If you've been blogging for any amount of time, you've probably heard that Pinterest can be a great traffic source for your blog. But if you're not seeing that success, it's probably because you're not using Pinterest keywords the right way. This guide will help you learn where to put keywords on Pinterest, how to add keywords to Pinterest pins, how to find keywords for Pinterest, and how to do Pinterest keyword research.
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What are Pinterest keywords and why are they important?
A keyword is a word that people search for on Pinterest (also on Google, but we're just talking about Pinterest here).
It can be anything, like “how to write a blog post or “gluten-free dessert recipes” or “Europe travel tips.
Knowing how to find keywords for Pinterest and then how to use keywords on Pinterest is crucial if you want to use Pinterest to grow your traffic.
“If your Pinterest content isn’t optimized for Pinners’ searches, you may be missing out. Keywords are building blocks for search engine optimization—and Pinterest is basically a visual search engine.”
Hootsuite
As that quote says, Pinterest is a search engine, like Google. So if your pins and boards have no Pinterest keywords, Pinterest won't know what they're about. And if Pinterest doesn't know what they're about, then they're not going to be able to show them to people searching on your topic.
Knowing how to use keywords on Pinterest solves this problem.
Pinterest uses keywords to identify what your pin is about so that it can show people relevant results in their home feed or searches.
“Pinterest assigns pins keywords called annotations that are between one and six words long. They then assess your pin’s relevance to these keywords with a confidence score based on the quality of the information extracted (text-based keywords are more highly rated) and how many times that keyword appears.”
Neil Patel
and
“The right way to keyword on Pinterest is to use keywords in a way to help Pinterest organize the content. That means to only add the topic-relevant words. For example, if a Pinterest user searches for ‘DIY wall art’, Pinterest will pull pins having pin descriptions with words DIY wall art, wall decor ideas, diy wall ideas, wall shelves etc. Most of the pins will be relevant to the term DIY WALL ART or kind of similar topics.”
shemeansblogging.com
When you know how to add keywords to Pinterest pins, a single pin can bring you thousands and thousands of page views, helping you to grow your email list, make more ad and affiliate marketing revenue, and sell more products or services.
So knowing how to use keywords on Pinterest and how to do Pinterest keyword research is crucial.
Where to Put Keywords on Pinterest
Now, where to put keywords on Pinterest? There are seven main places:
- Your profile name
- Your profile description
- Your board titles
- Your board descriptions
- Your pin titles
- Your pin descriptions
- Your pin alt text
Let's talk about them one at a time.
1 | Putting Pinterest keywords in your profile name
The name you list on your Pinterest profile (which can be different than your Pinterest username) is searchable. So it's a great place to include a Pinterest keyword or two.
You don't get much space, but there's room for one or two Pinterest keywords.
For example, I don't list my name as just “Becca Klein.” I list it as “Becca Klein | Blog Tips for Beginner Bloggers.” “Blog tips” and “blog tips for beginners” are big keywords for me, so I want them in there.
2 | Putting Pinterest keywords in your profile description
On your Pinterest profile page, you have a few sentences to write in a description of who you are and what you pin about.
Use this opportunity to throw in a few Pinterest keywords. I've used “beginner bloggers” “blog tips” and “social media strategy” in my description.
To be honest, this is probably the least important area to add keywords, but you should still take Pinterest up on every opportunity to use keywords.
3 | Using Pinterest keywords in your board titles
Your board titles are an important place to use keywords on Pinterest.
Pinterest needs to know what your board is about in order to be able to use pins from that board in searches and on the home feed.
If you don't tell Pinterest that your pin is about a chocolate chip recipe, it won't show it to people searching for “good cookie recipes.”
“You must show Pinterest that your pins are relevant to the terms users search for. Relevance refers to how closely your pin fits your audience’s interests, recent search history, and distinct searches.”
Neil Patel
Your Pinterest board titles are part of this.
It can be tempting to use silly or witty board titles, but don't do it. Instead, use a straightforward keyword that says exactly what your board is about.
For example, a bad title for a travel board would be “Wanderlust.” A good title would be “Budget-friendly travel tips.”
You can see below that all of my boards have straightforward titles like this:
4 | Using Pinterest keywords in your board descriptions
Your board descriptions are another crucial place to use Pinterest keywords.
Just like with your board titles, your board description signals to Pinterest what your board is about and tells them when your pins are going to be relevant to a particular user.
Don't go too crazy and “keyword stuff.” Write the description in full sentences. But do use a few keywords in there.
For example, the description for my “Instagram Tips & Tricks” Pinterest board reads:
“If you're a blogger wondering how to use Instagram for your blog, then you're in the right place! This board has all kinds of Instagram tips and tricks, including Instagram tips for bloggers, Instagram tips for online business owners or small business owners, Instagram tools, Instagram apps, Instagram images, Instagram analytics, how to get more Instagram followers, how to grow your Instagram, and more! #instagramtips #socialmediatips”
5 | Using Pinterest keywords in your pin titles
Your pin titles should serve two purposes.
One, they should entice the viewer to click the pin, and
Two, they should include Pinterest keywords. Knowing how to add keywords to Pinterest pins is crucial.
It's very important that your pin title entices people to click, so don't sacrifice this element. But if you can figure out a way to fit a keyword or two in there, you should absolutely do it.
Just like keywords in your board titles and board descriptions told Pinterest what your board is about, your pin titles and descriptions tell Pinterest what your pin is about.
And that's what's going to make it come up in people's feeds and search results.
So that chocolate chip cookie recipe pin is going to show up in searches for “good cookie recipes.”
You get 100 characters for a pin description, so make them count!
6 | Using Pinterest keywords in your pin descriptions
You can probably guess where I'm going with this now…your pin descriptions are a super important way to add keywords to Pinterest pins.
You need Pinterest to know what your pin is about, and that means keywords, keywords, keywords.
You get 500 characters, so you can easily write a few sentences.
Here's an example of one of mine, for a post about where to find stock photos for your blog.
“This list of free stock photo sites is great for beginner bloggers! It's got feminine stock photos, pretty stock photos, flatlays, and more. Stock photos for Instagram, stock photos for blogs, stock photos for social media. Great stock photo ideas too!”
Most Pinterest users won't actually read your pin description, but Pinterest definitely “reads” it.
This is the area most guides focus on when covering how to add keywords to Pinterest pins. I've shown you that there are many others, but that doesn't mean that you should skip the pin description.
Use Pinterest keywords everywhere you can!
7 | Using Pinterest keywords in your pin alt text
In late 2020, Pinterest rolled out a new feature–alt text for pins.
Alt text is the text that displays when a visually impaired person is using a screen reader to look at Pinterest.
Because of this, your alt text should always accurately describe what the image is (this goes for blog posts too). But you should also take the opportunity to use your Pinterest keywords, if you can (as always).
Now let's talk about how to find keywords for Pinterest and how to do keyword research.
How to find keywords for Pinterest using Pinterest itself
There are two main ways to find Pinterest keywords.
One, using a tool called Pin Inspector (which we'll talk about below), and
Two, using Pinterest itself. Let's talk about that first.
Go onto Pinterest and type a basic keyword into the search bar. For this example, I searched for “blog tips.”
When the Pinterest search results pop up, you'll see that underneath the search bar, there are colored bubbles with other words in them. It looks like this:
Each of these colored bubbles represents a word that people commonly search for on Pinterest in conjunction with the starter phrase that you typed in.
So in this example, I typed in “blog tips,” and some good keywords for me would be:
- Blog tips for beginners
- SEO blog tips
- Blog tips for Wix
- Blog tips and tricks
- Blog tips for WordPress
- And on and on…
Pin Inspector: The best Pinterest keyword research tool
If you're not using Pin Inspector to do your Pinterest keyword research, you are majorly missing out.
Pin Inspector is a fairly new Pinterest keyword research tool that allows you to find hundreds of keyword ideas in a variety of ways.
Pin Inspector allows you to enter in a keyword or phrase and find:
- Other good keywords for the same topic
- Top performing pins relating to that keyword (so you can see what the top performers are doing)
- Top performing boards related to that keyword (so you can see what the top performers are doing)
- Top performing profiles related to that keyword (so you can see what the top performers are doing)
- Trends related to that keyword
I wrote an entire blog post about how to use Pin Inspector, so I won't go into detail here. But I highly recommend checking out that Pin Inspector post.
How to grow your blog traffic with Pinterest
When you know where to put keywords on Pinterest and how to find keywords for Pinterest, you have a major opportunity for blog traffic.
Pinterest sends some people hundreds of thousands of pageviews a month. (Although that's definitely not everyone).
There are a few ways that you can grow your blog traffic with Pinterest.
Add Pinterest pins to all your blog posts
Every one of your blog posts should have one Pinterest image.
This means an image that is:
- Vertical (a 2:3 ratio works. I like to use 800 x 1200)
- Uses good photo(s)
- Has clear text (not too many script fonts or light colors)
You should always have a designated Pinterest image in each post, to encourage people to pin it for you. The more people that share it, the more reach it's going to get.
Use Tasty Pins to encourage the right kind of pinning
I highly recommend using the Tasty Pins plugin for Pinterest. It does a few important things:
- It allows you to disable pinning of any non-Pinterest images in your blog post
- It puts a “Pin It” button on all Pinterest images to encourage sharing
- It allows you to upload multiple “hidden” Pinterest images that don't appear on your blog post, but will appear when someone hits the “Pin It” button
- It puts a “pin this post” banner on image to encourage pinning
- It allows you to force people clicking the button to pin only your hidden Pinterest images
- It allows you to set the Pinterest title and description to be automatically filled in when someone pins from your post
It's a fantastic, lightweight plugin and I highly recommend it.
Pin consistently
Pinterest values consistency. So pinning 100 pins in 20 minutes and then nothing for 3 weeks isn't going to get you far.
Years ago, the standard advice was to pin 30-100 pins per day. That was rough (and many people used auto schedulers like Tailwind to manage it).
Nowadays, I recommend that people pin 2-5 of their own pins a day, every other day or so (more than that won't hurt you, but it's not required).
But as always experiment to see what works for your account.
Pinterest keywords FAQs
How many keywords can I use on Pinterest?
The only limit to how many keywords you can use on Pinterest is the character limit for each location. Other than that, there's no number.
Is Pinterest good for SEO?
Pins and boards can rank on Google. It's not that uncommon.
As for your blog's SEO, Pinterest keywords aren't going to have a direct effect on that. But as already noted, if you know where to put keywords on Pinterest and how to find keywords for Pinterest, you are potentially opening yourself up to a huge traffic stream.
Closing thoughts on how to use keywords on Pinterest:
To sum up, Pinterest keywords are absolutely crucial to getting your content seen on Pinterest (which leads to traffic which leads to dollar bills). Now that you know how to use keywords on Pinterest, you should utilize them everywhere you can.
How do you do your Pinterest keyword research? Let me know in the comments!
More blog tips you'll love:
- Pin Inspector: The Best Pinterest Keyword Research Tool
- A Complete Guide to Writing an About Me Page for Your Blog
- How to Host Your First Webinar
- 32 Places to Find Free Stock Photos For Your Blog
- Common Beginner Blogger Mistakes
- 8 Steps to a Killer Blog Post
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