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Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Simple Pin podcast. I am your host, Kate All. One of the top questions that I get from our community is how to get your pins seen on Pinterest. This not only unlocks more clicks from Pinterest, but also more sales and more email leads for you. What we have learned over the years is that quality content matters. If you don't create content that meets quality guidelines that Pinterest has, then it can fall flat. Which leaves us with the question of what does Pinterest deem quality content? I'm currently part of the Educator program. The Pinterest Educator Program. As a Pinterest educator, just recently we were able to meet with some of their team who specialize in how pins get discovered. The information was so valuable that I knew I had to share this with you. So I specifically, specifically asked the Pinterest team if I could share some of that. So today I'm going to walk through the checklist of what exactly you need to think about when you create your content so that it can align with some of the signals Pinterest looks for at distribution. This episode is created in partnership with Pinterest as I am part of the Educator program. If there is one main point you take away from this episode, let it be this. Quality content always equals better reach, more saves and actual traffic to your website. Take time to create good content and I promise you will be rewarded. So let's walk through the checklist that we have for how your pins can get discovered. Number one is you want to have strong tech foundations. So I want to talk about the technical pieces that are needed to make sure you are in alignment with what Pinterest wants. So first, let's start with image and video requirements. If you are new to Pinterest, then you might not know that there is a specific ratio for images. And the minimum size for any Pinterest image is actually only 200 by 200, which this was really surprising to me. That's pretty small. You would actually never pin something that's 200 by 200, but they recommend a vertical size of 2 to 3, 1000 by 1500, because that is what most users engage with. So it's important that you do what users are engaging with, not something that is not an ideal size. Now, video pins, they have a little bit of a different ratio. You can do square one to one. You can do vertical two to three, four to five, nine to 16. The maximum file size needs to be two gigabyte. And the length of a video can be four seconds up to 15 minutes. Now I would never ever, ever Recommend up to 15 minutes because people on Pinterest don't watch long form video. So if you can keep it to right around a minute, even a little bit less than that, that's what we find. There's gets really good engagement. So why does this matter if you have the specific tech requirements, the image size pins that don't meet specific specifications simply will not perform. And it's not always about the technical, it's more about what the Pinner prefers. A long time ago Pinterest used to use landscape photos and then slowly it switched to vertical. This wasn't driven by Pinterest as much as it was by user behavior. So if users are saving one to one pins, then that's what the algorithm will start to favor. But they don't. So it's not the best format to use. So when it comes to image and video requirements, try to stay within those technical boundaries, but also pay attention to what the users are clicking on. This is another tech important piece that I don't want you to miss is that broken links will kill your credibility. Pins that don't have links are always going to be a missed opportunity anyway. So whether it's to read content or purchase something, if there is no link, they can't find you. That is one of the most frustrating parts of Pinterest is that when you click on an image, it doesn't go anywhere. So the best way for you to prevent this from happening is that when you upload a pin to Pinterest, ensure that it has a link. Now also make sure that that link actually works. Broken links will hurt your domain authority on Pinterest. If someone comes to a website and it's a 404, it's never a good thing. They're out. This brings me to the next step in the tech realm, which is speed and a mobile experience that is good is 2025. Your website needs to load fast. No one wants to wait any longer than two seconds to get your information. And that might even be a little bit long. Your mobile loading speed matters when it comes to that quality content on Pinterest. Why? Because Pinterest cares about your site speed, because it cares about their user experience. Can you imagine if they had a bunch of sites that had slow loading time? I would imagine they would receive a ton of customer service support emails and they can't control site speed. You do check your site speed. There are a lot of recommended tools out there. Somebody has asked me If Pinterest prefers a specific one, I would go just in general, which whichever experts in site speed recommend. I'm no expert in that. I hire people for that. But you can Google and test those websites and they can give you information. I was using a really horrible web host 2 years ago and this is an example of when things can go south and and my traffic was steadily going down. I kept digging into it and I was like, what is going on? And the people I was working with said, you need to find different hosting, there's something happening here. So I changed up my hosting and it was significantly affecting my site speed. I moved to that new host and immediately all of my traffic returned. So don't overlook this. I am a person who doesn't like the tech pieces, so. So I just think if I have signed up for hosting, it should just work, right? I paid the money, it should work. Sometimes it doesn't. Make sure you're checking in at least once a year. I would say you should probably audit your website once a year. Is it have the right call to action? Is it have broken links? Is it have fast loading time? Those are things you should check in on. Number two on our checklist is engagement and user experience. If pinners are not inspired by what they see on the image, they will simply scroll past. Also, if the image doesn't match what's on the website, it leaves them confused. So let's break that down a little bit. Image consistency matters. So if a pinner is on Pinterest and they come to your website, the only engagement point they've had up until this point is the image that's on the pin. So they go to your website and they're looking for that image to confirm they are in the right place. Place. The Pinterest algorithm looks for a matching image somewhere on the landing page. It does not have to be the first image, but it should actually be somewhere in that page. If it is not there, that can infect, in fact affect engagement. Which means that if a PIN does not get early engagement, it will be deprioritized. There are a lot of people who have made multiple images for one landing page and sometimes they've gotten a little too creative and they have used images that might not even be there. So I just want to encourage you use images that are in that landing page to maintain visual consistency. Again, this is where it would be a good test for you to open up Pinterest. Click on one of your pins and go to your website. Does the image match? Do you Feel like you're in the right place. Next is click through Quality. Pinterest is looking for Pinners who stick around and consume the content they want. If your site loads quickly, this allows the pinner to engage with that content. Longer visits on your website matter, just like they do on Google. So you want to think of some strategies to keep visitors engaged in your landing page. One of the things that I have done is I've given a lot of information towards the top and then I have these things embedded in my blog post that read in between the paragraph, but it is related. So I will actually write related and the name of another blog post and I'll italicize it so that it looks different than the straight text that is actually on either side of it. Because I want to keep people clicking around my website. So think about strategies that keep them there longer. Content alignment matters. So again we're talking about your pin image matching the image that is on your page coming from Pinterest and that content being not only helpful for the solution that they're trying to solve, but also getting them to click in other areas. Now a lot of people will ask, does this feel a little bit like clickbait? Am I like trying to trick them? No. Think of it as serving them. If somebody has come to this page on your website and they're looking for more information and you have related pages or products, share that with them. They will not know, especially if they are new to your website. Now let's talk a little bit about landing page experience. So when I speak about landing page, I am talking about your blog post, your product listing or a page on your site. Oftentimes people will refer to it as pages or posts. Right. So we're going to lump all of those together and talk about like landing page. Again, here's my call to action from this. If you have never clicked on your website from Pinterest, I highly encourage you to do that today. Okay? You want a seamless journey from pin to page. So there's a few things I'm going to tell you that are going to get in the way of that. The pop up problem. I completely understand wanting to grow your email list or share about a discount. I am all in it with you, right? I think discounts right now for products are one of the number one ways to hook people in. I do it, I fall for it all the time. But what happens is that if I am especially trying to reach read something. So let's say if it's blog post and I go there and all of a sudden I'm getting a pop up and I can't find the X to get out of it right away. I am quickly exasperated and I will move away. It is a frustrating experience not to be able to get to the content. So you want to consider adding your pop up maybe on an exit intent right before a user leaves leaves or giving it a little bit of time before it pops up. If I am going to make a recipe and I'm coming from Pinterest to get that recipe, there's two things I'm doing. First, one, I need to see a list of ingredients. Do I actually have them all? Number two, I want to see how much time it's going to involve for me to make it. Both require me to read. Which leads me to the second thing that can kind of prevent a really good landing page experience. Ad placement. I also understand that making money off your website through ads is a really lucrative and amazing way to have a business. I am not discrediting that at all. However, when you have a website that the moment I get on it I have a pop up, I have seven ads or I click the jump to recipe button and I'm constantly cycled through to where like I'm trying to make the recipe and I can't see it. This happened this weekend as I was doing some baking. It was really frustrating. So I'm going to say just consider good ad placement. Work with your ad company in order to make a good user experience because we want pinners to stick around longer. That helps create good quality content which means more of that content gets seen. So making sure that your pop ups and your ad placement are in the right place. Number three in our checklist is trust and safety. Probably most of you have this nailed, but we want to make sure that you are following all the safety guidelines as a content creator or as a product seller. Don't spread misinformation, disinformation or mal information that could harm users well being, safety or trust. This includes false content about protected groups, conspiracy theories, manipulated media and content from disinformation campaign. Just don't share it. Pinterest wants to be a positive environment has no business here. You want to also make sure that you are authentic and transparent. Don't manipulate content which includes spam or acting like you're somebody else. Content must accurately represent the creator, the brand or the product that is being promoted. Most of you are getting this. It would probably be the people who are specifically bad actors who actually want to violate this. So make sure you're authentically you. That's how you build long term credibility on the platform. Just represent yourself as you are. Right. So what happens if you violate these guidelines? Well, number one, Pinterest will remove the content. They're going to give you a warning and then if you violate it again, they're going to remove your account. Pinterest has a very robust appeals process to correct any mistaken removals. They recognize that their system is not perfect. So let me go over these again before we wrap this up. One, really strong tech foundations enable your content to become really quality content. For Pinterest, you follow the image guidelines, the video guidelines. You make sure that you don't have broken links and your site loads fast. Then you look at engagement and user experience. Are the people coming to your website from Pinterest able to access the content? Do they see the same image as is on the pin? This is really important. So that is number two. Number three is trust and safety. Are you following the guidelines that Pinterest has laid out? Here's a few things that I would tell you to do today. I've said it a couple times already, but I feel like it's important to note again. Number one, click on your PIN from Pinterest and go to your website. What are two to three things you note right right away? Does your site load fast? Are there any broken links? And does the user or do you know you're in the right place because you see the image from Pinterest that is actually on the landing page? If any of those things are broken, you have your checklist. One, if your site doesn't load fast, figure out your site speed. I would actually make that number one, that not only benefits Pinterest, but but it also benefits Google. And then the second takeaway that I would have for you is think about that quality content over quantity. A lot of people think more is better when it comes to Pinterest, but we don't always see that with our clients. We see consistent quality creation over time helps the account grow because they are making sure all of those bases are covered for quality content. And over time that will develop into this giant snowball where multiple pins are driving traffic to your website so that you can increase your sales, you can grow your email list and you can even make money off of those ads. If you have any questions about content quality on Pinterest, you can always email us. Helloimplepinmedia.com I'd love to know from you what your questions are about quality content. I always have a lot of questions, and of course, I take them to Pinterest. And so I'd love for you to ask me what your questions are about. Quality content on Pinterest. Thank you so much for listening.