I’ve had so many messages recently, either through email or from my Facebook group PinTips, about a serious decline in Pinterest traffic. Business owners and bloggers alike have seen their traffic from Pinterest drop substantially in recent months and have panicked. What could be causing the drop? Is it the strategy causing the problem? How can the traffic increase again? Everyone is looking for a reason and everyone wants it fixed, and fast.

So what do you do when your Pinterest traffic drops?

In today’s post I’ll be looking at the ways in which you can best react to a decline in your Pinterest traffic.

1. Don’t Panic

Ok so the first thing to do is stay calm. When you wake up one morning and see a decline in your stats, it’s easy to start panicking. Panic causes you to react. And that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes you just need to sit and wait. Pinterest has a habit of changing things up, often on a weekly basis, so watch for a day or two, even a week and see what happens.

Secondly remember that Pinterest is a slow burn. Nothing happens quickly, and traffic takes time to grow. Similarly it can take time to drop too, and we often see a steady decline in our stats which is easier to read. If you’re traffic has hit the floor overnight there’s definitely something amiss and you need to investigate what’s happened.

The main thing is to stay calm and work it out steadily. Don’t make any rash decisions until you’ve done your research and can identify where the problem is or what has caused the issue. Once you’ve found it, and it may be a combination of events, then you can start to build a plan to improve your traffic again.

2. Pinterest Analytics

Stop reading Pinterest Analytics!

They are hugely unreliable and prone to all kinds of anomalies. They get updated frequently and are rarely reliable, so my advice is to stop relying on them as a source of Pinterest success/failure.

If you are using them as a tool for measuring how well your business is performing, things like this can send you over the edge.

This is my own personal account. The statistic ‘People You Reach’ hit the floor a few days ago. In fact, I bet if you go and look at your own account for this statistic it will be exactly the same. I was inundated with messages asking what the hell had happened and what were people now going to do with their account. BUT …. it’s just Pinterest doing their thing. Which they are allowed to do. (They are actually phasing out this statistic hence the strange drop in reach).

The only true measure of your Pinterest traffic is from Google Analytics. If you don’t have this set up, or haven’t looked at it in a while, do it now!

3. Google Analytics

And so here we are at the only real way to evaluate how well your pins on Pinterest are really doing. If you’re using a good strategy, and following all the best practices, you should monitoring and evaluating your traffic results from here.

If you don’t know how to do it, I highly recommend using the Google Dashboard from Kristie Hill. You can sign up to get and install the dashboard on your own GA account, then you have all your Pinterest stats including traffic from Tribes and Promoted pins, in one handy place.

Get the Pinterest Dashboard HERE. 

4. Evaluate Your Strategy

One strategy that works for one account may not necessarily work for another. The strategy I teach isn’t anything unusual. It’s based on Pinterest best practices (see below) and how to make good sense of the rules and algorithms. There’s nothing strange or different about it. I just package up these ideas and give you something easy to follow and understand; I put all of this up to date information into one place for you to use as you see fit.

If it doesn’t work for you, then you need to adapt and find the tweaks that do. If I say pin 10 per day and you don’t get the results you hoped for, increase your pins to 20 per day. The point is, each account is different and you need to continually work on your strategy to find your ‘sweet spot’.

When the algorithm changes, we all need to evaluate our strategy. If that change causes a drop in traffic, spend time identifying what’s happened and develop a plan for how to move forward. Nothing is ever static.

5. Best Practices

Make sure you’re following the best practices laid out by Pinterest at all times. They do get updated now and again, and have recently been refreshed. You can see the latest Pinterest Best Practices HERE.

6. Be Smart – Diversify

Pinterest doesn’t owe you anything. It’s a creative platform that happens to enable large traffic growth for millions of bloggers and businesses. We don’t pay for it (unless we promote our pins) and using it is free. They are allowed to change it; it’s their business. So why do we get so upset and angry when the changes affect our audience?

Usually it’s because we’ve invested so much time and effort in one platform. We have it working well and our efforts are paying off. But, when traffic does decline it’s a sharp reminder that Pinterest should be just one element of your marketing strategy and not the whole caboodle.

Remember to invest time in your SEO, social media and other marketing avenues. It should never be your whole strategy.

If your account was closed tomorrow. What would you do?  You need a plan, so make sure you have one.

Have you seen a decline in your Pinterest traffic recently, and have you identified what caused it?

Save this pin to your Pinterest account to help others and allow you find the blog post again quickly.

 

Jen x