What if I told you I had a talk a few months ago with the team at Pinterest to figure out the worst Pinterest mistakes bloggers are making?
And what if you can fix all your Pinterest mistakes in just a few minutes right now to save time and grow your blog traffic faster?
My direct line to Pinterest opened back in 2019 at the official Story Pins launch event.
Of course, Story Pins are history by now. But I’ve received tons of helpful tips on how to use Pinterest the right way to drive traffic to my blogs.
I’ve met some lovely people who work at Pinterest. All of them were more than happy to share their best insider tips with me.
If someone from Pinterest tells me what I shouldn’t be doing on the platform, I’m all ears!
So, to help you grow your blog traffic with Pinterest faster, I’ll cover the worst Pinterest mistakes and easy techniques to fix them right away.
Let’s go!
Read also:
- Pinterest SEO: The Crazy-Comprehensive Guide for Easy Blog Traffic
- How to Grow Your Blog Traffic? 7 Powerful Traffic Tools for Fast Growth
Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.
1: Using the wrong keywords
The first thing you must know about Pinterest is:
Pinterest is a search engine.
People use Pinterest to find ideas and inspirational content. They type in a search phrase and browse through the search results, right?
Therefore, Pinterest SEO (or search engine optimization) is the most important concept and skill to learn if you want to grow your blog traffic through the platform.
Pinterest SEO is very easy to learn and implement — especially when compared to Google SEO. Google uses a far more complex and sophisticated algorithm, so Pinterest is a great place to start learning SEO.
How to find the best Pinterest keywords?
Keyword research is the core of your Pinterest SEO strategy. It’s all about figuring out what your target audience is typing into the Pinterest search bar.
Once you know what your audience is searching for, you can create the perfect blog posts, design beautiful Pinterest pins, and publish them to your Pinterest boards.
Through this entire process, you will use the right keywords in your blog posts, in text overlays on your Pinterest pins, on your Pinterest profile, and in your board titles and descriptions, for example.
If you want to master Pinterest SEO faster than others, make sure you grab the Smart Pinterest SEO guide to get all my best tips, techniques, and methods to get your pins ranking better consistently. It’s easier than you think!
2: Follow and unfollow
One of the reasons I’m fed up with Instagram is the whole follow-unfollow thing going on there. (I mean, who has the time for that?)
Following and unfollowing isn’t a thing on Pinterest. It doesn’t grow your reach on the platform.
Who should you follow on Pinterest?
Follow people who have similar interests to yours.
Find interesting profiles and boards and follow them all if you want to. As long as their content is helpful to your target audience, go ahead and follow them and save their content to your Pinterest boards.
It doesn’t matter how many people you’re following versus how many followers you have. All that matters is that you find content you think is worthy of pinning.
3: Spending too much time on Pinterest
When new pinners come from social networks like Instagram or Facebook, they often think they need to be active on Pinterest 24/7. They assume they must spend a given amount of time daily on the platform to see results.
Why? Because the more time you spend on Instagram, the more visibility you gain. I see this a lot on X (or Twitter) and Facebook, too. The more content you share, the more traction you gain.
But the thing is:
Pinterest is different. You don’t need to spend hours on Pinterest every day. In fact, you can get away with 10 minutes of daily pinning and still grow your blog traffic like a pro.
How much time should you spend on Pinterest?
Don’t spend more time on Pinterest than you need for finding new ideas and pins for your boards.
For instance, spend 5 minutes in the morning and another 5 minutes in the evening pinning relevant, high-quality content to your boards.
You want to fill your Pinterest boards with pins that are helpful for your target audience. Each board should contain pins about a specific topic and Pinterest keyword.
The Pinterest algorithm loves consistency, so make sure you’re not skipping days.
4: Pinning manually
So now you know that Pinterest doesn’t really care how much time you spend actively pinning.
But if you’ve used X (Twitter) or Facebook for driving traffic to your blog, you know that it’s important to actually spend time on the platform itself. This helps you achieve more engagement from your followers. If you’re actively responding to messages and comments, your posts and tweets will “stay alive” longer.
Obviously, using an automation tool to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts won’t help you save much time.
But here’s the good news:
Pinterest works differently. You don’t need to check up on your pins all the time. You want to respond to comments, of course, but chances are you won’t see any comments at all.
To save time, you want to use a Pinterest-approved automation tool to schedule your pins in advance.
Pinterest doesn’t care how you pin your content. All that matters is that your pins are genuinely interesting and fresh, and that you maintain a consistent pinning schedule.
Should you schedule your pins?
As long as you stay consistent and engaged on the platform, you will achieve results with Pinterest.
But I know it’s a lot of work to design stunning Pinterest pins and save them to your boards consistently.
Luckily, you can save heaps of time with an scheduling tool that automates your pinning with a few clicks.
Make sure you choose a Pinterest-approved tool like Tailwind. Using a third-party tool that’s not approved could get your account suspended.
Tailwind has a free plan to get started, so there’s no risk in trying it out.
If you’re not ready for it, don’t fret. I know plenty of bloggers who prefer manual pinning. So whether you choose to use a scheduler to grow your traffic is up to you.
How to find the best pinning schedule?
How often should you save pins to your boards? How do you know when to do it during the day?
You want to follow a consistent pinning schedule, but it’s difficult to know when your target audience is active on the platform.
For example, let’s say you want to pin five times daily. Now, what’s the best time for pinning? Should you save all five pins at the same time or spread them out throughout the day?
I use Tailwind for finding the best time slots for my pinning schedule. It uses a massive pool of Pinterest user data to know when my audience is active on the platform.
All I need to do is tell Tailwind how many pins I want to save every day. Let’s create a queue with 10 daily time slots:
Tailwind now automatically creates the perfect weekly time slots for my pins:
After that, I can add pins to my Tailwind queue to fill those slots. Tailwind will then publish them one by one following the schedule with the time slots — even while I’m sleeping.
The best part?
Tailwind offers a 100% free plan to help you get started with zero risk.
I doubled my blog traffic in just six weeks with Tailwind when I followed this Pinterest marketing strategy.
Of course, your results could be different from mine. Nevertheless, Tailwind is a true time-saver, that’s for sure.
5: Using board covers
I see tons of beautiful board covers on Pinterest every day.
The truth is: they look amazing, but they’re a waste of time.
If your goal is to make the Pinterest algorithm happy so that your pins get seen by more people, board covers isn’t helping you achieve that goal.
Now, that doesn’t mean they’re not pretty to look at. If you have the extra time to create and upload them, go for it.
What you should be doing instead
If you’re thinking about creating board covers, ask yourself:
Could I use this time for something more productive?
I’m sure you have tons of stuff to do on your blog. Why not create a bunch of new, fresh pins instead?
Head over to Canva and whip up a few fresh pins, or grab my viral Pinterest template pack for Canva to create dozens of pins within minutes.
6: Focusing on monthly viewers
Quite frankly, I don’t give a flying duck about my monthly viewers.
What matters most for your Pinterest traffic is the number of clicks to your blog. That’s all you should care about.
Moreover, if you want to make money blogging, the only way to do it is to get people over to your blog.
Sure, gaining more monthly viewers looks great. But it doesn’t mean your blog is getting more traffic. If you pin a lot of other bloggers’ content, you might be boosting their traffic more than yours.
Thus, make sure you check your Pinterest Analytics regularly to keep track of your clicks. See which types of pins are getting clicked. Then, create new pins that use similar techniques for attracting people’s attention.
What metrics to track on Pinterest
If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to learn how to use Pinterest Analytics to track the right metrics.
Your primary goal is to generate engagements and click-throughs to your blog. Therefore, find the pins in your Analytics Dashboard that generate the most engagements and clicks:
These pins are your gold mine! If you don’t have enough time to write new articles, then at least start creating fresh pins for these top-performing posts asap.
Also, feel free to draw inspiration from your most clicked pins for your next pin design patterns.
7: Pinning other people’s content
80–20? Or perhaps 70–30?
How much of other people’s content are you pinning? And tell me: why?
Did you read it on a blog somewhere? Or did you find a good ratio by trial and error that works for you?
Either way, I see tons of bloggers getting caught up on finding a ratio of pinning your own content vs. others’ posts.
But here’s the deal:
Pinning posts from other blogs is great, but it’s not getting your blog any more traffic.
In fact, this was the biggest Pinterest mistake the Pinterest team pointed out to me.
What to do instead
What matters the most is that you stay active on Pinterest. That’s the best way to make sure that Pinterest distributes your pins to a larger audience.
Follow these three steps over and over to keep Pinterest noticing your efforts:
- Keep creating helpful, value-packed content
- Publish new blog posts
- Pin your articles to relevant boards
- Avoid re-pinning — design new pin designs for existing blog posts instead
You see, there’s a score called Domain Quality that’s a part of the Pinterest ranking algorithm. The value depends on the quality of your pins and your overall pin performance.
If you stay consistent and active on the platform, your Domain Quality will increase step-by-step. This will help the algorithm trust your blog more.
But what if you don’t have anything to pin?
If you run out of pins for your own blog, feel free to pin other bloggers’ content.
Just don’t get hung up on something you read on another blog and stress about it. There’s no magic ratio to help you get tons of blog traffic.
Now go out there, open Canva, and create a few fresh pins for your own articles!
8: Messing up your landing page
Ok, I found your pin on Pinterest and I’m loving the design! Great job!
But when I click on it to get to your blog, something’s wrong…
Either your blog is loading way too slowly, so I grow impatient and close the page.
Or perhaps your blog design so cluttered that your post is difficult to read and follow.
Or, maybe your blog post is just poorly written?
I see these mistakes every day. And I wonder why someone would make the effort to create a pretty pin but neglect their blog so badly.
I don’t want you to be one of them! Let’s see what you should do next to give your readers a smooth user experience.
Focus on a smooth user experience
Now, your goal with Pinterest traffic is to attract readers who actually enjoy reading your blog, right?
They should feel like you’re really helping them with a problem or a question.
In other words, you want meaningful traffic from Pinterest. Those are the people who find what they’re looking for on your blog.
Thus, they’re most likely to at least save your pin but also to follow you, come back to your blog, and maybe purchase your products, too.
What you should do for your readers
Take a few moments to test your blog and website for anything that looks out of place.
Here are a few points to keep in mind:
- Test with different browsers:
How does your blog look in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera? - Test with different devices:
How does your blog work on desktop? How about an iPhone? Or an Android phone? Or a tablet? - Check your page loading speed:
Use tools like Pingdom or Pagespeed Insights and optimize your WordPress performance. - Check your ad units:
Are your display ads covering half of the screen on mobile? Are they easy to dismiss? - Align your pin with your blog content:
Can your readers find what you promised on your pin? Is your pin image visible on the page for them to recognize?
All in all, you just want to pretend like you’re a normal visitor to your blog. Try to see your website from another perspective. See how it works:
- Can you find what you’re looking for?
- Is the navigation easy to use? How about on mobile devices?
- Is the font readable even on a smartphone screen?
- Is the text dark enough to be read easily on a smaller screen?
All these things play a huge part in how likely your readers are to come back and start following you.
I started my own web design business back in 2017, so I know a thing or two about user experience. If you ask me, the easiest way to set up a user-friendly, intuitive blog is to use these tools:
- Best blogging platform? Start a WordPress blog with Bluehost.
- Best WordPress theme? Use Astra, it’s super intuitive for beginners.
- Best page builder? Use Elementor to customize any part of your blog like a pro.
In fact, I built this site with these three tools and I can’t recommend them enough. Your blog will look professional and work like a dream even without any customizations.
If you haven’t already, make sure to check out these top WordPress themes for bloggers.
Summing it up: Pinterest mistakes you must stop doing right now
There ya go! Did you find a few Pinterest mistakes that sounded familiar? Drop me a line in the comments below!
I know Pinterest is a lot to take in. But if you follow the tips above, you can save time, grow your Pinterest traffic, and become a successful blogger faster.
Here are the main takeaways:
- Use the right Pinterest keywords.
- Follow other creators in your niche and save their best pins to your boards.
- Spend 10 minutes on the platform daily, pinning relevant pins to your boards.
- Use Tailwind to save time and automate your pinning schedule asap.
- Forget about creating board covers. Instead, create more new pins.
- Track your engagements and clicks with Pinterest Analytics.
- Maintain a consistent pinning schedule.
- Improve your website’s user experience with free tools like the Astra theme and Elementor.
To kickstart your Pinterest traffic strategy, grab my Smart Pinterest SEO guide to steal all my tools, hacks, and secrets for fast traffic growth right away!
