The secrets to incredible traffic that I've gleaned from four top rated Pinterest courses.
Find out how I tripled my blog traffic in just one month using these 5 top Pinterest strategies! Then implement them, be consistent, and watch your traffic skyrocket too.
Why Pinterest Isn’t Growing Your Blog
*This post may contain affiliate links. You can read my affiliate disclosure here.
Pinterest is hands down one of the best ways for brand new bloggers to get traffic. Compared to most search engines, you can start ranking for certain topics in just a matter of weeks if you do things right.
Let's compare that to Google, for example. Google is, in my opinion, the hardest search engine to rank for.
Many of the top spots in their algorithm are taken by major publishing sites like Huffington Post, BBC, Inc, and more. It would be very, very difficult for a small blogger to budge one of those sites for a top ranking.
YouTube is the other major search engine that brings consistent traffic to bloggers.
And while it is significantly easier to get traffic from YouTube than from Google, Pinterest is still much easier.
The key, however, is that you need the right Pinterest knowledge to make your pins work for you.
Without this, your pins likely will never be ranked and you won't see very much traffic from it.
These are the top five reasons why Pinterest isn't growing your blog.
1. You Are Pinning Too Much or Too Little
When it comes to their algorithm, Pinterest is pretty specific about how often they want their users pinning.
The general rule?
Pinning 15-30 pins per day is ideal. This means that between your own pins, other people's pins that you save, and any pins you have scheduled in Tailwind, you'll want to make sure there are at least 15 and no more than 30 pins going out daily.
You can use the Pinterest scheduler Tailwind to automatically schedule a certain number of pins to go out each day. This is a great way to help make sure that your total number of outgoing pins stays in the 15-30 range!
Wait, Aren't Lots of Fresh Pins Better Than Just A Few?
Yes, fresh pins are awesome. But, there is such thing as “too much of a good thing”. Here's how this works.
When your Pinterest profile saves pins, Pinterest records how many people engage and save each of those pins. The more engagement and repins your profile gets, the higher Pinterest will rank you.
This is because they see your profile as one that is putting out content people really love, and they want to reward you for that!
Now let's take a situation where someone is pinning 75 times per day. That's a lot of pins going out in one day, and in all likelihood your followers will not be able to keep up with so many!
That means that each of the pins you publish will get fewer close-ups and repins. Over time this devalues your profile rank, and Pinterest will begin to devalue your pin ranking as well.
2. You Aren’t Creating Enough New Pins That Link to New Posts
Here's a little secret I've learned about pin ranking straight from Tailwind themselves! (Tailwind is partnered directly with Pinterest, so they know what they are talking about.)
Different types of pins are ranked differently depending on a few factors. Here is what that looks like.
- Brand new pins that link to NEW blog posts are worth the most
- Brand new pins that link to old blog posts are second best
- Older pins that link to older blog posts are useful but not ranked as highly
I learned this little secret from sitting in on an online training from one of Tailwind’s representatives. And to be honest, this information didn't surprise me at all.
Every time I've created new pins for a blog post I put out that same week, that pin has done significantly better than pins that link to older blog posts. To me, this makes complete sense. Pinterest wants to see fresh content both from your pins and the blog post that links to that pin.
This is one of the reasons it is so important that you post to your blog at least once per week. Twice is even better!
You will simply need these new blog posts every week to give you fodder for your Pinterest profile.
Here's how I do it.
First, I upload two new blog posts to each of my blogs every single week. Then I try to create at least 5-6 pins for each of these posts.
After that I will create another handful of new pins for some of my older blog posts.
In total, this gives me enough pins to upload at least two brand new ones to my profile each day. Then I use my Tailwind account to share each of these posts to my other related boards and to my Tailwind Tribes.
This method has helped me see tremendous growth with my traffic, and I highly recommend you try it too!
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3. Your Pins Are Too Hard to Read
With so many pins in the home feed to choose from, the vast majority of pinners now scroll through the feed quickly. Very few people take the time to slow down and give extra time to hard-to-read pins.
This is why it is SO important that you make your pins easy to read if you want them to stand out among the rest!
Things like cursive fonts, small letters, and complicated pin designs can actually hurt you in the long run.
In the past I definitely created many pins that fit this description. And while they did receive a few repins, it wasn't much. It was only when I started creating very clear and easy to read pins that my number of repins spiked upwards, and my traffic did too.
These old pins are far too busy, convoluted, and difficult to read to get high re-pin rates on Pinterest. Lesson learned! Don't be like me.
4. You're Not Using Tailwind
Some bloggers are averse to using a Pinterest scheduler. I get it. It's one more thing to pay for, and another program you need to figure out how to use.
The reality is that if you want to get significant traffic from Pinterest, you very likely are going to need to use Tailwind to do it.
There are two reasons why.
First, Tailwind is partnered directly with Pinterest and because of this they know the ideal times of day to share your pins. Without Tailwind, you will be shooting in the dark trying to figure out when your audience is online to see your new pins.
Allowing the Tailwind scheduler to schedule your pins is one of the big secrets to getting more repins and more traffic.
The second reason every blogger should be using Tailwind is for the Tribes feature. Tribes are groups of pinners who essentially share each other's pins on a one-to-one basis. They typically separate themselves by category, so you should have no trouble finding other pinners in the same niche as you to share your content.
Because Tribes require users to share a pin for every pin they post, your chances of getting repins is very high! This is a great thing because it helps keep the group lively and gives everyone lots of blog traffic.
5. You Aren't Using Pinterest SEO and Keywords Properly
As I mentioned earlier, Pinterest is a search engine and search engines use SEO to rank content.
Pinterest relies on good SEO to help decide who should see your pins. This means that when you do incorporate the right SEO, you will get lots and lots of free blog traffic from Pinterest!
The key here is that people who aren't getting traffic from Pinterest are almost never doing their SEO properly, if at all.
Getting your Pinterest SEO just right is a huge topic, so I'll send you to my blog post Pinterest SEO Tips for Bloggers to learn more.
I learned almost everything I know about Pinterest from taking Alex and Lauren's Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course, and I'm so glad I did. That course really put my blog on the map as far as traffic goes, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see more blog traffic coming in from Pinterest.
Conclusion
If you're wondering why Pinterest isn't growing your blog, there are probably a few reasons why. It's a great idea to take a little bit of time and really assess how you are using the platform so you can figure out how to get more traffic in the future.
Here are the biggest mistakes most Pinterest newbies make:
- They pin too much or too little
- They don't create enough new pins for new posts
- Their pins are hard to read
- They don't use tailwinds features
- They don't incorporate Pinterest SEO and keywording
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