Pinterest SEO: How to Make Your Account Work for You

I sometimes use affiliate links in content. This doesn’t cost you anything but I may make a commission payment from anything you buy through these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All opinions remain my own.

When you first mention Pinterest SEO to people, there can be a bit of a frown. Pinterest, right? It’s that cool social media site where you pin all sorts of stuff to boards. But SEO – that’s all to do with getting your website ranked higher in search engine listings. The two have nothing to do with each other!

But that’s where you would be wrong for one simple reason – Pinterest isn’t a social media site, it is a visual search engine.

And that means that, like any search engine, it operates on keywords and therefore there are good and bad ways to use the site. SEO, or search engine optimisation, is about understanding how the site works and making the most of it so that your account can work for you and your business.

Let’s start with a few basics about the Pinterest algorithm because, just like Facebook and Co, it does have one.

Table of Contents

How does the Pinterest algorithm work?

Pinterest uses a system that is called the ‘Smart Feed’ to decide what pins to show any person arriving at the site. The idea is that it shows you a mixture of stuff that will be of interest to you and that you will want to pin. So, unlike say Twitter, where everything is largely chronological, Pinterest shows content based on a whole complex set of systems the exact details of which we don’t really know.

The Smart Feed that you see when you first arrive on Pinterest

What we do know is there are three sections or pools that the site uses to pick content to show us:

Repins for people you follow
Pins related to others you have pinned
Pins that are relevant to your interests

Added to that are four main factors used to decide which pins that fall within these pools are worthy of space on your feed. The website looks at:

Domain quality
Pin quality
Pinner quality
Relevance

Domain quality

Domain quality on Pinterest is a bit like a MOZ rating for a website or domain authority – it is the way over time that Pinterest rates your content as being worth showing to others. Like increasing domain authority on your site, there’s no guaranteed way to make Pinterest like you more but there are a couple of steps to take to help.

First, convert to a business account because you are pinning for your business, even if you also pin personal stuff. This is simple, free, and also lets you in at analytics. Next, get your website verified to show you are a real person. Lastly, enable rich pins on your account to increase the quality of the pins.

Pin quality

Pin quality is about the content of your actual pin and is judged mainly on how many times it is saved if people tick the ‘tried it’ button or other such metrics. The key to getting good pin quality is in areas such as the post title that is used in the pin and the quality of the graphics. Pin graphics are a whole blog post so let’s just settle on saying remember long and tall sizes with great images and readable fonts.

Pinner quality

This one is all about how much you use the website and the quality of content that you pin. Pinterest is okay with using tools such as Tailwind to pin but there are also theories that it helps to manually pin some pins regularly too. However, you do it, pinning often is key – anywhere from 15 to 100 pins a day was recommended by different sources. Now we are recommended to stick to about 15-25 a day, mostly our own content and high-quality stuff from other people. You can go higher than this, of course, just don’t do it all of a sudden.

Relevance

Relevance is where the main concepts of Pinterest SEO start to come in – how does Pinterest know that a pin is relevant for anyone? Because the keywords that it contains in its description will tell the site what the content is about. The more relevant the pin, the more likely it is to come up on a search or even be randomly suggested to someone who has the interests listed in the description.

The name of the board it is added to can also help with relevance. So if I have a pin about vodka cocktails and pin it to a board called ‘Chicken Recipes’ this is going to confuse Pinterest (unless it is chicken soaked in vodka or something!). That means it is important to think about your board names as well as pin descriptions.

Looking at the Smart Feed, you can already get some ideas about Pinterest SEO works and why it is so important. It is a lot like any other kind of SEO – you have to use the right keywords to signpost people to your content.

You might also like Why Facebook Page Reach Matters (And How to Expand It) from Skylark Virtual Services

Is there a Pinterest keyword tool?

Another question people ask is if there is a Pinterest keyword tool like there is for Google. The answer is both yes and no – there isn’t a specific tool to use but the website itself is one giant keyword research tool.

Let’s say you want to start pinning content around ‘blogging’ so you do a basic search on that single keyword. You will instantly find a whole list of additional topics to specify further what you want to know about blogging. Click on one of these coloured boxes and it will refine the pins available and often offer more options.

Another long tail keyword would be ‘start a blog’ and again there are coloured box options. Say we select ‘in 10 minutes’ and this will give us a selection of quick start blogging tips as well as additional options – tutorials, website, and make money.

Not only does this help find interesting content to pin to your boards but also gives you some ideas about the kind of terms that people use in their pins around this topic. Hence when you write a post about your top tips for starting your blog, you can use terms such ‘jobs to do in 10 minutes’, ‘start a blog tutorials’ and ‘start a blog make money’ if they are relevant to your post, of course.

Pinterest SEO Strategy

So, what would the number 1 tip for people looking to optimise their pins for SEO purposes?

My biggest SEO tip is to place relevant keywords in six main places on Pinterest:

Your business name on your profile

Your board names

Your bio

Your board descriptions

Your pin descriptions

The titles of your blog posts

Choose keywords that are related to your niche and that you think your ideal audience would be searching for and use them in these 6 places in ways that makes sense.

[cp_modal display=”inline” id=”cp_id_2b338″][/cp_modal]

Kate Ahl of Simple Pin Media said that the most important thing was to ‘keyword their pin descriptions with the words they know their target person is searching’ because if you don’t use the terms that people use, your keywords are ineffective. I realised this with one of my boards for my other blog – I had called it Chef’s Corner because my husband is a chef and he creates some recipes for the blog. But this might not be what people were searching for so I renamed it – Recipes.

Things to avoid or test

However, there is a word of caution with keywords on Pinterest – don’t stuff them in and make it seem unnatural. Just like you wouldn’t repeat your keyword in your post loads of times in an unnatural way, don’t stuff keywords into your descriptions of pins and boards. Instead, write something that makes people interested, features the keywords, and finishes with a call to action to prompt people to do something – most often, this will be ‘click to read the article’ in some way.

Hashtags are a little less certain. One thing we know is that there’s no use putting them in board descriptions or names because they aren’t clickable. But you can use them in your pin descriptions. Sometimes they work, sometimes not, so it is a good idea to try some pins with and some without.

Conclusion

There are lots of things to say about Pinterest SEO strategy but for me, a lot of it is about trying for yourself, seeing what works, and doing more of that. I’m still working on my pins but I have at least one or two that I like. Creating multiple pins for each post is another good tip and is also a great way to practice your pin-making skills. I’m currently using stock photos from Ivory Mix for my pins and blog titles and they are easy to work with and come in gorgeous colours. I also use Canva to create the actual pins as I haven’t mastered Photoshop at all!

I’d love to hear your tips about Pinterest and what has worked for you – have you got a keyword strategy or a tool that helps you choose keywords? And how do you pick what your pins look like? Share all below!

P.S. If you are struggling with Pinterest then I can help – I now offer Pinterest Management services to help bloggers make the most of the site. If you have Pinterest issues or don’t know where to start I would love to chat!