How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest
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Contents

This post will be showing you how to rank for keywords on Pinterest.

Yesterday, I accidentally stumbled on some of my pins and noticed that a few of them ranked for their keywords. It was a nice surprise, to be honest as I wasn’t expecting them to rank so quickly.

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest
How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest
How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

Lately, I’ve been working hard on my Pinterest marketing game and it is nice to see some results despite all the craziness going on with Pinterest at the moment. As always, I’ve decided to backtrack and document my exact strategies for getting my pins to rank.

To be honest, I like to think that I was simply lucky. About three months ago, just before lockdown, I decided to switch up my blog strategy. I was ready to take Pinterest seriously but then I needed to be creating the right content that works for Pinterest. (See how to choose a Pinterest-friendly niche for your blog.)

So, I took my lifestyle blog and pretty much dissected it. At the moment, travel traffic is down worldwide so I had to double down on my beauty and general lifestyle content. But then, I noticed that some keywords took off faster than others. I just needed to find the sweet spot. So, I took each niche and broke them down into sub-niches. Before then, I ran my niche through the Pinterest search engines to see the kind of beauty content was being searched for. Thankfully, skincare which is exactly on my lane is a very popular keyword.

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

I didn’t stop there. Next, I did further keyword research for skincare to see the exact keywords I could get traffic from easily. I’d like to point out here that I initially struggled to get traffic to my beauty content at the beginning. But once I spent more time doing further keyword research, all of that changed. At the moment, my beauty content brings me the most traffic each month. Also, my most popular post is a beauty post.

I’d also like to mention that before I got success from my beauty content, I also tried to work on my lifestyle content. It turns out that the Personal Development niche is a massive driver of traffic on Pinterest. As always, I did keyword research again and figured out the important keywords I could create content on. So far, it’s been going well even though I currently just have a single viral pin in my top 10 performing pins. Otherwise, the niche brings me regular daily traffic.

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

Now, that you have an idea of how my strategies got me results, let me show you how you can do the same.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to rank for keywords on Pinterest and get massive traffic to your blog.

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

Do a keyword research

I’m sure you can understand why I iterate the importance of keyword research. One of the ways you can understand how Pinterest as a platform works is by studying the keywords. Doing this regularly will help you identify patterns which will improve your results with Pinterest. So, the first thing you need to do before you can rank for keywords is to identify them.

  • First, throw in your niche into the search bar. This will typically be one word or a phrase. E.g skincare or personal finance.
  • Next, go through each niche to gauge the broadness of keywords under it. A short tail keyword like skincare is very broad. (You can determine this by the number of longtail keywords under one topic).
  • Copy out all the keywords into a Google sheet and study them. You would want to combine long-tail keywords because it is easier to rank for them. So, go down your list and focus on keywords from the middle to the end. Those are easy to rank.
  • When you’re done, choose your keywords and create great content for them.

Keyword research is easily one of my favourite things to do on Pinterest. It helps me create relevant content and Implement Pinterest SEO effortlessly.

Create fresh pins for your keywords as regularly as possible.

I’m sure you are aware of the current Pinterest algorithm that prioritises fresh pins. One of the reasons why my beauty content rank is because I take photos and create fresh pins weekly. Do you have any idea how stressful it is to take new photos of old posts every weekend? But I do because it is the single most important way I can create fresh pins. This is why all my pins are littered all over those keywords.

Using original photos to create fresh pins is an easy way to rank for keywords on Pinterest. This is why food content gets so much traffic from Pinterest. Serious food bloggers invest in food photography which gives them a lot of photos to create fresh pins. Which is what Pinterest wants. You are basically populating the keywords with your pins until they eventually rank. A lot of pins that rank for keywords just have one version and that’s it. But by creating fresh pins regularly, you are attempting to kick those sometimes old and outdated pins out of their spot. So, whatever keywords you want to rank for, make sure you are constantly creating fresh pins for them.

Implement Pinterest SEO

So, you have done some great keyword research and you have a good number of fresh pins ready to published. How do you ensure that your pins are SEEN before they are even ranked? Simple! Make sure you’re implementing Pinterest SEO. In simple terms, make sure the following areas are rich in keywords;

  • Profile name and bio
  • Board titles and descriptions
  • Pin image/graphic
  • Pin titles and descriptions

Asides from your pin titles and descriptions, the rest don’t have to be the exact keywords. Just make sure your profile is well optimised with relevant keywords for your niche. A simple tip I use for my accounts is to archive boards that don’t have optimised pin titles and descriptions. Having just three boards that are optimised for Pinterest SEO is better than 50 boards that are not.

When uploading your pins, go back to your Google sheet with keywords and see how they appear. Craft your titles and descriptions exactly or similar to them. Do this every single time you upload a fresh pin. To take it even further, experiment with different long-tail keywords as long as the blog post you’re linking to is relevant. If it’s is not, create blog posts for all the long-tail keywords you want I rank for.

Use hashtags

A lot of people have a love-hate relationship with hashtags on Pinterest because they feel that they are not relevant. I absolutely cannot do without them. I believe they help me boost my fresh pins fast! Also, I like to think that they are responsible for the first surge of traffic from a fresh pin.

If you are using the Pinterest mobile app to upload your pin, take advantage of the different hashtags. Just like you would with your Instagram hashtag set, mix up popular ones with less popular and niches ones. If you don’t think they make any difference, do an A/B test. Publish two pins with and without hashtags and see the results.

Other tips

  • Focus on trending topics. Use Pinterest Trends and the Popular Searches bar to get content ideas.
  • Identify upcoming trends on other platforms outside Pinterest. They tend to find a place on Pinterest eventually. E.g For skincare, I know that I have to start creating content for trending brands like Cerave and The Inkey List because they are becoming increasingly popular. When you learn how to identify trends early enough, you could easily be at the top of it and rank for the keywords when they eventually find their way to Pinterest.
  • Hack your way through with video or story pins. A lot of people still haven’t yet jumped on video pins. Creating yours for keywords without them helps you rank automatically.

In conclusion, these are my exact strategies for rank for keywords on Pinterest. I hope you find them as useful as I did.

Next steps:

If you’re not even sure how to get DAILY traffic from Pinterest, start with the Pinterest Optimization Worksheet.

When you’re done, use Ell’s Course (affiliate link) to take your Pinterest efforts to the next level.

If you would prefer to have a one-on-one strategy session with me, you can book one here.

If you enjoyed this post, please don’t forget to share by pinning this image.

How To Rank For Keywords On Pinterest

Ebun Oluwole
SEO Specialist & Blogger with nine years of experience with B2B & B2C brands in various industries.
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