The ultimate guide to clean up your Pinterest boards and watch your traffic soar
Pinterest can be a great way to drive traffic to your website but only if your Pinterest boards are well organized and optimised! Why? Because Pinterest is a content search engine and anything that you can do to keep it easy for Pinterest to find your Pinterest boards and your pins, the better your Pinterest results and your Pinterest traffic will be.
In this guide, I’ll show you:
So get ready! I’m uncovering my full system to clean up your Pinterest boards to get more traffic from Pinterest.
Full disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission from.
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Why to clean up your Pinterest boards
The best way to explain why to clean up your Pinterest boards is a great exercise is by giving you a completely different example.
Let me explain…
Your pins and Pinterest boards are exactly the same. The need to help Pinterest find your content.
In addition, imagine now you look at the window of a fashion shop, and you see a similar mess to the one I just described above... would you be tempted to go in at all, let alone become a customer?
Yes! Your Pinterest boards are the window to your audience, that you want to convert into super fans and warm leads to join your list and become customers. So your Pinterest boards need some tidying up regularly so that you present yourself in the best possible way... while not spending too much time sorting it out.
If you're not seeing the results you want from Pinterest, it's time to clean up your boards and change your pinning strategy.
How often to clean up your Pinterest boards
Obviously you can clean up your boards at any time. Here are some guidelines for how often Pinterest users typically clean up their boards:
If you are just starting out on Pinterest, don't worry about cleaning anything or making any changes to your Pinterest account yet. Just get started pinning and connect with other people to gain visibility.
On the other hand, if you're not seeing results from Pinterest or you've been on the platform for a while and haven't made much headway, then it's time to start cleaning up your boards.
You should also clean up your boards on a regular basis to keep them up-to-date and relevant, at least every quarter.
And if you want to discover plenty of more Pinterest strategies, tips and hacks, check out these related blogs:
What to clean up on your Pinterest boards
It's time to improve your Pinterest reach by cleaning up your Pinterest boards.
This includes deleting pins, moving boards, combining similar boards, optimizing your Pinterest boards SEO, optimizing your Pinterest profile, considering how to attract your audience and what's missing and more.
To keep this necessary process simple, let's look at my 6 steps to clean up your Pinterest boards in this ultimate guide to clean up your Pinterest boards. Cleaning up Pinterest boards can take some time, but start with these 6 steps to help you make sense of all your Pinterest boards and boost your Pinterest results!
Step 1: Decide what Pinterest boards to keep, merge, delete or make private
The very first step to start your process of cleaning up your Pinterest boards is to assess all your boards and sort them into the following 3 categories. Boards to:
delete or make private
merge
keep
In this process, you will consider both your personal boards as well as your group boards. Obviously you won't be able to merge group boards.
It all comes down to the relevance of the boards and the results you're getting.
When to delete a Pinterest board
You will consider deleting a Pinterest board if:
you've had no activity on that board for at least 3-6 months.
your target audience isn't interested in the topics you're pinning to this particular group board (check this out in your Pinterest analytics).
there is a high chance your content won't be pinned and shown by other people because it doesn't relate to any of your other boards. It's effectively an oddity that sticks out and Pinterest will not naturally associate your account to that type of content in that board.
When to make a Pinterest board private
You will consider making a Pinterest board private when:
you don't want people to see this board because it's personal (for example, your holiday pin boards).
you're benchmarking some of your competitors but don't wish to be promoting their pins on your boards.
you don't want to delete the board and its content, for example because you wish to focus on other content pillars (categories) for a while.
When to merge a Pinterest board
You will consider merging Pinterest boards when:
you have quite a lot of overlap (even if they aren't exactly the same) between your boards.
both boards are about the same topic anyway and it can even become confusing for your audience which one to look at.
By merging Pinterest boards you combine their pins to make 1 board with double the content. This can help you with boards that haven't got enough pins! 🥳
When to keep and optimize a Pinterest board
You will consider keeping a Pinterest board when:
It's an essential part of your strategy (if they are doing well).
There's nothing wrong with it. If it isn't just getting pinned much because your target audience isn't following this board, you can make changes after you've finished the process of deleting and merging your Pinterest boards to try perk up activity on that particular board. We'll look at that later in this blog.
Step 2: How to delete Pinterest boards the right way
Deleting Pinterest boards can be a little scary.
You'll need to make sure you don't delete your board in error which means using the correct process!
How to review and delete personal Pinterest boards (not Group boards)
Here are a few important considerations:
Remember that when you delete a Pinterest board you will lose the followers. So always expect to see the number of your followers go down when you delete Pinterest boards.
Also, and super important, a board might not be super relevant anymore for you but you could have very good performing pins inside. So before you delete a board, check out your own good performing pins. Move them out of the board you're going to delete into boards you're keeping.
Remember that when you delete your own pins, the pins saved in other accounts might not find your content and will create user experience issues.
The alternative to deleting is to merge boards or make them private.
To delete a Pinterest board: Log into your Pinterest account and click on Boards in the top left-hand menu. Click on the three dots to the right of your deleted board and select Delete. You will also see a confirmation box so you can double-check if the deleted board is the one you want to delete.
How to review and clean up Group boards using Tailwind
You might have joined a number of Pinterest group boards. If you find yourself in too many Pinterest group boards, it might be time to delete some of them so that they don't dilute your brand.
Over time the performance of a Pinterest group board can change and it's a great idea to regularly consider whether to maintain that Pinterest group boards in your account or not.
Use Tailwind to see the analytics of Pinterest group boards in your account. consider deleting when:
You see low Virality or Engagement score
There are a very large number of contributors and pins daily (it becomes very difficult for your pins to stand out, plus the quality of the pins can be questionable and difficult to track).
You have more followers than Pinterest group board (you're better of with your own personal board)
This will improve your Pinterest SEO score for each board where you have published pins.
Step 3: Why and how to merge Pinterest boards
Merging Pinterest boards is the same process as deleting a board, but instead of choosing Delete, choose Merge Boards.
You'll need to go through this process on all of your Pinterest boards that you've selected to merge.
Merging boards is a great way to have more relevant pins quickly in a Pinterest board and boost your chances of attracting the right audience. Only merge when it makes sense to do so.
Step 4: How to optimize the Pinterest boards you keep
Now it's time to optimize your Pinterest boards!
This basically consists in doing the following things:
Optimize your Pinterest boards SEO (title, description)
Order your boards
Create / choose board cover
Add pins to boards
Reorder pins to get yours at the top
And please note that you have no need to delete pins!
How to optimize your SEO Pinterest boards
Pinterest boards have a title, a description and hashtags. You can optimize these to improve your SEO performance on Pinterest.
Optimizing the titles and descriptions of your Pinterest boards with keywords is important because it enables you to appear in more search results for relevant queries!
When creating titles for your boards, just remember that there are only 20 characters that you can use! So it's important to choose your keywords carefully and use them in the title of the board.
Order your Pinterest boards
You can choose in which order your Pinterest boards appear when someone looks at your Pinterest account. You can click and drag boards to reorder them.
You want your most important boards to appear first and the least important one at the bottom of your Pinterest account.
Sort your Pinterest boards by topic, with the most relevant and strategic to your target niche first.
Create or choose your Pinterest board cover
By default Pinterest will show the latest pin and that isn't ideal.
You can choose what pin shows as your board cover. Create an interesting pin with your Pinterest board cover in mind and edit your board and select it as your board cover.
Think that the board cover is what stands out when someone looks at your Pinterest boards in the Saved tab, so make it irresistible and enticing to be clicked and followed!
Add pins to Pinterest boards
Overtime, some of your boards might have less pins because literally you forget you have them, especially when you have a larger number of boards.
If your Pinterest board has less than 50-100 pins, add pins to that board. That helps signal to Pinterest that this board deserves to be followed.
Reorder pins to get yours at the top in your Pinterest board
Reorder pins to get yours at the top from time to time so that someone looks at a board, what they see is mainly your pins.
Step 5: Optimize your Pinterest profile… not just your Pinterest boards
Your Pinterest profile has an About section, display name and link. Optimizing your Pinterest profile is important because it's what people see when they follow you.
Your Pinterest profile picture should be eye-catching and represent something about the topic of your account or board.
People will want to follow you if they think that you can provide them with what they want, so make no mistake about it.
Your Pinterest About section should be written in a way that potential followers know what topics you are focussing on and invite them to follow you if interested!
Step 6: Go back to your Pinterest analytics every few months
This step is very important because it's the only way to ensure that your boards are still relevant to your Pinterest account.
The first thing you should do is go back to your Pinterest analytics dashboard. See which were the most popular pins over time and pin them again, if they are still relevant to this day!
You can also see which boards are getting more followers or repins for example.
Your BONUS tip: Create new Pinterest boards
And now for your special bonus tip! Until now you have been cleaning up your existing Pinterest boards but...
What about if you're missing some essential Pinterest boards in your Pinterest account?!
Part of cleaning up your Pinterest boards is to consider what other Pinterest boards you should create! Here are the 2 main considerations:
Ensure you have a "Best of" board
You need to create a "Best of" board because you want the most popular pins from your different boards all in one place.
Here is my "Best of" board as an example:
Isabel Talens Online Business | Pinterest Traffic
You don't necessarily need to call it "Best Of" board! It is the place when you showcase your Pinterest content to your audience.
Are you using 4-5 content pillars?
Create new Pinterest boards to cover your content pillars, usually between 4-5 different content pillars. You can:
Niche down to create new boards
Niche to lateral interests of your audience
Go wider (not too niched down)
This helps you have a wider net to attract a maximum number of people to your Pinterest audience to convert onto followers!
Create Pinterest Boards regularly
It’s a good habit to create new boards regularly (every month or so). It indicates that your account is not static but is capturing new ideas and inspiration to show to your audience.
Obviously it doesn’t make sense to create boards for the sake of it. Consider all the elements that we have looked at together in this blog and it will become natural to identify gaps in your Pinterest boards!
What next?
As always… take action! Happy Pinterest board clean up and start watching your Pinterest traffic accelerate!
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Hi! I’m Isabel
Visual content creation is my passion
The sea is my happy place!
For years and years I have created and produced content, in particular visual content. You can find me very often with my cameras and tripod out and about!
My passion: to help you with your online presence and drive business growth through my blog and visuals collections (marketing templates, styled photos & video).
Ah, I have also worked for 24+ in the corporate world, leading quite a mix: transformation, marketing, coaching, sales, productivity, programme management, investments and product management.
I love sharing all these skills with you in my blog.
I am also founder of Agavea Properties, our family holiday rental business. My husband and I lead it with the passion with one goal in mind: serving our customers to create a memorable holiday experience for them.
So there you have it, that’s me! Ah... I almost forgot, my happy place is by the sea.
Thanks for being here with me!
