The Biggest Pinterest Board Mistake You Might Be Making

Last week, we talked about our biggest Pinterest SEO mistakes … and this week we are going to talk about the importance of a solid Pinterest board structure for Pinterest SEO. Let’s uncover the Pinterest board mistakes many travel bloggers are making and how to fix it!

The Mistake: Your Pinterest boards are way too general

When you set up your Pinterest boards a few years ago, it seemed like a good idea to create a board for each continent and a few countries and put the majority of your pins in there. Even better, you have a “Wanderlust” or “Travel Inspo” board for anything that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. Does that sound familiar?

Your Pinterest boards are basically your blog blueprint for Pinterest. They are the most important message you send to Pinterest about who you are, why you are an expert in your niche and why Pinterest should rank your pins in that niche.

Continent/wanderlust boards send the following message: I’m a general travel blogger with nothing making me stand out from other travel bloggers . I know about lots of travel things but I don’t really have a niche. I like wanderlust. Please rank my pins!

Guilty? Now let’s fix it together because you know I’ve got you! The good news is Pinterest is really smart. So even if you’ve been pinning for years into random boards, it’s not too late to teach Pinterest about your niche.

Step 1: Niche Down Your Boards to Improve Pinterest SEO

Let’s do a little exercise together to come up with a great list of niche boards for your blog! Ask yourself the following questions and mark all that apply:

• Are you a female/male/solo/couple/family/POC/etc… blogger?
• Are you blogging about budget, luxury, backpacking, adventure, outdoor, digital nomad, slow travel?
• What country, city, state, region do you have content about (or are you planning to visit in the future) ?
• Do you write food guides, Instagram guides, photo tips, travel with kids guides?

For each board that you create, try to think of another that would be even more niche about that same topic. For instance, if you create a board about Paris and you have some great food content, consider creating a specific board for Paris Food. If you create a board about California but you have a lot of outdoors/hiking content, consider creating a board about California National Parks. Force yourself to GO GRANULAR!! You are an expert in your niche and you need Pinterest to know this too!

Now let’s reintroduce ourselves to Pinterest with our brand new board structure, shall we? Hi, I’m a solo female travel blogger with a focus on the UK and specifically London. I write a lot of foodie guides about London and roundups of epic photo spots in London. I am an expert in this niche. I also traveled Asia extensively and have a lot of content about Southeast Asian countries.

Now I know that this sounds like pretty basic sh*t. Every Pinterest guide out there will start with create good boards. But I’m not rambling for nothing here, this is step 1 to Pinterest SEO. On my own personal account, I built my Paris board for a long time because that’s where I grew up. I curated a lot of great content about Paris and France in general. My Paris board quickly became my most engaged board by far. When I finally wrote my first Paris article Pinterest ranked it almost immediately and it’s been hanging up there at the top of Paris searches for a year now. Pinterest knows that my account curates and produces relevant Paris content because that is what I taught Pinterest.

My rule of thumb: For each piece of content that you produce in your niche you should have a minimum of 4 personal Pinterest boards this content can fit into. If you don’t get to 4, that usually means you need to niche down your boards more.

Step 2: Make sure your boards have SEO optimized board descriptions

We’ve touched on this topic in the Pinterest SEO Mistakes article, but we’ll revisit this again this week. Write a few sentences for your board descriptions and make sure they are keyword rich. Pinterest will use that description to figure out what your pins are about.

Now a few of you might tell me that when they do a board search on Pinterest, the first boards that show up sometimes don’t have a description. And that would be the truth! If someone has been pinning relevant content into a board for 6 years and has established themselves as an authority in this niche, Pinterest has most likely already indexed that board even without a description. If we could go back in time, we would all start pinning 6 years ago! If you’re one of the new kids on the block, every little bit of information you can give Pinterest helps! So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and set out 2 hours to write board descriptions.

Step 3: Don’t leave those new boards to collect dust and only use them when you publish a relevant post

Remember the bit about establishing yourself as an expert in your niche? It takes work and time. It’s not going to happen overnight. But if you curate good content and build useful boards, Pinterest will reward you for it. So make sure you pin consistently and not just your own content!That’s it for this week! If you haven’t already and join our Facebook group Pinterest Guide for Travel Bloggers!