The days of quick and easy Pinterest traffic for your blog or website appear to be over. Once a go-to place for referral traffic, the platform has recently been through some intense changes. This has caused a lot of red-faced bloggers to have to seriously consider their traffic strategies.

So does this mean the Pinterest traffic dream is over?

Or is their light at the end of the tunnel?

Pinterest Changes

The blogging Facebook groups are full of complaints from frustrated content creators. Not only is the platform failing to deliver the same sort of numbers it used to, but many have even been caught up in a spam filter – completely obliterating their profiles performance.

Pinterest Virtual Assistants across the blogging world are asking ‘how can this be fixed?” And the answer, although not easy, has actually been clearly defined by Pinterest themselves.

The platform now demands fresh content above all. And only by feeding the beast with what it wants will your pins gain maximum exposure.

But what does fresh content actually mean? And how can it be sustainably delivered?

Fresh Content

Pinterest defines fresh content in a very straightforward way. Firstly, the ultimate hierarchical type of content that the platform deems fresh is a new URL (one that has never been posted to Pinterest before) combined with a totally new pin image. This is the ideal type of content that the new algorithm is craving.

But fear not bloggers, you don’t need to write 5 new blog posts a day just to have actual stuff to pin. They also consider a new pin image to an old URL as new content.

This means we have to get busy creating new images for our old posts and using either the manual pinning method, Pinterest native scheduler, or Tailwind; get them out to the world. I have personally seen massive increases in impressions and click-throughs by delivering exactly what Pinterest has asked for.

Moving Forward

It may not be the powerhouse it once was, but Pinterest is still possibly the best, easiest and quickest way to get free traffic to your blog or website. Also, it is worth noting that the new changes are still being fazed in, and the teething problems may well get sorted.

Finally, many well known big names in the Pinterest marketing world have noted that it is taking 20-40 weeks for pins to start generating traffic. So it might be that Pinterest can deliver the goods, it’s just now a long term game as apposed to a quick win.

There are a number of ways you can quickly generate quick pins that adhere to the new requirements:

• Use actual different images from free and paid stock photo sites.
• Swap the main focus point of images you use on your pins. For example, if you have a chair in your pin and it is far away, consider zooming in for another pin.
• Change the titles and highlight different phrases.
• Change the colors and main focus colors. This can be for large sections or minor ones. As long as there is a significant difference.
• Add small subtitles in text bubbles or shapes.
• Rotate the text and change the alignment of text as well.
• Use text effects for focus keywords.
• Add borders to the pin image.
• Add relatable elements, e.g dollar signs for money related pins.
• Remove elements and change focus.
• Change the size and dimensions of pins

Either way, if you want to win at the game of Pinterest, you need to play, and play fresh!