fbpx
Select Page
Pin It Right: Answering 16 Common Pinterest Questions

Pin It Right: Answering 16 Common Pinterest Questions

by | Apr 25, 2024 | Pinterest

I’ve consulted with individuals and businesses on Pinterest and I’ve been asked lots of different questions about it. But surprisingly, what I found is that many of those people all have the same question or a variant of that question.

For this post, we’ll be answering the most common questions regarding Pinterest to save you time and money.

Common Questions on Pinterest

1. Does Pinning Time Matter?

No, timing doesn’t significantly impact your pin engagement. It does not matter what time you pin. However, you will see increased engagements during certain times of that day. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be posting during those times of engagement but it’s something you can test.

You can see certain engagement rates by going into your analytics. You can do this by:

  • Clicking the “last 24 hours” option on your dashboard and;
  • Changing the metric to “Engagement rate”

Pinterest dashboard showing the last 24 hours option

Let’s see this as an example. This is the analytics on Sunday where you can see the highest engagement point was 4.96% which was at 8:00 p.m. UTC. Now, checking that on my specific time zone, it was 2 p.m. on a Sunday. 

Pinterest dashboard showing the analytics on the last 24 hours

What can you do about it? You can go through and track this day by day and see which time you are getting the most engagement. Then, you can try posting during those times so you can take note of these engagement rates and possibly post during those times in the future. 

However, generally speaking, I don’t post at any specific time, and then when my audience is online, they will go through and see those pins ready. One thing is for sure though, analytics can help track engagement rates by hour to inform posting times.

2. Do Followers Matter on Pinterest?

Here’s what I want you to know. Followers represent only a small portion of the total reach on Pinterest. So no, followers on Pinterest don’t matter. 

What you should focus on more is your actual monthly engagement numbers and monthly reach that you have inside the platform. That is a far better metric to measure the success of your marketing versus how many followers you have. Also, the quality of your followers is certainly more important than the quantity of followers.

3. How Often Should I Be Pinning?

The answer to this question is not as straightforward as giving you a simple number of pins to post each day, week, or month.

Whatever is sustainable for you and your business should be your priority. I also want you to learn that consistency is more important than the actual amount of times you pin. 

For example, if you say that for the next year, you are going to pin two to three times a week every week versus somebody posting thousands of pins in a month and then feels completely burned out and doesn’t post the rest of the year after that.

The person who consistently pins and shows engagement on Pinterest is going to have better results.

But here’s what I generally recommend. You can start with two to three pins a week, feel that out, and see how that goes. If that feels sustainable and it feels like something you can do for at least a long period, then that’s good. 

However, if you feel that it’s not enough then go through and the next week bump it up to maybe five pins a week, and then if that feels good, bump it up to daily pins. 

From my personal experience and working with other accounts honestly, the best cadence if you’re producing good content is posting daily to two times a day. But once again that’s only if it’s sustainable for you and something that you can see yourself doing over the long run. If not stick to posting two to three times a week you’ll still see growth from that.

4. Is it Possible to Pin Too Much on Pinterest?

The answer to this is no. I think after you post five or more times a day, you kind of see diminishing turns but that doesn’t mean you can’t do that if you don’t want to.. Also, one thing that is important to note is that if you’re going to be doing mass amounts of pins on a daily or monthly basis and you’re using a scheduler, it should be a Pinterest-approved vendor.

A look inside a content scheduler

Using Pinterest-approved services such as scheduler is important since if we look at Pinterest policies under “Spam.” The very first bullet point, you can see, “Don’t use automation tools that haven’t been explicitly approved by Pinterest.” 

Pinterest's policy when it comes to Spam contents

You can find Inspirations and approved tools on the Partners page. It will give you a list of those approved partners for automating Pins.

The two tools that I personally recommend are Tailwind and then Canva. If you’re just looking for quick two tools that you can use for automation those are probably the two that I would recommend.

If not, you can go through the list and look at all the different partners that they have inside of here.

So to sum that all up no it’s not possible to pin too much if you are using an approved automation tool. If you are using a non-approved tool and you post too much you will get yourself flagged and probably your account shut down.

5. Should I Delete Underperforming Pins?

No, you should not delete underperforming pins. There are no negatives to having them there and also the way the Pinterest algorithm works you never know when a pin is going to take off, it could be days, months, or years from when you posted it.

For instance, I’ve had pins that were “underperformance” for 6 months, and all of a sudden they started ranking inside Pinterest and getting tons of clicks and traffic coming through them. There’s just really no benefit to doing that and there are lots of positives to keeping your pins on your profile 

6. How to Rank Pins and Get Found?

When it comes to this question there are four different things that you should understand when it comes to the algorithm and what the algorithm looks for, when Pinterest decides which pins should show up at the top of the results page based on the following.

  • Domain quality

Domain quality is the experience that the user is taken to after they click on the pin. A few things Pinterest looks at to determine domain quality are the site speed, and that the user experience is good, (not getting bombarded with too many pop-ups or ads).

So ask yourself when you’re creating pins is the landing page or the page where I’m sending people to after they click the pin a good experience or a bad experience?

  • Pin quality

The click-through rate and the engagement rate ( amount of people that are saving that pin, commenting, liking, etc) is a huge indications of which content Pinterest should be showing at the top of the results.

Spoiler alert down the road we’re going to be talking a little bit more about this question of how to design pins that convert.

  • Pinner quality

This comes down to your actual profile. How often are you posting? How often are you interacting with other people’s pins?

I think there is a lot of value in actually going through and engaging with other people’s pins. You might want to start commenting and acting like a real user instead of having 100% automation where you’re never really logging into your Pinterest account.

  • Topic relevancy

It makes sense that when some user goes in and types in “chicken recipes” inside of Pinterest, that user expects to get pins about chicken recipes. There are lots of different ways that Pinterest decides which pin is actually about a chicken recipe. The images, the keywords that you put inside there, the description, and the title are all a big deal. You want to make sure that you are optimizing all of those options to show up for specific keywords.

7. Should I Repin Other’s Content?

The answer is yes, Pinterest was designed for you to put other people’s pins into boards, organize them, and repin them. It’s a good indication that you are an active user inside of Pinterest. So yes, go through and repin other people’s content that is related to your content into those boards!

 I think there are huge advantages and a lot of people miss out by not repining other people’s content. Now this doesn’t mean go through and pin other people’s content as your own. What I mean is to repin their content so that you give them the credit. While their pin is inside of your boards, mix it in with your content as well. It just gives you more likelihood to rank boards inside of Pinterest.

8. Where to Use Keywords?

When it comes to utilizing keywords, there’s one place that I think is probably the most important to have your keyword – the title of your pin. The next most important place is to have it in your description somewhere. 

It doesn’t mean to go through and keyword stuff that into your description and title as many times as you can. What I recommend is to go through and sprinkle it in there and make it an actual cohesive title and description in the pin.

Other places where you can add keywords are your files. So when you go through and download the pin, you can name that a specific keyword.

There’s lots of debate on whether that helps or not but I always do it just in case to give Pinterest even more data about what that pin is about. Lastly, you will want to go through and insert keywords on your board descriptions in your profile description, and in your profile headline as well.

9. How to Find Keywords?

There are three different methods that you can utilize to find keywords. 

  • Search bar

On the search bar, type in chicken as an example and you’ll see it auto recommend lots of different ideas for you.

Pinterest search bar with the query "chicken"

These could all be specific keywords or pins that you can go through and create. For example chicken breast recipes, chicken thigh recipes, and you can go through and do the same thing. Instead of just doing chicken you can do “chicken a”  and then it will give you all the things that start with chicken and an A and then go through and do that for the entire alphabet.

  • Pinterest keyword tool

Inside the Pinterest ads tool, you don’t actually have to go through and create an ad to create this but you can go through and click inside of here and type in chicken as well and then you can see it will come up with a lot of different keywords and kind of give you an idea of the monthly search volume.

Doing keyword research on Pinterest ads tool

  • Pin Inspector tool

This is my favorite. You can get this for one payment which is nice and not like a recurring thing. Type in “chicken” and then it will automatically do the A to Z search for you. You can see it will give you a ton of different keywords and the current rank for those. 

A look inside the Pin Inspector tool

This is the fastest way to do keyword research. You can pick this Pin Inspector for under $50 for a lifetime license.

So you have two free options and then a paid one!

10. What Creative Performs Well?

To answer this question, it would be easier to give you a resource that you can take as a reference. This is the Pinterest Creative Swipe File, which you can get and access for free.

The first slide of Pinterest Creative file

It is a file containing 25 slides of various creative samples that work on Pinterest.

Pinterest Creative file showing different creatives

11. Should I Use Hashtags?

No, do not use hashtags. Hashtags currently don’t do anything inside of Pinterest. Three to five years ago, hashtags made sense on Pinterest. But today they are not clickable anymore, which means it won’t affect you in any way.

To be honest and in my opinion, hashtags also look kind of tacky and just don’t serve any purpose at all.

12. Is Reusing Content Acceptable?

Let’s define the term ‘reuse” here first. When we say “reuse”, it means it’s your content on Pinterest that you’ll use again. If you are using somebody else’s content, it’s best to get their permission and not steal other’s content.

When it comes to reusing content on Pinterest, there are multiple times I use the same image. What I do is I will put a new overlay on it, tweak it in some other way, and then pin it multiple times.

It’s a hundred percent okay to go through and reuse content on Pinterest. One thing you should know is that Pinterest prioritizes what’s called “fresh pins” or “fresh images”. That’s why it’s important to have a mix of fresh content and  reuse content. There’s nothing wrong resuing content as long as you own the content,  in doing so and it even helps you have a longer shelf life when making videos or photos.

13. Should I have a Personal or Business Pinterest Account?

You should always choose a business account whether you are an individual or a company. Here are two reasons why.

  • It’s free to go through and create a business account.
  • You can see it gives you access to so much more. It doesn’t limit your reach by any means by having a business account.

A simple graphic comparing the personal and business account on Pinterest

It can give you insights and analytics for your business account, which a personal account doesn’t have. I recommend creating a business account or if you already have a personal account, you can easily switch it over to a business account.

14. What Is the Best Niche for Pinterest?

The answer to this one is relative. Whatever one you are passionate about or have inside knowledge about is the best niche to start with.

This is because it will allow you to have an edge over your competition and create valuable content. You might want to ask yourself, “What am I passionate about or what can I see myself creating content for a long time?”

Now, here’s this little cheat sheet of top niches that I’ve identified inside Pinterest. This isn’t a full list but here are the ones I find useful on the platform.

Popular niches on Pinterest

15. What Is the Importance of Pinterest Group Boards?

I know there are a lot of people stressed about getting access to group boards or collaborating on these group boards. To be honest, if this was once again three years ago they would be very important. But now group boards have little to no value similar to hashtags.

Pinterest has kind of deprioritized them and honestly I never utilize group boards. I have access to one or two that I’ve created just to experiment but they don’t do anything for you so just focus on creating your boards and getting as much content in them as possible.

16. What Are Some Pinterest Tools for Faster Growth?

If you’re looking for the best tools to use inside of Pinterest I recommend checking out the best Pinterest tools. It goes through the seven tools that I use the most inside Pinterest.

Conclusion

So there you are, the most common questions answered. Pinterest might be daunting at first if you’re not yet familiar with it but these questions will serve as your starting point to learn the ins and outs of the platform. Take this as a guideline and start your Pinterest journey today. Happy pinning!

How Pinterest SEO Actually Works In 2023

How Pinterest SEO Actually Works In 2023

by | Jul 12, 2023 | Pinterest

Pinterest is a powerful platform for discovering and sharing content. In this article, we will explore how Pinterest SEO works and provide actionable steps to optimize your pins and profiles on Pinterest. Understanding the different ways your content can be discovered and how the Pinterest search engine operates is crucial for maximizing your visibility on the platform.

 

 

How Pinterest Works

Now when it comes to Pinterest, there are basically three different ways that your content can be discovered, and all three of these ways are very different. It’s important for you to understand what each of these are so that you know how to optimize for each of these areas to be discovered.

 

  • Home Feed: The home feed is personalized based on your recent interactions, such as saving pins or commenting. It is similar to the “For You” page on TikTok, showing content tailored to your interests.Home Feed of Pinterest Feed
  • Watch Tab: The watch tab, available only on mobile, is similar to the home feed but focuses solely on videos. It also suggests content based on your interactions.

Watch Tab of Pinterest Analytics

  • Search: Pinterest is primarily a search engine, and users can search for pins, videos, boards, profiles, and products. Optimizing for search is essential to be discovered on Pinterest.

How Pinterest SEO Works

Let’s talk about how Pinterest SEO works. Pinterest’s goal is to match the most relevant content to the user’s search query. Relevance is determined by how closely your pins match your audience’s interests and specific search queries. To ensure your content is relevant, you need to consider the following factors:

 

Things to Consider for Relevance

  • Domain Quality: Pinterest values high-quality websites. While specific guidelines are available for merchant center applicants, it is also important to avoid poor editorial content, improper grammar, broken links, blurry images, incomplete pages, and excessive pop ups on your website.
  • Profile Quality: Your profile, pins, pinning activity, and boards should reflect quality and relevance. Optimize your profile by making sure it represents your brand accurately, using relevant keywords in your profile description.
  • Topic Relevance: Ensure your pins and their destinations are relevant to users’ search queries.
  • Pin Quality: Pinterest measures pin quality based on popularity and current trends. The number of saves (also known as saves) is a crucial metric for relevance.

 

Saves

Saves are the most important metric for ranking pins on Pinterest. Pinterest’s Creator Rewards Program emphasized the importance of saves by offering bonuses based on the number of saves a pin receives. Saves indicate that users find the content valuable and relevant. You can check your pin performance and saves in Pinterest Analytics.

Pinterest Analytics Page

 

Pins

 

Relevance Starts with Keyword Research

 

To ensure your pins are relevant to users’ search queries, it all begins with thorough keyword research. Follow these steps to conduct effective keyword research on Pinterest:

 

  1. Start by visiting Pinterest and entering your target keyword in the search bar.
  2. Make sure you’re on the “All Pins” tab to see the suggested keywords related to your search term.
  3. Take note of the relevant keywords suggested by Pinterest and compile them in a separate document or spreadsheet.
  4. To explore more keyword ideas, append a letter of the alphabet after your initial keyword and see the suggested results.
  5. Analyze the keywords and select the most suitable ones for your pin. Choose long-tail keywords when possible, as they tend to be more specific and less competitive.

 

Value

 

One crucial aspect of optimizing your pins is to provide value beyond the destination link. By offering valuable content directly within your pin, you increase the chances of attracting more saves and appearing higher in Pinterest search results.

 

When creating your pins, strive to provide immediate value to users on the Pinterest platform itself. Consider using tools like Canva to enhance your pins with visual elements, useful information, or compelling statistics related to your keyword. This will entice users to save your pin even before visiting the destination link.

 

Making Your Pin SEO-Friendly

 

Now that you’ve conducted keyword research and understood the importance of value, it’s time to optimize your pin for success in Pinterest SEO. Here’s a step-by-step process to follow:

 

  1. Name your source file with your target keyword to signal relevance to Pinterest.
  2. Create a new pin on Pinterest, selecting the relevant folder and uploading the optimized image.
  3. Choose a title for your pin that includes your target keyword.

Ad Creation Page on Pinterest Business

  1. Write a compelling description for your pin. Consider using AI-powered tools like Jasper to generate engaging descriptions that incorporate your keyword naturally.

Jasper.ai Home Page

  1. Ensure that the URL destination is relevant to the search query you’re targeting.
  2. Publish your optimized pin or schedule it for later.

 

Remember to add relevant text overlays to your pin, if applicable, and select a board that aligns with your pin’s topic for maximum SEO reach.

 

Pinterest SEO Tips For Video Pins

 

Video pins on Pinterest provide an excellent opportunity to engage users with dynamic content. While the overall optimization process for video pins is similar to regular pins, there are a few key differences to consider:

 

  1.  Add relevant tags to your video pins to signal their topic to Pinterest. These tags help Pinterest understand the content and improve its search visibility.
    Keyword Indicator on Pinterest Business
  2. Mention keywords in your video’s voiceover or accompanying text descriptions. This reinforces the topic and relevance of your video to Pinterest’s algorithm.

 

By incorporating tags and mentioning keywords, you can enhance the SEO performance of your video pins and increase their chances of reaching a wider audience.

 

Pinterest SEO for Boards

Optimizing your boards is another crucial aspect of Pinterest SEO. Here’s how to make your boards more search-friendly:

 

  1. Choose keyword-rich titles for your boards. Instead of generic terms, consider long-tail keywords specific to your niche. For example, “Accent Walls in Living Room” instead of just “Accent Walls.”
  2. Craft compelling board descriptions that include your target keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing and focus on creating meaningful and coherent sentences.
  3. Aim to have at least 15 relevant pins in each board. The more high-quality, relevant pins you add, the better your board’s chances of ranking higher in search results.
  4. If possible, repin content from other users within your boards. This can increase the overall relevance and diversity of your boards, further enhancing their Pinterest SEO potential.

 

Optimizing Your Pinterest Profile

 

Your profile is a valuable asset when it comes to Pinterest SEO. Follow these tips to optimize your Pinterest profile for improved search visibility:

 

  1. Claim your website on Pinterest. This verification process provides various benefits, including signaling to Pinterest that your website’s content is legitimate and trustworthy.
  2. Write a concise and keyword-inclusive description for your profile. Highlight your niche, target audience, and key offerings while maintaining a natural tone.
    Description of Ad on Pinterest Business
  3. Add keyword phrases to your profile name, if relevant. This can help your profile appear in search results for specific keyword queries.
  4. Create and curate at least five to ten full boards related to your niche. The more boards you have, the better chance you have to demonstrate expertise and attract a wider audience.

 

Remember, the content you provide within your boards and profile is essential. Continuously update and curate your boards to offer valuable and engaging content to your audience.

 

Conclusion

Understanding how Pinterest works and optimizing your content for Pinterest SEO is crucial for success on the platform. By focusing on relevance, particularly through saves, you can improve your visibility and engagement on Pinterest. Remember to consider all aspects of Pinterest SEO, including pins, videos, boards, profiles, and products, to maximize your reach and achieve your goals on the platform. Happy pinning!

 

A Guide to Pinterest Marketing in 2022

A Guide to Pinterest Marketing in 2022

by | Jul 5, 2022 | Pinterest

My Pinterest strategy that gets 10M monthly views

While many people are aware of Pinterest as a platform, not many people understand how to use Pinterest to grow their business. As a result, very few people take the time to learn Pinterest and the power that it can have. Luckily, you found your way to this post where I’ll be sharing my Pinterest strategy, which I use to get millions of views and thousands of clicks through to my website monthly, all for free.

Why should I use Pinterest?

It’s a massive search engine.

Pinterest is the 3rd largest search engine behind Google and YouTube. It is a social media platform as well, but first and foremost it is a search engine where people go with the intent to search for content.

Pinterest content is evergreen.

Because Pinterest content is searchable, if something you post ranks, it can drive clicks and traffic to your website for years to come. On other social media platforms, the algorithm usually shows your content to a user for 24 to 48 hours, and then you have to create another post to maintain engagement. But with Pinterest, there’s a snowball effect, where having multiple pins ranking can pay dividends for a long time, which allows you to “set it and forget it”.

It has 431 monthly active users.

With a huge active user base which has skyrocketed in the past 2 years, posting on Pinterest in 2022 gives you access to a sizable potential audience that spans all age groups and marketing demographics.

Is Pinterest right for my business?

Here is a quick process to find out if Pinterest is a good fit for your business: search your niche or product on Pinterest, making sure that the dropdown to the right of the search bar is set to “All Pins”.Then, go to the Profiles tab.

Here you can see what other people are doing in your space. If you see profiles with massive amounts of followers, it’s a safe bet that Pinterest is working well for their business. And since they are inside of your niche, this is a very good sign that you should be on Pinterest. This is also a great way to find inspiration for things that are working. On the other hand, if you are seeing profiles with less engagement, you still have the opportunity to be a trailblazer and introduce your desired audience to Pinterest, but you should keep in mind that it’s less of a sure bet.

How do I get started on Pinterest?

Once you have decided that Pinterest is right for your business, it’s time to define your goal for Pinterest. Here are some possible goals:


●  Getting more sales

●  Getting more leads

●  Driving more traffic to your website

●  Getting more followers on Pinterest

●  Building general brand awareness

Depending on your answer, you may want to change your strategy accordingly, but this guide should help with all of those goals.

Once you have a goal in mind, your next step is to create your business account. Here is how to do this:

 

  1. Go to https://www.pinterest.com/
  2. If you are new to Pinterest, select “Sign Up” in the upper right-hand corner and then “Create a free business account”.
  3. If you have an existing Pinterest account, select the arrow in the upper right-hand corner next to your profile picture, select “Add account”, and select “Create a free business account”.

A business account allows you to grow your audience, drive traffic, and sell more products, and it also gives you access to more analytics than a personal account does.

Note: One common concern is that creating a business account will cause Pinterest to limit your organic reach. In my experience, this is simply not true. As long as your content is good, Pinterest will show it.

How do I grow my Pinterest account?

To grow your Pinterest account, you can create boards. The strategy I use to get my boards ranking in searches is the following:

  1. First, come up with 4 or 5 topics for which you want your business to show up as a result.
  2. Create a board for each of those topics and add other people’s existing pins to that board.
  3. Once that board has some traffic, add your own content to the board as pins; this method ensures that your board already has some impressions so that your original content will be shown to people as well.

Here’s how to create boards:

  1. Click on your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner.
  2. Click on the “Saved” tab.
  3. Click the + button and select Board.

4. Name your board using the topics you chose earlier. In this example, I am creating a board for an Office Makeover project I will be working on.

5. Save 20-50 of the suggested pins which are displayed to your board, as these are pins which are already showing up for your chosen topic.

Now that we have our boards created, it’s time to create our own pins to add to the boards. My preferred way to create pins is using Canva because it’s a very easy and free drag-and-drop system. Here’s how to use Canva to create pins:

  1. Go to Canva or create an account if you don’t already have one
  2. Click the “Create a design” button in the upper right-hand corner and search “Pinterest”.
  3. The dropdown should provide “Pinterest pin” as an option, and you can also select your size here.

3. Select a template from the menu on the left and edit it to show your content. All of the elements in the design can be moved around so you can change it to your liking.

4. Finally, you have the option to Publish to Pinterest directly from Canva if you would like using the button in the upper right-hand corner. If you have the paid version of Canva, you can also choose to schedule the post for later using the calendar button next to “Publish Now”.

How often should I post to Pinterest?

Personally, when I started I was posting multiple times a day to get the momentum going. Now that I have that momentum, I tend to post every two to three days, so don’t feel like you have to maintain the pace of posting multiple times a day indefinitely.

Even more importantly, consistency matters much more than frequency. If posting daily feels overwhelming to you, then don’t feel as though you have to hit that mark. If your goal is to just post once a week, then just make sure to set that goal and stick with it, and you will see the benefits over time. If you find that you are getting more confident and efficient with posting, you can always decide to post more frequently over time.

What are the best practices for Pinterest pins?

Pinterest has very thorough documentation on their website of creative best practices. I would definitely recommend reading through all of their advice and following it as much as you can. You can also check out this video where I go over 5 ways to go viral on Pinterest.

One special recommendation I have is to use idea pins where you can. Idea pins are a newer addition to Pinterest that take advantage of the 2022 trend away from static images towards videos, and they have specifically been performing really well for me lately, so I would recommend downloading the guide to idea pins that Pinterest offers.

So what’s next?

Hopefully you’re convinced by now of the awesome power of Pinterest and its ability to help you market your business and take it to the next level. Plus, you now know exactly how to do it. All that’s left is to get started. Create your account, start creating your boards and pins, and put in the work, and you’ll start seeing the benefits in no time!