Starting out on Pinterest can be somewhat of a barren place to begin with, you don’t have any followers and you’ve got to start establishing yourself in order to start ranking for specifics on Pinterest.
That’s quite a common place to start, but what about if you’ve got somewhat of an established account, have been getting fairy good views on your pins and then all of a sudden every single pin you post is getting no views, or views in the low 10s?
Getting no views on pins seems to be one of the most common problems with those trying to grow their presence on Pinterest. In this blog, we take a look at 7 reasons why your Pinterest pins are getting no views, and what you can actively do about it from today.
7 Reasons Your Pinterest Pins Are Getting No Views
1.Your Use of Keywords Is Not Good Enough
The number 1 thing to remember about Pinterest is that it’s not social media, it’s a visual search engine. What do search engines live off? Keywords.
If you’ve been posting pin after pin and hoping something sticks without keyword research, this is probably the main reason your pins are attracting 0 views, or very minimal impressions.
Graphics are important, but keyword research is more important. Before every pin I do some gentle keyword research on the Pinterest app using the search box. Quite often I will find much better keyword combinations that people are actively searching for vs what I was going to put. Simply type your keyword into the search box in Pinterest and it will drop down with other auto suggest keywords as shown below;
These keywords you identify should be employed through your titles, descriptions, graphic overlays, alt text if relevant and on your boards too.
Another great tool for keyword research which is FREE is Keysearch, you can search Pinterest keywords and find their monthly volumes too which is super helpful for finding the most popular keywords, but also it’s useful for targeting the more lower competition keywords that you have a great opportunity to rank for. I would also highly recommend checking out Pinterest Trends for planning future content, targeting trending keywords is a great way to jump onto the traffic bandwagon.
If you start employing keyword research today, I promise that you will start to see the views on your pins increase.
2. The Pins Are Not Enticing
Your views may also be 0 because the pins you’re posting or a) not enticing, b) not clear, c) it doesn’t tell you anything about the pin.
Text overlays are a must for pins, especially those where you are driving someone to a blog post, this is also essential if you’re wanting to increase outbound links too.
Adding a text overlay gives context to the pin, it can help with indexing on the relevant search terms and it gives a call to action to the Pinner. The key here is to include a small amount of text that provides clarity, has a CTA and is easily readable, you’re going to want to ditch colours you can’t see well and handwritten fonts that aren’t very legible. They might look cute, but Pinterest hates them.
Whilst Pinterest recommend a 1000 x 1500px size of pins, we’ve had a lot of success playing around with larger formats. As long as they are vertical and pin quality isn’t reduced, larger pin sizes give you more real estate on a mobile feed and they look so much more enticing than standard size pins. Here’s an example of one of our pins that’s had a lot of success for our interiors client.
3. You Keep Using The Same Template
Pinterest values fresh, unique pins. Whilst templates might look different because the image of text is the same, using the exact same template on Pinterest for each and every pin is boring, and doesn’t bring anything different or of value to Pinterest, and its pinners.
I get it. It’s an easy way to continue churning out 2-5 fresh pins each day, but you’re going to need to put in a little more groundwork if you want to continue growing your account.
This is only speculation and Pinterest have never officially announced this, but as a platform that priorities inspirational ideas, in posting the same templated post every time I feel like reach is automatically limited which stops you from getting many views on your pins.
The solution is to keep re-energising and switching up your pin templates. Remember to keep them clear, concise and easy to read too.
And one thing you should NEVER do? Keep sharing pins to the exact same URL day in, day out, it opens you up to being identified as a spam account and to Pinterest you’re trying to keep sending pinners to the same place. Vary the URLs you use, and don’t repeat them for 7 days.
4. You Aren’t Posting Consistently
Posting once a week and wondering why your account is not growing and your pins have no views is like going to the gym once and expecting an 8 pack by the time you leave. Not. Happening.
You need to be posting consistently over time to show Pinterest that you’re here for a long time, not a short time, and that what you have to share with fellow pinners is inspirational, useful and valuable.
The only way you can grow your views is to have a consistent posting strategy, best practice was always 2-5 fresh pins per day, but we are having huge growth by posting 10 fresh pins per day.
However, if you have a brand new account, I would only start pinning 1-2 pins a day before Pinterest learns about your account, pinning 20+ pins a day to begin with will ring alarm bells with Pinterest and they may brand your content as ‘spammy’ which could lead to account suspension.
5. You’re Not Giving It Enough Time
Posting a pin and checking back the next morning to see you still have 0 views is not a fair judgement as to how well the pin is performing.
My personal Pinterest account has 3,000 followers and attracts over 3 million monthly impressions, yet most of my new static pins don’t start gaining proper traction for at least 4 weeks, but it can be some months until pins take off and this is when people give up.
It takes time for Pinterest to start indexing your pins, it’s not on overnight success story. Often seasonal pins for example won’t become popular and rank well until the following year.
Remember, this is a visual search engine with delayed gratification, it’s not like waiting for immediate likes to come in from Instagram. Pinterest is just like search engine optimisation for a website, it takes time.
Many people become convinced that their Pinterest account has had a ‘shadow ban’ placed on them because they keep getting 0 impressions. If you’re pinning a little bit now and then this won’t be the case.
The only reason you would have a shadow ban implied is if you’re spamming Pinterest with lots of pins at once, they all look the same and they point to the same URL. Again, it’s a bit of a grey area on Pinterest around whether this exists, I have personally never come across this being a thing on my own, and our clients Pinterest accounts.
If you believe you have been ‘shadow banned’ reach out to Pinterest support for help, but if you don’t spam your account with pins, this shouldn’t happen.
6. You’re Not Posting At The Right Times
Early impressions can be achieved on pins, but only when you post your pins at the right time. Posting your pins when your followers are most active is one of the best ways to get your pins noticed early on.
There’s no clean cut way to find out this data. But if you have a business Pinterest account head to Analytics > Overview. You then want to toggle the date range to the last 24 hours. If you select the performance over time metric to Impressions, you’ll then be able to see at what time you receive the most impressions.
It’s not the same for every account, but almost every account we work on has the most impressions during late evening, this does seem to be a common denominator as most people are scrolling and seeking inspiration on Pinterest after work. It’s worthwhile regularly checking this data as weekends may be different to weekdays.
Posting your pins during the height of this impressions traffic is one of the best ways to tap into getting some early impressions onto those pins.
From our perspective, we generally don’t follow this strategy as our main goal is lots of impressions and engagement in the long run and we haven’t noticed any difference to changing the time we post our content.
Another way to capitalise on gaining early impressions is to share Idea pins. This is still the newest feature on Pinterest and they are still somewhat prioritising those who post them.
The added benefit of using them is that they appear at the top of your followers feeds, so your idea pins get seen straight away, rather than taking weeks to be indexed by the keywords you want to rank for. We would definitely recommend adding at least one idea pin to your account weekly to get those impressions growing.
7. You’re Posting The Same URL Each Time
Just like the templates, posting the same URL each time is not good Pinterest practice.
Over time this is going to limit your reach and could be one of the main reasons that your pins are getting no views.
Pinterest does value unique, fresh pins so try sharing a range of different templates and direct pinners to different links, blogs and categories to have a well balanced mix of content.
If you start employing these practices into your Pinterest strategy you should start to see your pin views increase. Just remember to be patient, and mindful that it is a search engine.
I have taken my personal home interiors Pinterest account from 0 to 3 million monthly views and from 1k to 30k+ outbound clicks in 3 months with a heightened posting strategy, whilst Pinterest is an ever changing landscape, it is one of the most powerful and underrated platforms for gaining brand awareness and getting traffic to your site each month.
Whether you want some advice, have any Pinterest questions or are interested in our services, drop us an email, we’d love to chat Pinterest with you! Take a look at our audit and Pinterest management package costs for more information.
