Have you ever been suspended on Pinterest for “spam”?
Have you ever received an email from Pinterest that your pin was removed because of a copyright
complaint?
Do you know exactly what you shouldn’t do on Pinterest do stay safe and sound, and sleep
well?
Like any other Internet platforms, Pinterest has to constantly work on prevention of spammy
behavior and do their best to create a better experience for everyone.
For regular users, for content creators and for their advertisers.
Hi!
I’m Anastasia of anastasiablogger.com.
I’m a Pinterest marketing expert and I publish my Pinterest tips every Thursday.
Subscribe and hit the Bell button to get notified every time when I publish a new tutorial!
We all like to find unique content relevant to our interests and search queries.
So, we have to assume that all the platforms on the Internet have certain spam filters
and systems to reduce the amount of spam.
We have to also live with the fact that all the platforms can only give us very little
information in regards to their spam filters.
If they gave us the exact numbers and limitations, it would just make the life of black-hat spammers
easier.
They would continue spamming in a safe mode knowing the exact limits they cannot approach.
When you are just starting on Pinterest, you have no idea what could put your account in
trouble.
So, I made this video to help you understand better which behaviors on Pinterest are considered
spammy.
The best place where you can learn about Pinterest's Spam Policies
Is Community Guidelines Page.
I'll give you a link to this page below the video in the description.
So, I will scroll down to the Spam
and Quality Section of it.
But there are some other things we can talk about
which were mentioned earlier.
I'm not talking about the attempts to artificially boost views and other metrics, I'm talking
about what a regular blogger, or a website owner who is just creating an account on Pinterest,
and is not from this black-hat world of spammers.
Someone who is a regular person, like you and I, could make accidentally by mistake.
So, what it could be?
It could be for example, unsolicited commercial messages.
So you don't want to go on Pinterest in the comment section under the pin, and copy - paste
the same message talk about your services or about whatever products you are promoting
on Pinterest.
You definitely don't want to do it because you can get your account suspended really
easy and quickly if you do that.
Another way to get your account suspended which actually got suspended a lot of bloggers,
is when they were sending a message to be accepted to a group board.
And they would even use the same phrase and they would send in a one way, to let's say
to 5 or 10 different group board owners.
And even though those group board owners didn't flag their account, they didn't reply, they
completely ignored those messages, Pinterest doesn't ignore them.
Pinterest some spam filters which can identify this as repetitive behavior, or as unsolicited
commercial messages.
Because those bloggers would also include a link to their blog.
Because those bloggers were just asking the group board owner to have a look at their
blog, to evaluate the quality of the content.
But they don't realize that Pinterest spam filters will see this as an unsolicited commercial
message.
Another way to get your account suspended or even your domain blocked on Pinterest,
is doing repetitive posts, or saving the same pins linked to the same post, to the same
boards on your account very frequently.
Or multiple pins in the same day.
I have actually on this channel another video where I talk about how you can get your account
unsuspended, what you need to do, what are your actions on Pinterest, which teems you
need to contact to do this.
So, you can find the link to that video above my head there will be a little Info icon.
If you can't see it, I will give you a link in the description below this video as well.
But under that video, since I published it some time ago, I all the time keep getting
messages from people who were suspended, and of the reasons they are getting suspended
is that they accidentally or on purpose, just because they didn't realize that it's a spammy
technique, they just save several pins linked to the same blog post in the same day.
And sometimes they are saving the same image linked to the same page, to multiple boards.
Like to 20 or more boards in the same day.
And another case - they would use different images.
They would create let's say 10 different images and link them all to the same page on their
site and save them all (sometimes even to the same board) or even to several boards
- it doesn't matter.
Just because you are saving multiple times something linked to the same page on your
site, Pinterest Spam filter can be triggered and then your account will be suspended.
Another unfortunate reason why some people accidentally get their accounts suspended
for repetitive pinning is when they are trying to use Tailwind for the first time.
Without taking any course.
For example, they could take my course :) And avoid those mistakes but people are just trying
out this scheduling tool.
And they don't realize that if they have a list of boards, and they are trying to save
their pin to a list of boards, they can choose the list of boards.
And then they just go and click "Schedule" without checking what is the interval between
their pins.
You have to make sure that after you selected the list of Boards, you need to scroll down
until you see this Use Interval Button.
You click on it.
You need to make sure that you selected at least one day interval between your pins.
And then you can also select the time when you want to start saving your pins.
I usually start about 9 or 10 PM EST.
So, that's what you are choosing.
And Only after you selected the interval, you need to click on this Green button Set
Interval.
And only now you are safe to schedule your pins.
If you are going to save these pins in the same day, there is a high probability that
Pinterest will suspend your account.
At the time when someone goes to check your account manually, if you make an appeal if
you want to get your account reinstated, at the time when the person comes to your account
and they see that you actually did it.
That you actually saved 10 or 20 pins in the same day.
And you've done it multiple times, then chances are that they are not going to decide this
case in your favor.
And your account can remain suspended.
Another way to get your account suspended for repetitive actions on the platform is
doing follow for follow activity on Pinterest.
If you watched my video that I published last week, it was about the recent updates that
happened in the last year on Pinterest, one of the changes was that Pinterest made it
clear that the quality of your followers is more important than the quantity.
So there is not any reason for doing this follow for follow activity anyways, but if
you want to do it, at least make sure that you are not following way too many people.
in a short period of time.
Something might never expect to be considered a spammy activity I wanted to make sure you
know about this in this video, is that Pinterest doesn't allow link shorteners.
Probably they believe that this way you can use some misleading links and do some redirects.
And redirects or redirects :) Anyway, Pinterest is trying to see that there is consistency
between your pin and where your pin is going.
So, link shorteners, like bit.ly, which you can easily use on other social media, you
can not use them on Pinterest.
Don't take a risk, and don't try to save your pins using these link shorteners.
Another type of repetitive pinning on Pinterest is called Duplicate pins.
So by duplicate pins Pinterest considers when you are saving the same pin to the same board
multiple times.
So, you don't even have to do this in the same day.
It's enough to do this several time let's say in a month.
You don't want to do this more than once in 3 months.
This is the bare minimum.
And how do we know it?
It's because in Tailwind Smartloop.
Tailwind is an official partner of Pinterest, it's an authorized partner.
It's a scheduler.
And I talk about it in my course, you will find the link below the video.
So, in Tailwind you can save the same pin using the SmartLoop feature to the same board,
not more often than once in 3 months.
This is the default setting.
And Pinterest actually talked about duplicate pins and said that the only reason why you
would want to save the same pin to the same board on Pinterest is because you want to
show it to your new followers.
So imagine that over the course of 4 or 6 months you've got another 2 or 3 or 5000 followers
on your Pinterest account.
So, all of those new people haven't seen your pins, so this is the only reason why Pinterest
thinks you might want to save the same pin to the same board again.
Another way you can get your account suspended maybe accidentally without realizing you are
doing anything wrong is saving stolen pins on Pinterest.
You might not realize that when you are using an image taken from anywhere on the Internet,
especially as a newbie, as a beginner, you might not realize if you just go to Google
and just search and search for an image and it matches your content, it doesn't mean that
you can upload to your site without permission.
It doesn't mean that you can save it as a pin on Pinterest.
There is always a chance that if you do so, the copyright owner will file a DMCA complaint
on Pinterest and if you have too many of those, then your Pinterest account will be suspended.
So whenever you are looking for a new image for a pin, you have to search for free images
in stock sites.
Or maybe if you can afford it, you have to pay for a paid stock site.
I just opened a site that has a big collection of free photos.
It's called Pexels.
But there are many.
You just need to Google "free stock image sites".
So what is important though when you are using even the free images, you always want to be
logged in on this site and make sure that inside your account you have a history of
downloads.
So you always want to have a proof, just in case, in your account, on one of these free
stock sites that you downloaded for free there.
And if you've been on Pinterest for a while now, you probably received at least once an
email from Pinterest team that said "Sorry.
We have to delete one of your pins" it was a repin, something that you repinned inside
Pinterest platform.
And the copyright owner complained about it.
But don't worry it's not against your account, we are just informing you that we are going
to delete this pin.
So let me show you how you can easily get yourself into this trouble.
And it's not like you really have done anything wrong.
You haven't stolen an image, you haven't uploaded it on Pinterest you just went to Pinterest,
and you tried to search for some keyword.
And then you were just scrolling down the feed and some of the images will be definitely
stolen pins.
For example, this is my pin.
I know it for sure.
It's one of the first pins I created long time ago.
And I think that I had somewhere at the bottom of this pin my logo as well.
But anyway, what they done they just cut away my domain name from the bottom of the pin.
And this is one of the oldest pins, when it was still allowed to make those tall pins.
So it's a little bit tall pin.
Anyway, they knew that the pin was popular, pin image.
So they stole it and linked to their site.
And there are lots of sites that are doing the same thing.
So you might be just looking for pins you want to save to a specific board, and you
are going through search results.
And if you are not looking at the combination of the pin URL and what is written at the
bottom of the pin.
Or sometimes it can be in the middle.
So you have to look for the match between the URL where this pin is going and whatever
logo or domain is written on the pin.
There are a lot of spammy sites.
They are automatically scraping all the popular pins from the niche that they are targeting.
And then they are uploading all those pins to Pinterest and linking to their spammy pages.
So it's easy to accidentally save those.
Then it's easy to start getting those emails from Pinterest "Sorry.
We had to delete your pin".
So if you want to avoid this, you have to actually open every pin before saving it.
I know it's a lot of trouble.
But it can keep your account safe.
You need to check where the pin is going.
And what is the domain on the pin image.
And Pinterest, as any other company, is trying to provide a safe environment for their users.
So there are certain kinds of niches and topics that will not have good distribution on Pinterest.
And probably if you want to work in those niches, you have to filter your content really
well.
So you have to understand that certain types of content might lead to account being suspended.
It can be any kind of porn, any images that glorify violence.
Any images that encourage suicide, etc.
Well, all of those things that we don't want our children to see.
And we ourselves don't want to see on any platform.
Hate speech and discrimination.
And of course, impersonation is when you are stealing someone's image or someone's name
and using it on your Pinterest account.
Then you have to be prepared that your Pinterest account might be suspended at some point.
There is something interesting that Pinterest recently added to their community guidelines.
It's related to medical advice.
So now you don't want to have any content that includes promotion of false cures for
terminal or chronic illnesses and anti-vaccination advice.
So I know that there was a lot of buzz about it because there are lots of mommy bloggers
who give this anti-vaccination advice.
And they didn't expect their accounts to be suspended on Pinterest for a couple of posts
related to this topic.
So you might look at this if it's your niche.
All in all, in encourage you not just to rely on my video here.
But actually to read all these Community Guidelines in detail and also check them from time to
time.
If you rely on Pinterest for your online income.
You have to be always in control of the situation, and you need to know what's going on on the
platform.
What are the new types of content that Pinterest doesn't want to see on the platform.
What are some of the new safety of spam policies.
And another way to always stay updated with this information is to join my Pinterest SEO
Traffic Secrets course.
I'll give you the link to the course below the video, in the description.
Because you pay for my program one time but then you get access to all the updates of
the course.
And you get access to me.
You can ask me questions in the private Facebook group, where I support the members of the
program.
So you don't have to do all this work, and stay in multiple Facebook groups to just gather
the information from different sources.
And to know everything that's going on in the Pinterest world.
Because I do this for you and I share it in the Facebook group.
Or even in the new lessons of my course.
And my the way, if you want to learn how I'm driving over 300,000 monthly pageviews to
my site from Pinterest, then you should definitely sign up for my free Pinterest masterclass.
I'll give you a link in your top right corner to that Masterclass.
If you can not find the icon over there, then you can always go in the description under
this video and I'll definitely give a link there as well.
If you don't want to miss any of my Pinterest tips, and new tutorials, then Subscribe and
click that Bell button to get notifications.
Also, you can check out my other Pinterest tips here and there.
And I'll see you in the next videos!