Posted by Pinterest is an image-sharing social media platform founded around the same time as Instagram. You can use Pinterest to promote your brand, grow awareness and reach wider audiences. This is done by pinning images or creating fun and attractive boards.
While Instagram has evolved very quickly into a platform that also supports videos, reels, stories, and more, Pinterest is getting there at a pretty slow pace. When you see or hear of something you like, in the social media context, you don’t quickly check Pinterest to see if they have an account there but will definitely check Instagram.
That said, Pinterest is still pretty important and must be considered by social media managers all over as such. As slow as one might think it to be, people are beginning to use Pinterest a lot more now for many reasons. One of which is SEO purposes, considering it IS a search engine, a visual one.
Since keywords are building blocks for search engine optimization, your Pinterest content should be optimized for Pinners’ searches. The best way to reach the right audience is to find and use the right keywords. And I’m going to tell you about a few tricks to help you research the keywords you should be using on your Pinterest.
Let’s go!
1. Search Bar
The search bar on Pinterest is obviously the 1st place to look for your keywords. All you need to do is type in words from your niche and Pinterest will suggest categories or related keywords. The trick here is to wait before clicking Enter to search pins. The keywords offered here are what are most popular in Pinterest searches. You can see from the image here I’ve only typed wedding as my niche and I’ve gotten suggestions for wedding dresses, hairstyles, decorations, invitations, cakes, and a lot more. You won’t be able to copy+paste these suggestions so make sure you ready yourself with a notebook and pen or your device notepad.
Once you’ve noted down the suggested keywords, you can also continue typing one of the suggested keywords like wedding hairstyles. The suggestions will further categorize the keywords into options like wedding hairstyles for short hair, long hair, with a veil, for bridesmaids, etc.
2. Bubbles
When you use the search bar to try and note down a few extra keywords but press enter by mistake, no need to worry. The search page will give you similar suggestions in the form of keyword bubbles at the top of the page. You’ll see that some suggestions are the same and there are also more categories to choose from.
The best part about the bubble keywords is you can also scroll to the right for more keywords. Scrolling isn’t possible on the search bar suggestions so if you need more than what you get from the search bar, the bubbles are your answer.
3. Sitemap
The Pinterest Sitemap is an absolute gold mine for topic suggestions or keywords. It lists out so many keywords and topics that it probably covers almost everything under the sun. There are 26 pages and about 800 keywords per page! That’s over 20 thousand keywords. You can also toggle between users and collections, other than the topics
You will not be able to filter your search in any way and unfortunately, the keywords are listed at random and not alphabetically. You’ll have to use the CTRL+F or Command+F to look for the keywords related to your niche.
Once you click on a keyword, it’ll open the top 10 saved or created pins under that topic. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll also find the top Pinterest searches for that keyword, related searches, and more.
4. Feed
Not considering what method you use to search for something, have you found yourself browsing and browsing and then caught yourself going down a rabbit hole? Yes?
That’s because this is the way the site is designed. If you’ve exhausted pin options in one search, instead of manually typing a new related keyword, you can simply click on the of the suggested keywords Pinterest offers on your feed. You can find these keywords under short lists called ‘Related searches’ or ‘Ideas you might love’.
The new keywords for both lists open a fresh page and you’ll get another set of keywords based on the one you clicked. You can either pin what you like from each page or note down the suggested keywords for future research.
5. Explore
The Explore feature on Pinterest gives you a few interests you can follow to get more in-depth pins and keywords for that particular category. On this page, you’ll have access to articles, the top 10 ideas for the category or interest, and top Pinterest searches related to the interest.
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You will also get grouped suggestions of the most popular searches, for example, keywords under wedding decorations, keywords under bridal party attire, or wedding day aesthetics.
Once you pass by all this and get your keywords, content that is in any way related to the original interest is listed in the feed manner where you can keep scrolling and pinning what you like. Sadly, this feed doesn’t have the related search options like from point 4.
6. Ads Creator
The process for this is slightly long but the results are very good. You can only use this method if you have a business account. It’s free to convert to business and you only have to pay for ads. We’ll be using the process to create an ad campaign but won’t actually go through with it so it’s completely free.
Here’s how you can do some keyword research using this method.
– Open the campaign creation page
– Select Consideration under Drive Consideration and then click on Continue from the bottom
– Select Choose your Own under the Targeting details option
– Click on Interests and Keywords
– You can type your niche under add interests and note down the suggestions
– Or you can type your niche under add keywords
The list you see from ‘add keywords’ also shows you the number of monthly searches for each keyword. This is incredibly important information and you can also copy+paste from this list.
Once you’ve gotten all your keywords and saved them for future research, you can simply close the tab.
Bonus
The 2 bonus features I’ll talk about here are different from the methods I’ve mentioned above. These features are less of a method to accumulate keywords but more of a way to find out when to use a niche or keyword.
Pinterest Trends, launched in 2019, and Pinterest Predicts, launched around 2013, are widely used features.
Pinterest Trends help you compare up to 4 keywords to find out which one is a more popular search. They can also check at which time of the year particular keyword trends more. For example, you can compare Boho weddings and classic weddings and find out which one is searched for more. Or you can search for a keyword like Hot Chocolate Recipes and see which part of the year they’re searching for more.
Pinterest Predicts is a cool feature that, as the name suggests, predicts which keywords might do well for you in the next few months of the year. It takes into consideration the keywords from the month that performed the best in the past year and a few other parameters. This can give you insights into which keywords or categories might do well in the upcoming months or years.
Well, that’s all from me!
What other methods do you use for Pinterest keyword research?
Let me know in the comments below! 🙂