How To Find And Use Keywords On Pinterest
Welcome back to another post from my Pinterest series 😊. In my previous post about designing viral pins that drive massive traffic to your website, #2 key ingredient that makes a pin goes viral is “the pin is relevant for keywords search on Pinterest”.
You might ask: what does this mean? ….and why keywords?
BECAUSE PINTEREST IS A SEARCH ENGINE
Pinterest is a search engine mixed with a social network. With more than 175 million users, it can also be a huge source of traffic to your website or blog.
But people don’t use Pinterest as a social network. Sure, you can follow people and boards you like and are interested in. People can follow you and your boards.
Let’s face it, people use Pinterest mainly as a SEARCH ENGINE. A beautiful visual search engine.
And I’m sure you know what is really important in a search engine, right?
Exactly: SEO!
And SEO is based on keywords.
Your Pinterest SEO means… finding and using the right keywords
Like any other search engine, the keywords are the core pillars for getting found on Pinterest. How do you think your pins are shown in someone’s smartfeed? Based on the description of your pins. But just adding some text there is not enough. You have to include the right keywords in your pin description if you want to reach the right audience.
There are two main reasons for which you have to do keyword research and use them properly:
Without using the right keywords, Pinterest will have difficulties understanding what’s your pin about. And if Pinterest doesn’t understand the topic of your pin, it will not show it to your (potential) audience.
People look for information using keywords. So, if you don’t have an optimized profile and pin description, they will not find you and your boards while researching on Pinterest.
How to research and use keywords on Pinterest
Now, that you know the keywords are extremely important for your Pinterest presence, let’s see how you can create an effective SEO Pinterest strategy.
You need to know which are the relevant keywords.
Fortunately, Pinterest helps you here and the things are not so complicated as they might seem.
Step 1 – keyword research
After drafting your blog post open Pinterest, go to your search bar and tap one or two words there. You should keep it as simple as you can. Because at this stage you don’t just find out the relevant keywords and long-tail keywords for your blog post and pin description, but it's also a good inspiration for other topics.
For example, I take the word “marketing” as my starting point and tap it into the search bar. While doing this, Pinterest reacts right away and starts to give me suggestions for long-tail keywords.
I can see that the most popular long-tail keywords are:
Marketing
Marketing ideas
Marketing digital
Marketing strategy
Below them, Pinterest also shows me a list of 3 people that are the most relevant for this “marketing keyword”. Do you know why? Because this “marketing keyword” is part of their business profile description.
Under this list, Pinterest also lists 3 boards that have the same keyword “marketing” included in the board name and description.
As you can see, everything is related to the keyword.
Let’s say you click on the “marketing strategy”. This is a more extensive research. Pinterest will show you the pins, pinners and boards that are relevant for “marketing strategy” long-tail keyword.
Do you see the colored boxes on the top, right below the search bar? All of them represent long-tail keyword related to “marketing strategy”.
Let’s see what you get:
marketing strategy social media
marketing strategy template
content marketing strategy
and the list goes on.
You can do a more in-depth keyword research and the process will continue. For example, clicking on “content marketing strategy” you’ll get:
content marketing strategy template
content marketing startups
content marketing strategy tools
and so on.
Note all these keywords into a spreadsheet or a Word document. Whatever works for you, you need to create a system and have a clear overview of the keywords.
Do you see how many ideas can you get from a simple keyword research? As I mentioned earlier, you do not find out just which are the most relevant keywords for your blog post or pin description, but you can also know:
what people are searching on Pinterest
topics for future blogs, freebies, tutorials and even product development
how likely is that your (ideal) customer uses the platform while searching content related to your niche.
Once you’ve set a particular keyword (let’s come back to “marketing strategy” for example, near the search bar you’ll see a drop-down menu, showing you:
All pins
Your pins
Product pins
People
Boards
By clicking through these tabs you’ll find specific pins related to your keyword, people who specialize in this niche and boards related to your topic (this will help you while looking for group boards).
So, summarizing, if you know which your keywords are, you’ll want to insert them into your Pinterest profile so that you’ll come up in the searches via:
Your pins
Your boards
Your profile.
Step 2 – how to use the keywords to boost your Pinterest account
Use the long-tail keywords in your Pinterest profile
Pick up the most relevant keywords for your business and use them in your business profile:
Username
Business name
About you.
Unfortunately, starting with June 2018, Pinterest doesn’t let you to write more than 30 characters here, so you don’t have too many options.
Use the long-tail keywords in your Pinterest boards description
Use the long-tail keyword when you name your boards. Even if you might be tempted to use some creative names, you should remember that Pinterest is a search engine. So, if you want to have an effective SEO Pinterest strategy, you should stick to the most relevant keywords for your business.
Set up a name for the board that is descriptive for your topic and wave around a long-tail keyword. In this way, you’ll tell your visitors (and Pinterest) what the topic is about.
For example, I named my boards:
Marketing Tips, Tools & Strategies
Photography Tips
Website Tips for Bloggers & Entrepreneurs
Graphic Design | Web Design | Social Media Design
and so on.
When naming your boards, you can also create a 500-characters description of the board. Insert some of the most relevant keywords related to the topic of your board in the text. While I saw some board descriptions that are a long list of keywords, I personally don’t recommend this. From the SEO point of view, I strongly recommend inserting your long-tail keyword(s) into a few sentences or into a short paragraph. You can also add a link to your website.
Use the long-tail keyboards into your pin description
The last but not the least place where you should use the keywords is the pin itself. Use them in the following places:
Your blog headlines
Your blog topics
In the description of your pin
The headline of your pin image
The name of the pin – eg. yourkeyword.jpg
In the alt tag of your image
Spread them through all these key places and in this way, you’ll let Pinterest have a clear overview what your pin and blog post is about and show it in the smartfeed of your audience.
As you can see, all these things work as a whole entity and tell Pinterest what the pin related to a blog post is about. Then combined with all your other pins you will start consistently sharing content around a particular niche topic, whatever it is.
The biggest advantage of Pinterest SEO
Treat Pinterest as it is: a visual search engine. Plan your content around the topics that are important for your customers and they want to read (rather that you want to write about). Be useful, relevant and consistent and you’ll see the results over the time.
