Pinterest is an image sharing and social media platform that is a hidden gem among all social media platforms. While there isn’t too much buzz about Pinterest, it is a silent, powerful digital marketing platform that can help you gain visibility of your creative work. It is also the ideal platform for the creative introverts out there because it doesn’t require you to make captions, engage with other people, or create additional content like stories. It really is about posting an image or a short video in a strategic way.

I have been using Pinterest for over 3 years and have learned all the tricks and tactics from different Pinterest gurus including the Pinterest Queen herself, Jenna Kutcher. The tactics worked at first back in 2020, but eventually stopped. So from then on, I decided to research and experiment Pinterest myself to better understand how to improve my analytics over time.

After reaching at least 109K+ Impressions on Pinterest as of October 2023, I believe I have found the secret method to boost your Pinterest analytics. I went from 700 monthly views to now over 100K in several months. My strategy does not require you to download anything extra (such as a Google Chrome extension that take a bunch of your data), get your email, or show your face in your content. If you simply want to learn how to increase exposure with your creative work or content on Pinterest without the above criteria, you are in the right place!

Why Pinterest?

My simple answer is this: it is a low hanging social media fruit that will get you the most bang for your buck. The first reason being is that Pinterest is also a search engine that can drive traffic to your website. Pinterest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is built into the platform itself, so your content can also be searchable on search engines such as, Google Search, Safari, etc. This is an incredibly powerful way to reach people and lead organic traffic to your website.

Secondly, your Pins are also evergreen content, which means it will have a long life span on Pinterest. For instance, your Pins from 5 years ago may still be popular today. Unlike Instagram and TikTok, they do not “expire” within 48 hours of posting. I will also add that Instagram and TikTok do not have SEO, so none of the content can be found on a search engine. When being a content creator, it is important to have both a mixture of evergreen (Pinterest, email lists, blog posts) and non-evergreen (Instagram, TikTok) content. If all social media platforms were to disappear overnight, then you still have your evergreen content to fall back on.

Thirdly, I have found that with barely any engagement on Pinterest, you can still optimize Pinterest SEO to boost organic traffic. My strategy only requires posting your own content and be regularly active on the platform (by active, I mean just being on the platform to review your analytics and casually scrolling on your home feed for 10-15 min. a day). That being said, you don’t have to re-pin or comment or engage with someone else’s content. I did not do any of that and was still able to gain 100K+ monthly views.

Lastly, there is a high amount of active users on Pinterest and the number of monthly active users are generally increasing over time since 2016. As quoted and noted by Statista, “In the first quarter of 2023, Pinterest had 463 million monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide, up by 13 million users when compared to the previous quarter.”

Breakdown of Pinterest Analytics

Before getting into it, it is important to have a basic understanding of Pinterest analytics. Here are the six Pinterest analytics described below:

Impressions: This indicates how many times your Pins show up in front of Pinterest users, including their Home feed, search results, or another user’s boards

Engagements: This reflects the total number of engagement on your Pins, including clicks and saves
Outbound Clicks: The number of Pinners who clicked on the link from your Pin
Saves: The number of Pinners who saved your Pin
Total Audience: The total number of Pinners who have seen or engaged with your Pins
Engaged Audience: The number of Pinners who engaged with your Pins

Luckily, you don’t have to dive deep into each analytic. In fact, I only monitor three key Pinterest analytics, which are Impressions, Outbound Clicks, and Saves. The higher your Impressions, the more opportunity for the other analytic metrics to rise. This is because the more Pinterest users see your content, this increases the likelihood for them to engage with your content, such as a click or save. The Impressions (or monthly views) has been a critical analytic metric to closely track and optimize my Pinterest SEO. Growing your Impressions will be key to optimizing your content on Pinterest.

Outbound clicks and saves will also become important to not only measure how well your content encourages engagement, but also let Pinterest know the amount of engagement you are receiving. Like many social media platforms, Pinterest tracks the pin quality by its freshness, the quality of the Pin, and the amount of engagement it receives. If your Pins are well received, Pinterest will leverage your content more to keep users on their platform. The reality is, from a business standpoint, Pinterest can then gain more ad exposure and revenue. From a creator’s standpoint, this is the ultimate way to gain exposure of your work and increase organic traffic to your website.

Now that you have a better sense of Pinterest SEO capabilities and analytics, you are ready to learn the steps to increase organic traffic on Pinterest and, ultimately, gain 100K+ Impressions. Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Perform a Search of What’s Trending within Your Niche

It is critical to post Pins strategically, not randomly and hoping it works over time. I have tried this method before, including posting random short cooking videos, using the wrong SEO keywords, and batch posting Pins every couple of weeks or even months. I have found that this does not work and, over time, resulted into lackluster performance.

In order to improve your analytics on Pinterest, it is important to remember the root of Pinterest, which is SEO. Keeping in mind that Pinterest is SEO-driven, the first step is to research what is currently trending, ideally in your niche. I promise that this strategy is easier than it sounds and it doesn’t require you to download an app, a browser extension, or create a login at an unfamiliar website.

When thinking about what can really improve your SEO game, go to its biggest source: Google Search. The Google Search engine handles more than 3.5 billion searches a day and encompasses 92% share of the global search market. Because SEO is built into Pinterest, Pins will show up on Google Search and Pins can actually rank pretty high with the right, relevant SEO keywords.

To access what’s trending on Google, you can use Google Trends. Google Trends was launched in 2006 and is a website that analyzes top queries in Google Search across different regions and languages. It is absolutely free and no login and no download is required. You don’t even have to log in to your Google account to perform searches.

The next question is, what do you search for? You can start with one broad keyword within your niche and focus on creating content revolving around that topic first. For instance, if you are a calligraphy artist, type in “calligraphy” and see the top related queries people search for, which includes “how to learn calligraphy,” “what is calligraphy,” and “calligraphy for beginners.”

Another one keyword examples are photography, pottery, crochet, and the list goes on. I also recommend considering niching down to a particular product or a platform you use regularly with your creative work. For me, the term “digital artist” wasn’t a common search, so instead, I focused on the digital app I use to draw, which is Procreate. I searched on Google Trends with this one keyword almost daily and used the related queries to find what people were asking about on the topic of Procreate.

Because I started to revolve most of my Pins around those top queries related to Procreate, that is how my Pins and content became relevant because they were already based on what’s trending. When you show Pinterest that your pins are relevant to the terms users search for, Pinterest will show your content more, helping to increase your Impressions gradually. Try performing the search yourself on Google Trends and see what’s trending! You will be surprised at how simple some of the trending topics can be and also be surprised at what people are actually searching for in your niche.

Step 2: Create Content Based On Relevant, Trending Queries

Now that you have this tool to get a sense of what people are currently searching for within your niche, you can create content that meets each trending topic that you are familiar with. If there are topics you are unsure of or don’t know how to do, feel free to skip it and move on. You can also toggle the date range from Past Day, Past 4 Hours, Past 7 Days, or Past 30 Days, if you can’t find a topic you can create your content from. I recommend sticking to finding trending topics within 7 days or less, as trends and popularity change pretty quickly.

I also recommend to start creating content based on the top ten related queries or, ideally, the top one and go down from there. This will be a quicker way for your content to rank higher in searches because of your content’s relevancy. Also, it is best to keep creating content revolving around that one keyword first. This way, you can be known as the expert of the topic and both Google Search and Pinterest can start to recognize you and your Pins as a credible, reliable source, assuming if you are active and post relevant content consistently.

Create The Right Content

Beyond creating content, creating the right content on Pinterest will also be key to improving your Impressions. Pinterest is a platform that provides ideas and inspiration, from recipes to outfits to DIY crafts. Creating and posting dancing videos will not work (though, admittedly, funny animal videos will always do well across any social media platform). Thus, it is important to make the right content on Pinterest to improve your analytics. Several content ideas are listed below:

Templates (i.e. dream board)
Tips or a list on one page
A how-to or tutorial post leading to a blog or a video
Art such as wallpaper art, inspiring art, quote art, funny art, etc.
Unique merchandise, decor, etc.

One of the best performing pins can be a combination of two or more above items, such as an inspiring, artistic quote on a t-shirt. For me, a high ranking static Pin is a Taylor Swift inspirational quote on a t-shirt.

You can also create individual Pins to show the same item in different ways, such as a background or in a different color. I find this is better than posting all your images in a carousel because this increases the chance for your Pins to show up more frequently in the Home feed.

While it is important to make Pins relevant to trending queries in your niche, you can also squeeze in Pins of your art and other content you like to make too. Creating a variety of Pins can also be helpful in understanding what other type of posts Pinterest users are inclined to click and save. For me, two popular content people like to click on are quote art and cat notebooks I created, as shown below.

Create Short, Vertical Videos for Quicker Ranking

Recently, I have found that short, vertical videos generally do well, especially if they revolve around a trending topic. Like other social media platforms, Pinterest likes to push videos as much as static posts in the Home feed. If anything, videos perform so much better than static posts and, fortunately, you can post and weave in videos that don’t have to strictly be relevant to what’s trending, as long as they provide education or inspiration.

One of the best things about video content on Pinterest is that the video does not have to be super high quality, as long as it is educational or inspirational. The video can be dark, shaky, and not visually appealing, and it can still do really well. On Pinterest, it is not about the quality of the video, it is about the relevant content it provides. Of note, this does not mean that static posts don’t have to be visually appealing; on the contrary, static posts must be visually enticing to encourage engagement, such as a click or save.

Tie the Right Content with What’s Trending

You can consider how to format the right content with what’s trending in your niche. Going back to the calligraphy example, you can create a simple, static post that provides the calligraphy definition which will answer the trending related query, “What is Calligraphy?” Be sure to include the question at the top of this post too.

For a vague topic such as “calligraphy for beginners,” there are several Pin ideas you can create. You can create a short video tutorial showing the top three basic calligraphy tips or make a static post that will link to a blog sharing step by step instructions. Get creative on how you can make posts around trending topics in your niche. Most importantly, be sure your content does match the trending topic! Your Pins can also rank low if your posts are not relevant to the Pin’s title keywords.

Create Pins Relevant to Upcoming Holidays

I noticed recently that Pins relevant to upcoming holidays tend to show up more in the Home Feed. For instance, if it is October (or even before) and Halloween is coming up, Pinterest will push Pins relevant to this holiday, including Halloween merchandise, Halloween art, Halloween decor, etc. Even my Halloween Pins I created years ago have been rising in popularity solely because of its relevancy to the holiday. So, on top of creating Pins that are trending in your niche, you can also consider creating Pins that are holiday-themed to help you rank higher on Pinterest.

Tips for Creating Pins

In reality, content creation can be a lot harder than it sounds. I won’t downplay this because, in all honesty, there is a lot of effort needed to make both short videos and attractive static Pins. The shining light is that while you need to post very consistently at first, once Pinterest starts to rank your Pins high, you don’t need to post as frequently. You do need to stay active and post regularly to maintain your high Pinterest performance.

For me to churn out content consistently, I use Canva Pro for creating Pins in the form of videos and static posts. This has really helped streamline my content creation because everything is in one place and with the Canva app on my phone, I am able to save and download my content on my phone to post from there. Feel free to use whatever graphic design tool that best suits your needs to help you make content.

Below are several tips to create high quality Pins:

Use the ideal Pin size (1000x1500 pixels) to maximize your Pins on the screen as much as possible (this will make Pinterest users see your post more)
Have a variety of Pins, from both videos to static posts
Keep static pins attractive and use large text in the title
For static pins, use mockup photos showcasing your own creative work

Be sure you have set up your Pinterest account to be a business account!

Step 3: Pin Consistently and Monitor Your Analytics

Once you have created your Pins, you can now post them on Pinterest. When I say to post your Pins consistently, I do not mean posting 5 videos all at once or in one day. For SEO purposes, it is better to spread your videos out to one video a day and you can sprinkle in static posts in between. I posted at most one video a day or every other day and I was still able to optimize my Pinterest performance. Also, scheduling posts will be a good friend if you have a lot of content!

When you do post, be sure to enter the right SEO keywords in your Pin title. The title must either match or closely match to what people are searching for in order for Pinterest to find your Pins relevant. For instance, if people are searching for “how to curve text in Procreate,” then your Pin title should be “How to Curve Text in Procreate.” If people are searching for “calligraphy for beginners,” then your Pin title can be “Top 10 Calligraphy Tips for Beginners” or “Calligraphy Tutorial for Beginners.” One tip is that before you even begin creating your content, have the Pin title in mind so you can create content around the topic.

Ensure you enter relevant tags into your Pin. For example, because my Pin above is a video tutorial within my digital art niche, I included tags such as “Digital Art Tutorial,” “Digital Art,” “Digital Illustration,” “Digital Drawing,” and “Digital Artist.” This will help Pinterest categorize your Pins to help them get to the right audience, which are people who are interested in the Procreate topic. It is also important to put Pins in the appropriate Pin boards, such as “Art Tips” or “DIY Crafts.”

I highly recommend linking Pinterest to your personal website, not directly to an online e-commerce store, such as Etsy. This is so you have more flexibility in providing other content, such as blogs, portfolio, and newsletters. Also, your personal website can rank high beyond Pinterest itself and on search engines, including Google Search, as you create Pins and blogs related to trending topics. This is the beauty of SEO: if you can create relevant content in different formats, the higher your website will rank.

Of note, when you do post content based on what’s trending, it does not mean that all of your Pins will rank high right away. Some Pins will do better than others, based on the trending topic. Be patient about your growth because SEO does take time for it to track and rank your Pins, especially if you have a new Pinterest business account.

Monitor your posted Pins and see what Pins do well in your niche. On top of creating trending Pins, you can also make more content based on what your audience likes, which may not be captured in related search queries. As your Pinterest grows and ranks higher, make more content that people are interested in because that will all help you increase organic traffic to your site and allow you to gain over 100k Impressions. You won’t know until you find out!

Let me know if you have any questions about Pinterest in the Comments section, I would be more than happy to help! Good luck!

Happy creating,