A Pinterest Audit: What It Involves

A Pinterest audit is one of the best places to start when you’ve had a Pinterest account for a little while and your account still isn’t growing, it’s also a good idea to revisit your account a few times a year to see how best you can optimise your account for success.

Often when it comes to Pinterest marketing, people think that pinning is the place to start, whilst we all know that regular fresh pins are the facilitator of growth on the platform, going back to the basics and starting by looking at your account is a good indicator as to why your account might not be growing.

Whether you’re a growing business, blogger or brand and you’re looking to grow your Pinterest account, this post is all about Pinterest audits. what they involve, and why they are an integral part of growing your account.

What Is A Pinterest Audit?

A Pinterest audit is a complete review of your Pinterest account, current pinning strategy, graphics and keywords that you are using. By reviewing the areas that are not doing so well, and the areas that are doing well, the purpose is to streamline and create areas of optimisation and improvement to grow the account.

A Pinterest audit is suitable for anyone wanting to grow their account on Pinterest, or for those that are doing well on the platform but need to take stock and find additional areas that they could be improving on.

It’s worthwhile doing at least one audit at the start of every year, or bi-annually if you have a large account. Continually checking in on past targets is important, as well as keeping abreast of any algorithm changes that happen on Pinterest and could impact the strategy you are currently employing.

How Do I Know If A Pinterest Audit Is Suitable For me?

A Pinterest audit is something that all accounts should do on a regular basis, I’d firstly always recommend a Pinterest audit for a Pinterest account that has been established for a small while but there has been little to no growth. This is an important chance to see why it’s not growing and what strategy you need to be employing to start getting some lift to those numbers.

Perhaps, your Pinterest account has been growing very nicely until everything drops off a cliff. A Pinterest audit is the best way to try and find the solution to what went wrong, and how we can bring those numbers back to where they were before.

If you’ve got an account that is continually growing and ticking along nicely, it’s still a good idea to do at least one annual Pinterest audit to see what is working, what type of content to do more of and if there are any new features on Pinterest that you should be taking advantage of.

If you’re also working your way towards the Pinterest Creator Rewards programme, a Pinterest audit can help fast track your success on the platform and get you there much quicker than if you are trying to go it alone.

What Does A Pinterest Audit Include?

A Pinterest Audit involves going back to the bare basics of your account to see how everything is doing, and how your current strategy is working for you, before creating a new ongoing strategy for your account.

Not everyone offers this, but having an actionable strategy that you can take away with you is how you’re going to get that new growth going forward after you’ve cleaned up your Pinterest account. A Pinterest Audit should generally include the following.

Overview of Bio & The Face of The Account

I’ll say it again, but going back to basics and actually looking at the face or shopfront of your brand is the best place to start. This is a good opportunity to see what your profile says about you.

Send it to a friend and ask them if they know what your niche is and what you’re trying to achieve on the platform just by looking at your profile page.

The biggest issue I see come up time and time again is where small businesses are using their business Pinterest account like a personal account. If you’re trying to sell your health and wellness products, not only does that audience not want to see inspiration for your home or for your next salon trip, how they hell does Pinterest know what you do?

If it’s something you love personally, create a secret board so no one can see it, or have a separate personal account.

What boards you have is a great indication of how your account currently looks in respect to how well you’re niching down. You then want to look at your name and bio description, this was increased this year to a larger character limit of 500 characters. Ensure you are maxing this out and add keywords related to your services into your name too.

Other things this should include;

  • Optimisation of name and bio to include keywords
  • Add a cover photo relevant to your niche, add CTA’s and key information about what you do
  • Claim your website
  • Convert to a business account if not already done

Existing Boards & Pins Overview

It’s then time to delve into your boards and pins. You may have already identified a number of boards that don’t fit into your niche, either secret these so they disappear from your fellow pinners, or delete the boards if there’s really no hard feelings.

Once you think the core boards leftover are highly relevant to your niche, it’s time to start looking and optimising those titles and board descriptions.

Remember, Pinterest is a visual search engine which is driven by keywords, so you want to absolutely be using every opportunity you can to increase your chances of getting found, and increasing your rankings.

When it comes to looking at your historic pins, this might take a little bit more time. When we undertake Pinterest audits we look at what has gone out previously, the quality of the titles & descriptions, if alt tags are being used and the quality of the photos. If templates are used – are the text overlays easy and clear to read? Is there a clear CTA?

Keyword Research

Keywords are at the heart of everything on Pinterest. They drive searches, they drive activity to your pins and they help with your account growth. If you’ve never done keyword research on Pinterest, you need to start now!

There’s no point continually writing pin titles and descriptions and hoping that something sticks, there needs to be strategy behind it, and you need to actually be using keywords that people are searching for.

Keywords and their volumes also change regularly, so it’s really important to research and look at volumes on a regular basis, as drops in traffic can be a sign of changing keyword habits.

There’s a number of ways to conduct keyword research on Pinterest, one of the quickest and no barrier ways to do this is by simply using the search box on Pinterest. Type some keywords in and it will auto suggest others to do with it. This doesn’t display volumes but it’s a great place to get started and get into the habit of conducting keyword research.

During any Pinterest audit stage, we always compile a full spreadsheet of Pinterest keywords and search volumes relevant to the clients niche.

pinterest keyword research

Best Posting Times For Your Account

Posting your pins at the optimal time is key to getting those early impressions on new pins, and this will form part of your new strategy on Pinterest.

You will need a business account to access these analytics, simply head to analytics > Overview > change the date range to last 24 hours and select performance over time > Impressions. This will then display a similar graph like below which shows you where the height of your impressions come in, always try to schedule or publish your pins during these times.

pinterest best posting times

Idea Pin Audit & Recommendations

Idea pins are one of the newest, but fastest growing features on Pinterest. They’re also great for growing your monthly views and brand awareness, I recommend at least 1 idea pin a week (you’ll need to be hitting this if you want to be eligible for creator rewards) and they can give your monthly views a lovely boost.

As part of the Pinterest audit, reviewing current idea pins is key – are the graphics easily readable on desktop and mobile? Are tagged categories being used effectively? Are keywords being used in titles and in notes?

As well as this, we will form recommendations for idea pins going forward that we think would best benefit your account.

Actionable Pinterest Strategy

This isn’t an essential if you’re conducting your own audit, but for us, an actionable Pinterest strategy on the back of the audit it key to making the most of those updates that you’ve just made. What’s the point in a gorgeous storefront if there’s no door?

After reviewing what’s working well, and not so well, we create an actionable Pinterest strategy bespoke to your account and niche, with best practices, how often to post, what you should be posting, along with actionable information on keywords and how to supersede the growth of your account.

How Much Does A Pinterest Audit Cost?

If you’re a seasoned pro on Pinterest then you absolutely can do a Pinterest audit on your own, however, it does help to get a fresh set of eyes onto an account. A Pinterest audit costs a £150 one off cost with Bagel Digital, which includes the following;

  • Overview of bio – optimisation of title, header & bio best practices with SEO optimised recommendations
  • Existing boards & pins overview of titles, descriptions, alt tags
  • A full keyword list for your niche
  • Best posting times for your account
  • Idea pin audit and recommendations with best practices & ideas for your niche
  • A Pinterest strategy for your niche – an actionable plan on how to achieve success on the platform on your own
  • Free Pinterest e-book, task sheets & pin templates
  • 1 hour training call

If you’re interested in a Pinterest audit, please do get in touch with us, we do offer a free 30 minute discovery call if you want to find out a little bit more.

A Pinterest Audit is the first step to taking control of your Pinterest account and the growth of your business, do take a look at our Pinterest Management Packages if you’re interested in other Pinterest services. Happy pinning!