Your Pinterest Has Great Impressions… So Why Isn’t Anyone Clicking?

Pinterest Outbound Clicks: The Metric That Turns Views Into Website Traffic + Sales

Estimated Read Time: 10 minutes

You’ve been pinning consistently. Your impressions keep climbing. Maybe your saves are looking pretty good too. But you’re still wondering… Where is the website traffic? The email sign-ups? The affiliate revenue? The bookings? The sales?!

Here’s the thing: Pinterest isn’t successful for your business just because people are seeing your content.

The real question is: what happens after they see it?

It’s easy to get excited about a big impression number (and don’t get me wrong, visibility is a good thing!), but if one of your Pinterest marketing goals is to drive traffic to your website and turn that traffic into subscribers, clients, affiliate revenue, or sales, there’s another metric I want you paying very close attention to: Pinterest outbound clicks.

Outbound clicks tell us that someone didn’t just see your Pin. They saw it, became interested enough to learn more, and actually left Pinterest to visit the URL you gave them.

So before you celebrate your next 500K or 1M monthly views, let’s talk about what your Pinterest metrics actually mean, why outbound clicks matter so much, and what you can start tweaking if your Pins are getting seen but aren’t getting people to take that next step.

And yes, we can take this even further by comparing your Pinterest analytics with Google Analytics to see what happens once someone lands on your website—but that’s definitely for another blog post.

First, What Do Your Pinterest Metrics Actually Mean?

Pinterest gives us plenty of data to look at, but there are four core Pin metrics I pay particular attention to: impressions, saves, Pin clicks, and outbound clicks. They each tell us something different.

And once you understand the difference, it becomes SO much easier to figure out where your Pinterest marketing strategy might need a little work.

Impressions: They Saw You

An impression simply tells us that your Pin appeared on someone’s screen on Pinterest. That’s it! And while a growing impression count can tell us that Pinterest is distributing your content and getting it in front of people, it doesn’t necessarily tell us that those people are taking action. You could have hundreds of thousands of impressions and very few people actually visiting your website. So yes, I want to see impressions growing—but I’m never looking at that number by itself.

Saves: They Want to Remember You

I have a little bit of a love-love-but-also-let’s-look-deeper relationship with saves. A save happens when someone adds your Pin to one of their Pinterest boards. And yay for saves! Someone saw your content and thought, I want to remember this. Saves can also help your content continue circulating on Pinterest, which is part of what makes this platform so different from traditional social media. A Pin can keep getting discovered, saved, and resurfaced long after you originally published it. That’s the beautiful snowball effect we want from sustainable Pinterest marketing. Though, someone can also save your Pin with every intention of coming back to it and then completely forget about it.

(I know I can’t be the only one with Pinterest boards full of things I was definitely going to make someday. 😂) So saves are valuable, but a save doesn’t automatically equal website traffic or a sale.

Pin Clicks: You Caught Their Attention

Now we’re getting warmer. A Pin click happens when someone taps your Pin to see it close up. This is meaningful because something made that person stop. Maybe it was your image. Your text overlay. Your Pin title. The topic. The promise you made. Or maybe your Pin matched exactly what they were searching for. Whatever it was, you caught their attention enough that they wanted a closer look. That’s great information for us as marketers. But there’s an important distinction: They’re still on Pinterest and they haven’t visited your website quite yet at this point.

Outbound Clicks: They Want More

THIS is where things get exciting. An outbound click happens when someone clicks the link attached to your Pin and leaves Pinterest for your website, or whatever destination you’ve linked. Think about everything that had to happen before that click. They discovered your Pin, you caught their attention, and they understood what you were offering.

That click is the connection between Pinterest discovery and the action you ultimately want someone to take on your own platform. Because once they’re on your website, they can read your blog post, join your email list, click an affiliate link, browse your products, learn about your services, book a call, or make a purchase. That’s why I pay SO much attention to Pinterest outbound clicks when I’m managing my clients’ accounts.

And if your business goal is website traffic, leads, bookings, affiliate revenue, or sales, that last step matters a whole lot.

Your Pinterest Has Great Impressions. So Why Are Your Outbound Clicks Low?

Okay, so your visibility is there, meaning Pinterest is showing your content. But people aren’t leaving Pinterest. Now what? This is where I start looking at the journey someone takes from seeing the Pin to deciding whether it’s worth clicking.

Ask yourself:

• Is the Pin visually interesting?
• Is the text overlay immediately clear?
• Does it create curiosity?
• Does it communicate a benefit or solution?
• Does the title match what someone is actually searching for?
• Does the description make them want to learn more?
• And most importantly: have you given them a reason to leave Pinterest?

If the answer to some of those is ehhh… maybe?, we have some tweaking to do.

1. Start With Your Pin Design

Your image and text overlay are your scroll stoppers. Before someone reads your description or visits your website, your Pin has to make them stop long enough to care. Your Pin design should speak directly to the person you’re trying to reach.

Instead of thinking only about making something pretty, think:

What problem is my ideal audience trying to solve right now?

And then make the Pin communicate that. A good click-focused Pin often follows a really simple journey:

Problem → Promise → Curiosity → Solution → Click

You’re showing someone that you understand what they need while giving them just enough information to want the rest of the answer.

2. Get Specific With Your Pin Titles

Your Pin title is doing some heavy lifting here. It needs to help Pinterest understand your content, match what your audience is searching for, AND tell that person what they’ll get if they click. Generic titles are easy to scroll past, where specific titles give someone a reason to stop.

For example:

Foods for Gut Health

vs.

10 Foods to Add to Your Diet for a Healthier Gut

Same general topic.

But one simply labels the content. The other promises something specific. And when you’re thinking through your pinning strategies, ask yourself: If I were searching for this exact thing, would this title make me want the answer?

3. Don’t Treat Your Pin Description Like an Afterthought

Once someone opens your Pin, your description can help turn that curiosity into an outbound click. You don’t have to make it complicated. I like descriptions that sound natural, almost like you’re talking to a friend. Tell them what they’re going to find, naturally work in your main keyword and related keywords, and finish with one clear call to action.

I often like starting descriptions with a question, too, because it can immediately speak to the exact situation that brought someone to Pinterest in the first place, and then tell them what to do next. This should be short, specific, and focused.

Read the full guide.

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See how we can work together.

4. Remember: Pinterest Is a Visual Search Engine

Not every Pin needs a text overlay! There are plenty of niches where the image can do a lot of the talking—fashion, food, travel, interiors, beauty, products, and more. But if the image is doing the heavy lifting, make it GOOD. Use captivating, high-quality images that accurately represent where the Pin is taking someone. Blurry, mediocre, or unrelated imagery isn’t going to cut it when you’re marketing on a visual search engine. Your Pin is competing with a whole screen of other beautiful ideas.

5. One Pin Doesn’t Need to Rank for Everything

Please don’t take every keyword you found during your Pinterest SEO research and shove it into one Pin description. More keywords do not automatically equal more reach. Instead, give each Pin one clear search intent and build the title, description, text overlay, and image around that angle. Then create additional fresh Pins for the same piece of content using other relevant keyword angles.

So instead of trying to make ONE Pin rank for five different ideas, you might make five Pins, each targeting a different way your ideal audience is searching for that content.

I like to think of it this way:

You’re creating different doors into the same piece of content.

And that’s one of my favorite parts of Pinterest marketing. One blog post, product, podcast episode, or offer can give you SO much Pinterest content when you approach it strategically.

What This Looked Like for One of My Clients

One of my clients came to me with this exact problem. She wasn’t starting from scratch, either. Her Pinterest account was already reaching close to 800K monthly views. She was pinning consistently, creating multiple Pins for her content, and getting saves. On the surface, the account looked like it was doing really well. But the outbound clicks weren’t matching all that visibility—and more importantly for her business, neither was the affiliate revenue.

As I started revamping and optimizing her Pinterest account, I noticed something. A lot of her Pin titles and descriptions were too generic or vague. Some of the text overlays weren’t communicating a strong enough benefit or solution, and descriptions weren’t always giving people a clear next step. So we changed that, we got more intentional with her Pinterest SEO, Pin titles, descriptions, keyword angles, designs, and calls to action. And we gave it time to work.

Around 6–8 months later:

Outbound clicks increased 420%.

Monthly views grew from around 800K to 1M — about a 25% increase.

Saves increased 200%. But you know which number I’m most excited about?

420% more outbound clicks.

Because a million monthly views looks fantastic on a Pinterest dashboard, but I want those people going somewhere. I want them visiting the website, reading the content, discovering the products, clicking affiliate links, joining the email list, and learning more about the business behind the Pin.

That’s the difference between chasing Pinterest vanity metrics and building a Pinterest marketing strategy around your actual business goals.

What If You Had Started Six Months Ago?

After about eight months, my client told me she wished we’d started working together sooner.

When you finally start seeing Pinterest turn into actual website traffic instead of just pretty numbers on a dashboard, it’s easy to wonder what could have happened if you’d made those changes six months, or even a year earlier. Where could your business be today?

BUT YOU CAN START NOW!

If you’re getting Pinterest impressions but aren’t seeing those impressions turn into traffic, leads, or sales, my Pinterest Management package starts with a full Pinterest account optimization. We build the foundation first—your Pinterest SEO, boards, profile, strategy, keywords, and content—so we’re not simply pinning more content onto an account that isn’t set up to support your goals.

From there, I take Pinterest off your plate so you can keep doing what you do best: running your business. Ready to turn more of those Pinterest views into actual website traffic?

Take Action This Week

Give Every Pin a Specific Call to Action

Skip vague CTAs like: “Click for more.”

Tell people what is actually waiting for them.

Read the full guide.

Grab the free checklist.

Shop the full collection.

See the before + after.

Get all 10 tips.

Learn how we can work together. That one little line can make the next step feel much more obvious.

And if you’re not sure whether your Pinterest account has the right foundation in place, grab my free guide—it’ll walk you through the key pieces to check in your profile, boards, keywords, and more.

Pro Tip: Make Consistency Easier on Yourself

I personally use Tailwind to schedule Pinterest content because it allows me to plan ahead, stay consistent, and take care of things like alt text while I’m already scheduling. Because here’s the thing:

A sustainable Pinterest marketing strategy shouldn’t require you to be glued to Pinterest every day. I’d much rather see you create a strategic system you can actually maintain than burn yourself out trying to manually Pin every single day.

We’re not looking for more views just for the sake of having more views. We want to build visibility that leads somewhere, we want more of the right people discovering you! The goal is more traffic to your website, and more people entering your world.

And ultimately, more opportunities for that Pinterest traffic to turn into subscribers, affiliate revenue, bookings, clients, and sales. That’s the Pinterest growth I’m interested in.

Come hang out with me on Threads! I spend lots of time over there sharing Pinterest tips, marketing thoughts + little bits of everyday life. Come say hi! 🌻