Pin clicks are one of the metrics reported in Pinterest analytics, and you may wonder if they’re worth paying attention to.
They are defined as ‘The total number of clicks on your Pin or ad so that it opens in close-up.’
Pin clicks are a good indication of whether your content resonates with your Pinterest audience.
They are what’s called an ‘engagement signal’ on Pinterest, so one of the metrics you should pay attention to.
In this article, I will discuss in detail how to use this metric, how it relates to other things you should keep an eye on, and, of course, my tips for increasing clicks.
In case you wonder: why should I listen to you?
I’ve been an active user of Pinterest for nearly 10 years, and have grown my oldest site to over 500k sessions in a month, and continue achieving similar results for my clients.
What I do and teach here is based on factual evidence on how the algorithm works, not my educated guess.
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What are Pin Clicks on Pinterest?
First things first, there are two definitions of pin clicks that Pinterest offers.
The first one I already mentioned in the intro, and here is the second one:
The total number of times people tap on a Pin or ad that leads them to a destination on or off Pinterest. (source)
This is a more precise definition, and it covers two scenarios – the click on the pin initiates a closeup view of the pin, which leads to two options:
They either click on the link to read the article or visit the website, or close the pin and continue browsing.
Now, this is just my personal opinion and speculation, but I believe if you have a high amount of clicks, and only a tiny percentage of them leads to saves or outbound clicks, it could actually be a bad sign for your account quality.
Similar to pogo-sticking in Google, if the users return back to search results and don’t want to save your content or visit your site, it’s an indication that the content is not worth saving or exploring further.
I think Pinterest probably has a higher tolerance for this behavior since it’s, by design, a site made for exploring, but it may play a part in the overall account quality.
I will try to dig out some details and evidence for this in the engineering blogs.
Are Pin Clicks Important on Pinterest?
Yes and no.
Pin clicks are part of the engagement rate calculated by Pinterest.
The amount of engagement that your pins receive from users is a good indication of how healthy your account is and how well your content resonates with the audience.
The more engagement your content receives, the more your content gets served to the audience.
This is one of the reasons that low impressions on new pins are not a bad thing; if they receive good engagement, your engagement rate shoots up pretty quickly.
With that being said, you shouldn’t pay attention to the ‘engagement rate’ as calculated by Pinterest too much, as it relies on impressions.
Impressions are defined as at least one pixel of your pin loading on the screen for at least one continuous second.
As you can imagine, if a tiny corner of your pin loads at the bottom of the screen, the audience has no way of engaging with it.
I did say engagement is important and is defined by Pinterest as follows: Engagements include saves, Pin clicks and outbound clicks.
Out of the three engagement metrics, saves are the most important one (as Pinterest also says), so you don’t need to worry too much about pin clicks, but focus more on increasing your saves.
How to Increase Pin Clicks on Pinterest
To increase your pin clicks on your account, you first need more people to see your content.
To do that, you need to master Pinterest SEO – that’s the only way your content will make it to the search results and be shown to related accounts.
If you want a crash course on Pinterest SEO, you can find my free course linked at the end of the article – it covers everything you need to know to get your account on track.
Are there other ways to increase pin clicks?
Of course!
If you increase your impressions and your content is served more (not necessarily seen!), your next goal should to be increase your actual pin clicks.
To do that, you need to craft beautiful pin images that have a solid call to action, bold graphics and nail the user intent.
One of the best ways to do this is by looking at the top pin results for your target keywords, and checking where your own content falls short, be it design, headline, layout of the pin and other things.
Pin Clicks vs Outbound Clicks
So why are pin clicks simply not called clicks?
They need to be differentiated from outbound clicks, which generally follow a pin click and take the user out of the platform.
A good way to calculate your click-through rate is to look at your total number of pin clicks over a period of time, and compare them with outbound clicks for the same period.
This will give you the best engagement rate calculation, which will be different from the one given by Pinterest.
Why?
Because Pinterest factors impressions into this metric, and as you know, impressions don’t actually mean a user seeing your content.
All it takes is one pixel of your content being loaded for at least one second.
Below is the formula you can use to calculate this:
Real outbound click rate calculation on Pinterest: total number of outbound clicks divided by total number of pin clicks, multiplied by 100.
4 Places to Track Pin Clicks in Pinterest Analytics
There are a few places where pin clicks are reported.
Let’s check each of these in detail as they each serve a different purpose.
1. Overall Pin Click Reporting
To get an overview of how well your pins are doing, you can use the main dashboard and choose pin clicks as your metric.
Please remember that when using analytics, add a manual time window into your filters, as Pinterest is using the last few days reporting with estimated data, not real data (see the missing line in my analytics at the end).
Another thing to remember is to use the filters at the top of the analytics, choose organic pins only, static pins, and your pins only (not third party pins).
You have no control of third party pins and should be only interested in pins that are connected with your website.
2. Pin Clicks for Boards
The next section is your boards at the bottom of your analytics.
If you see some boards that are getting a lot of impressions but not enough pin clicks, you might want to experiment with new graphics or more compelling overlay text to try to increase your pin clicks.
I tend to review these each month to see if any specific content started attracting more pin clicks.
3. Pin Clicks for Top Pins
At the bottom of the analytics, you will also see reporting for a list of individual pins. You can filter these to see your most fresh content by clicking to show the pins created in the last 30 days.
This will give you a good indication of how your engagement looks like on brand-new pins and how they perform in relation to each other.
Remember that the engagement rate for each pin in this report is calculated based on impressions, so it wont be very accurate.
4. Individual Pin Click Reporting
The last place you can monitor pin clicks is by clicking on your pin and checking the analytics section on that individual pin.
Pinterest displays impression, saves and pin clicks under each pin – the little hand icon is for pin clicks, not outbound clicks (see below).
When you click on your pin, you will see a stats recap at the top, and a button to see more. This will give you a graph overview of how that specific pin performs over time.
Key Takeaways
Pin clicks indicate the total number of times a user has clicked on your pin image, whether it leads to an outbound click or not.
They are part of the engagement metric on Pinterest and an important one to keep an eye on.
You can increase your pin clicks by having an engaging title, description, and a strong call to action that will draw the audience to click on your pin.
Need to Learn More?
If you want to learn more about success on Pinterest, I created a free simple mini course that will teach you everything you need to know about the platform.
Sign up for my newsletter below, and you get free access to the course!
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