What is Pinterest SEO (search engine optimization)? Pinterest is a search engine, so in order to maximize Pinterest effectiveness, you need to make sure the Pinterest search engine can find your created pins. When your pins rise to the top of the results in Pinterest searches, you can potentially get big traffic to your website. You may be wondering how you can improve your SEO on Pinterest. Here are some simple Pinterest SEO tips to help you optimize your pins for Pinterest. The best part? All of the SEO research tools recommended in this post are free!
***Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.***
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 1: Optimize Your Business Account
When you create a business account in Pinterest, you want to carefully choose a username. Some put the name of their blog or website, then add a few choice keywords. (show example screenshot). Your profile needs to include SEO-friendly keywords as well. How do you find the keywords to use in your profile? Search out other accounts in your niche to see which keywords they are using. Do a Pinterest search to see what else comes up when you type in some keywords in your niche. You can always change your keywords and test out different combinations to see which has the most reach. Keep an eye on the number of followers you get after you change the keywords in your profile.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 2: Optimize Pinterest Boards
When creating a board on Pinterest, make sure you include SEO-optimized keywords in the board description. Use words that fit your niche. Check out your competitors once again to see what they are naming their boards. Type in a few of your keywords in the Pinterest search bar to see the related terms that are listed. Whatever you do, remember to add a description to each board you create.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 3: Create SEO-Optimized Board Covers
People have differing opinions about Pinterest board covers. Accounts with coordinated board covers seem to look more organized and put-together, in my humble opinion. You want to help the Pinterest search engine know what your account and your boards are about, so adding SEO keywords to a board cover image description makes sense.
To create a board cover, you can use the Instagram post template in Crello or Canva. After you have created your board cover, you can upload it to Pinterest and pin it to the chosen board. Be sure to give the image a description that tells what the board is about. If you are making a cover for an existing board, you have to be on a computer to edit your board cover. When you click on the Edit option on your board, choose your new image as the board cover. If you are making a cover for a new board, you can use your phone and just make sure the cover image is the first image you pin.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 4: Verify Your Website
Claiming (verifying) your website on Pinterest enables you to track analytics for the pins you create which link back to your website. When people see a pin that links to your site, your profile picture will be shown alongside a Follow button down below your pin image. There are three different ways to claim your website. The method you use depends upon your web hosting service, and Pinterest provides a handy guide to help you through the process.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 5: Make it Easy for Your Website Visitors to Share a Pin
On your website, you should have a way for visitors to easily pin an image from your post to their website. You can activate a Pinterest sharing option using a social share plugin. One free social sharing plugin recommended in blogger support groups is called Grow by Mediavine. Setup in simple, and you can decide whether or not to have floating share buttons, or place your buttons at the top or bottom of your post. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you will see my social share buttons. I also have floating social share buttons on the left side of the screen. What do you think about them? Are they distracting? Does the convenience of having them right there to use outweigh the drawback of having them there on the screen? Your feedback is always appreciated.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 6: Search for Keywords in the Pinterest Search Bar
When you search for keywords in the Pinterest search bar, there will be a dropdown list showing related popular search terms. The related terms show up as buttons after clicking on a search term, but no longer. You can get a few keywords for SEO this way, but for far more, follow my next tip.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 7: Use the Pinterest Ads Console to Find More Keywords
When I stumbled upon this method of finding keywords, I was thrilled. The Pinterest keyword tool is not easy to find, and some people might be put off by the fact that you begin your search by clicking on the Create an Ad option in Pinterest. Don’t worry! You will not actually create an ad. You will just partially work your way through the ad setup process. It would take a long time to explain, so here’s a video tutorial. Please keep in mind that Pinterest frequently makes adjustments (extreme understatement), but here’s what it looks like as of this writing.
I really like the fact that for each keyword or keyword phrase you can see approximately how many people are using that term in Pinterest searches. The bigger the number, the better!
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 8: Type Your Keywords in Your Pin Title and Pin Image
When you are creating a new pin for Pinterest, it seems pretty obvious to put your keywords in your pin title and description. Sometimes people forget to make sure that their image name that is uploaded also contains keywords in the image title. It’s a small thing, but you never know what might make the difference in a pin being seen or not.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 9: Pin to the Most Relevant Board
In order to help the Pinterest search engine know how to categorize your pin image, you need to pin the image to the most relevant board. If you change the pin description for a different image linking to the same URL, then you might pin that image to a different board, even though both pin images link to the same URL. That way, you might reach a different audience. The point is, make sure you pin the image to the board it most fits with. Also, avoid repinning the same pin image to another board. I have been experimenting with waiting 30 days to pin the same image to just one more board (my main board filled with just my pins). So far, it hasn’t seemed to hurt me, but if you want to make VERY SURE not to get flagged as spam, just pin each image once. That’s just the way it is now.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 10: Add the Board Title to Your Pin Description
After you decide which board to pin your image to, make sure you include the board title somewhere in your pin description. That will help the Pinterest search engine better understand what your pin is about. Once again, it’s all of the little things that help give your pin image a Pinterest SEO boost so it can be found. For example, if I were going to pin a peanut butter fudge pin to my Holiday Ideas board, I would begin the pin description with “Holiday Ideas:” then add the rest of the SEO optimized description, including keywords and phrases.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 11: Add Keywords to the Alt Description
In Pinterest groups I belong to on Facebook, the question of the alt description has been raised. Of course, the purpose of the alt description is to make clear what the image is to someone who is visually impaired. You want to make sure you do describe what is in your pin image. If you can place in a few keywords to the alt description and it enhances the description, then why not do it? As long as it helps describe the image, it can’t hurt, and it might help your pin to be found more easily.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 12: Make Your Words on Your Pin Image as Easy to Read as Possible
Since people scrolling through their Pinterest feed or search results tend to scroll quickly, make your words stand out. Bigger is better. Since the Pinterest search engine is a visual search engine, you want to make your words easy to read. Script fonts are pretty, but they are sometimes difficult to read. As tough as it might be, resist the urge to use a script font. Keep it clear, clean, and eye-catching. Which one of these is easier to read? These are some of my oldest pins. I’ve learned a lot since I created these!
Need some help with your pin designs? One of the best things I did for my Pinterest growth was take a fun class called . I learned some great design principles, got some attractive pin templates, and gained some valuable skills which I use every time I create a pin. After taking that class, my click-through and save stats took a big jump.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 13: Use Your Own Images or Paid Images
Avoid using free stock photos, if you can. I am not a great photographer, but even my own photos do better on Pinterest searches than free stock photos. My most popular pins have included either my own photos (mainly travel pins) or paid photos. If taking quality photos is a challenge for you (believe me, I can relate), find some paid photos from a source like Deposit Photos. They often have great sales on image packs of 100 downloads for as little as $39, and you have an unlimited amount of time to use them. Also, your photo image title should have some keywords in it. Every little place you can put keywords, add them. Their big sale only happens a couple of times a year. You can sign up to get alerts about the next big sale.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 14: Use the Pinterest Native Scheduler
I used to use Tailwind to schedule pins, but that was when repinning the same pin image to more than one board was okay. Now that the practice of repinning is frowned upon by Pinterest, Tailwind just doesn’t make sense anymore. Sorry, Tailwind, you were a good product, and you helped me for a while. Now I just use the Pinterest scheduler you can find on Pinterest itself. Instead of selecting Publish Now when you create a new pin on a phone, you can click on the editing pencil and schedule the pin for later. On a computer, you can choose the “Publish at a later date” option, then choose the date and time.
You can schedule two weeks out in advance, and you may schedule up to 100 pins at a time. Here’s an extra little tip for when you schedule video pins: If you use the Pinterest schedule tool, you are also given the opportunity to select up to 10 tags to add to your video post. That’s another Pinterest SEO boost!
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 15: Embed Your Pin Image Description in Your WordPress Post
It’s easy to code in a Pinterest description for pin images. Just click on the pin image within your post, then go to the Text option instead of the Visual option in WordPress (I use the Classic editor). Right after the image size dimensions in the code, type in “data-pin-description=” and add your pin description wording. It looks like this:
data-pin-description=”17 Genius Pinterest SEO Tips to Maximize Traffic Potential will give you Pinterest tips for how to make the most out of every post on Pinterest by using SEO tips to boost your Pinterest success. Get Pinterest ideas and learn how Pinterest works. Learn the benefits of creating a pin on Pinterest. Increase blog traffic by incorporating these Pinterest SEO tricks into each pin. Pinterest is a great tool for bloggers. Use these Pinterest hacks to learn how to use Pinterest for blogging today!”
Although your title will not automatically transfer to Pinterest when someone pins your Pinterest image to their Pinterest account, the pin description will! That’s a great time-saver. Here’s a special bonus Pinterest SEO tip: I always compose my pin descriptions for images within my posts in Pinterest itself as if I’m creating a new pin. That way, I don’t go over the Pinterest’s description word count. Then I just copy and paste the description (filled with carefully-researched keywords, of course) into the code.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 16: Hashtags are Optional
People have gone back and forth about hashtags, and so has Pinterest. For awhile a few years ago, Pinterest was encouraging the use of hashtags. Then, they seemed to become obsolete because Pinterest users realized that the hashtags were no longer blue and clickable. Well, guess what? Just as I was writing this post, I saw a Pinterest pin with hashtags in my description, and they were blue. They were clickable, and they led to a category of other pins with the same hashtag. So here’s my tip: Add one hashtag to the end of your description, if you have room. It won’t hurt, and it might help the reach of your pin. If a description doesn’t have hashtags, it’s not a problem, but try adding a one to some new pin images to see what happens.
Easy Pinterest SEO Tip 17: Use the Pinterest Trends tool or Pinterest Predicts
You can do the best the Pinterest SEO research in the world and still not get found if very few people are searching for your topic. How do you know which topics are hot on Pinterest? You can use the Pinterest Trends tool to discover when certain topics get searched for. If your country does not yet have the Pinterest Trends tool, another good option for finding hot topics is Pinterest Predicts. Just find your category and read the report.
In the Mood to do Some Pinterest SEO Research?
Now that you have read through these easy Pinterest SEO tips, are you ready to give them a try? Pinterest SEO tools are out there, just waiting for you to take advantage of them. I’m so grateful they are free. If you would like more Pinterest tips and daily opportunities to share your work, hop on over to Facebook to request to join the Blogging Well with Pinterest group. It’s a supportive community of bloggers helping each other to use Pinterest more effectively.
Get Your Blog Noticed
Standing out from the crowd is tough, especially when it comes to blogging. Need to add some unique, memorable features? If you are a fan of tech tools, you might like my eBook containing information about some excellent free tools for adding interest to a blog, web page, or social media account.
Have fun trying out these Pinterest SEO tips. May your efforts be met with success!
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Lisa Mitchell is a blogger and school librarian who likes to use her job as an excuse to stay up far too late reading books and noodling around with tech tools. To learn more about what this website has to offer bloggers and Pinterest users, click on over to the Tech page.
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