3 Big Pinterest SEO Mistakes You Might Be Making with your travel blog

You’ve heard it 100 times. Pinterest is not a social media platform, it’s a search engine… that’s awesome but what the heck are you supposed to do with this golden piece of information. In this post we are going to point out the 3 most common Pinterest SEO mistakes travel bloggers make and how to take simple steps to fix them!

Pinterest SEO Mistake #1: You pin the first pin from a new blog post into your “Best of” board

This is probably the most common mistake I see happen every single day. Your post is fresh off the press and it’s time to get it out into the world! Since all of your blog posts are listed under your Best of board, it seems logical that you would pin it there first. But this would be a pretty big Pinterest SEO mistake!

Your very first pin sends an important signal to Pinterest that will help the platform figure out what your post is about and where to rank your post in search. Your best of board is a mix of all your pins from all different countries and destinations: if you put your pin there, the signal sent to Pinterest is FULL BLOWN CONFUSION! Your first pin should go into your most relevant board, then other relevant board in decreasing order of relevance. Like if you need, Best Onion Chopper, You won’t search for knife. Just like that. Be relevant.

IRL Example: let’s say your article is about Pretty Paris Picture Spots. My first pin would go into my Paris Travel Tips board, then my next pin a few days later into France Travel Tips Boards, then into Travel Photography Tips, then Into Instagram Photo Guides, then into Europe Travel, and FINALLY into my Best of board.

Each time you put a pin into one of these boards, you are refining the scope of your topic and sending signals to Pinterest about your pin.

Pinterest SEO Mistake #2: You are using the title of your blog post as your Pinterest description

I get it… you’ve spent hours doing SEO on your blog post and you finally hit the publish button. The last thing you want to do is write another keyword rich paragraph! But your pin description is SO IMPORTANT to getting your pin in front of the right people (aka those travelers searching for information for their next trip).

Write your pin description with the same focus as you would write your meta description for Google. Put yourself in the shoes of the traveler – what could they be searching for that would lead them to my pin? Make sure you use all these relevant keywords into your pin description. Make sure you write a small paragraph that ​explains what is in your blog post and the value the reader will get if they click through. If You need SEO Service, You can check out Bengal Developer.

IRL Example: Back to My Pretty London Photo Spots article. People might be searching for Instagrammable places in London, where to take pictures in London, best London photo spots, London photography tips. I will then write a paragraph with 3 or 4 sentences including all of these keywords. Use as many characters as Pinterest allows you! Make this copy count.

Pinterest SEO Mistake #3: You don’t know your audience’s intent

Before you start focusing on where to pin things, whether you’re going to use Tailwind or group boards or tribes etc… there are 2 CRUCIAL things you need to do.

1.Figure out who the audience is for your article (and make sure there actually is one!).

Would you as a traveler go on Pinterest to search for the information that you are providing in your article? If the answer is no then don’t waste any time trying to promote it on Pinterest. If people would be searching for this on Google then this is a post for Google. (an example would be for instance a review of an upcoming festival in your city and why people should attend)

2. What is my audience looking for? What will they be searching? Make sure you do the research beforehand.

If you don’t know your audience and you don’t know what they search, you can’t produce content that will rank highly on Pinterest (or anywhere for that matter). It might be tempting to write whatever you feel like writing and hope that people will come but unfortunately more often than not it flops!

So here you have them… the biggest Pinterest SEO mistakes a lot of bloggers make without realizing them.