post. I’ve been off Pinterest for a while due to personal reasons and a lot has changed.
With all of the changes, do you think it is still worth using Tailwind Tribes? Are business owners still promoting each other in Tribes? Is Tribes helping with traffic?
Speaking of Tailwind Tribes is that something that you cover in your Pinterest course?
Cheers
Thea
Thank you so much! I do cover this in my course, yes! As for tribes still being useful, I personally don’t use them anymore. I still use Tailwind though!
This has been helpful. I’ve only started with my Pinterest and it’s great to see this post. Thanks so much!
http://www.thequeensights.com
So glad you found it helpful! Thank you!
I needed this. Thank you so much for writing this ❤️
Happy to help! Thank you!!
Thank you for these tips! I have a lot of changes to make to my Pinterest account to get link clicks, but after reading your advice I know I can do it!
So glad you found these tips helpful Ali! Thank you!
This is a great post! I’m definitely guilty of a few things here so I’ll get my act together. Thanks for being so helpful ?
So glad you found it helpful! Thank you!
This is so useful! Thank you!!
Thank you so much Sarah!
*Scurries over to Pinterest to fix some blunders* <3
Love it!
Hola,
Thank you very much for this helpful post.
Adriana
So glad to hear this, thank you so much!
Thanks ELL! I just started using Pinterest a few weeks ago and boy have I been doing it wrong! I’m so glad I found your post! I will def be implementing your strategies! Thanks again! 🙂
Thank you so much Carmen! Can’t wait to see where Pinterest takes you 🙂
This post was a HUGE help! I didn’t know how wrong I was utilizing Pinterest until now, so I’m really excited to implement this advice. My impressions have been going up but I have not been able to get my link clicks to budge at all. Thank you so much!
Thank you so much Liana! So glad you found these tips helpful 🙂
This is so helpful I didn’t even realize I was making some of these mistakes! Thank you!
So glad it helped! Thank you 🙂
So helpful! You said to only pin your own items, do you pin different images from the same article? I am new to blogging and don’t have a lot so I don’t want my boards to look empty haha
I usually pin different images and create my own pins as well with text overlay 🙂 I have so many pins for each post that I pin every week!
Definitely guilty of paying attention to monthly viewers even though they are not super important! Loved these tips!
I think a lot of us are guilty of that too!! So glad you found these tips helpful 🙂 Thank you Kelly!!
I have been guilty of so many of these, thank you!
So glad you found it helpful! Thank you!
I’ve definitely slacked out with creating pins but this helped me a lot!
Creating fresh pins is frustrating but makes a difference! You got this 🙂
I’ve been doing everything you say not to do! Thank you for the post!
So happy to hear this thank you!
Some very useful tips in this post! Thank you x
Thank you Jenna!!
Awesome tips!!
Brianna | briannamarielifestyle.com/
Thank you so much!!
I had no idea about pinning other people’s content! This is going to be a time-saver now that I know this 🙂 Also, I purchased your pin templates yesterday and made 15+ new pins this morning and I absolutely love them!! I got bored of my old pins and now creating new ones is so enjoyable. Your blog is always a huge help! Thank you for generously sharing your knowledge and experience 🙂
This makes me so happy to hear! Thank you for always being so supportive 🙂
Hi Ell, thanks so much for this post!
I’m only super confused about re-pinning others content, haven’t found anything about this yet (although I’m aware about the fresh pins). Is there a way you could share this Pinterest e-mail?
Your explanation on group boards was fantastic!
Thank you so much! I’ll go back and find the email and add it to this post 🙂
Thank you for all of these tips. I was surprised to see some of these on here, but the way you explained them were very sensible!
So glad you found it helpful! You are very welcome 🙂
We’re still VERY new to Pinterest and blogging, but one thing we just can’t seem to figure out, is if we only publish 1-4 new blog posts per month, how can we maintain creating even 5 new pins every day?
Hi Ryan! That’s a great question. The good news is you can create more than one pin for your blog posts and upload them manually to Pinterest! I create new pins for old content all the time 🙂
Hi, Thank you so much for sharing this info with us. How many pins do you create per blog? Is there a limit? I have read before that 5-6 pins per blog post should be the max. What do you suggest?
I find the limit doesn’t matter much as long as you switch up the pin design and don’t spam pin them all at once 🙂
Thank you so much for this post!!
You are so welcome!
I was making a couple of these mistakes! Thank you!
Very welcome!!
So how many pins do you think each one of your blog posts has? I am afraid I might be making too many. Is that even a thing? Thanks!
I honestly have lost count! So I wouldn’t worry too much 🙂
Thank you so much for these tips! Really helpful! Going to incorporate them in my Pinterest strategy going forward, fingers crossed 😊😊
So happy to hear this