Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Keyword Research

Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through them.

If you’ve decided to leverage Pinterest marketing for your small business you may be wondering how to find keywords to use. I know when I started, I had a lot of people show me the free tools, but I knew there had to be more data out there to leverage a stronger SEO strategy on Pinterest. Now that I’ve had some experience using these tools and effectively implementing a keyword strategy in my Pinterest content I wanted to create this guide so you can have all the information you need to do solid Pinterest keyword research.

Why Keyword Research is Important

Pinterest is an incredibly effective tool for driving brand awareness and website traffic for small and large businesses alike and it's a great strategy to implement alongside SEO to increase your website traffic.

But, there is a little bit of an art to making it work for you. Keywords are incredibly important to ensure the right people are finding you at the right time in their buying journey and that involves a little detective work and some strategic thinking. We're going to cover the detective work in this blog post so you can find the keywords you know your audience is using to search for all the great things you offer. We'll cover the strategy in a post coming soon.

This guide assumes you have some knowledge of deciding which keywords to use so we're just going to cover three great tools for finding the keywords.

• Pinterest Trends

• Pinterest guided search

• Keywords Everywhere

And definitely be sure to stick with us because I'll be giving you some tips for where to use them at the end—you don't want to miss that.

Let's dig in!

Free Pinterest Keyword Tools 

First, we’ll start with the free tools that Pinterest offers. These tools can be a great start to uncover what users are searching for and can be particularly useful for identifying seasonal and new trends. While these free tools fall short of providing any search volume or competition data, they are still helpful if you're not ready to pay for a more robust tool yet.

Pinterest Trends

The first free research tool we're going to cover is Pinterest Trends. Pinterest Trends is available to business account holders to support trend analysis, keyword research, and demographic insights. Once you're logged into your business account, you can navigate to the Business Hub in the upper left corner to access the tool.

There’s a lot to this page so we’re going to break it down section by section to teach you all the ways you can use it to inform your keyword research.

Search Bar

Like any keyword tool, you can enter any keyword to begin to analyze it. I like starting with what might be considered a main or root keyword to see what suggestions come up to spark new ideas. You can also see right away, what’s trending up, down, or staying the same.

Clicking on a keyword will bring up an “interest over time” graph, and will also reveal those same related keywords that you can easily select to add to the graph. The Pinterest Trends graph is relative so it is going to show search volume relative to any other search terms you’re comparing it to (as opposed to actual volume that you may see in other tools).

Below the graph, you can also view demographic data for the keywords and popular pins.

Top Trends in the United States this Month

I always like to browse through the carousel of top trends this month to see if there’s anything related to my content. If you click on a topic, it’ll bring you back to the search trends graph so you can dig into the search volume a bit more.

Discover Trends in the United States

This section is a treasure trove of ideas. Here you can use filters to select a trend type, date, interests, keywords, age, and gender. Visiting this section every month as you’re developing your content plan is a great idea.

Using Pinterest Guided Search 

The next free keyword research tool we're going to cover is guided search. Guided search might feel a little more intuitive because if you've spent any time on Pinterest, you've used this search bar to find topics you're interested in.

Similar to the trends search bar, guided search is going to bring up related searches in a box below your primary keyword, and once you select a keyword, instead of taking you to the trends graph, it’ll show additional ideas at the top of the page and all the related pins, just as if you were searching as a regular user.

In terms of keyword research, I think this is most helpful to see what Pinterest serves up for certain searches so you can see if your content or product would fit in. It's also really helpful as you're deciding what boards to create (more on that in another post). In terms of keyword ideas, you'll get the same results in the first tool we covered.

Paid Tools to Supercharge Your Pinterest SEO 

There are tools out there that provide what I consider to be much-needed data to refine your Pinterest SEO strategy. The free tools are good for guidance, but it's nice to see search volume and how competitive the keyword is so you can have a better sense of how a pin might perform.

So far, I've only used one paid tool to refine my Pinterest SEO and it works well so I haven't gone searching for other tools but I bet they're out there. Keywords Everywhere has been a complete game changer for my website traffic so I wanted to share it with you here.

Keywords Everywhere 

Keywords Everywhere is hands-down my favorite tool for Pinterest SEO. I’m not affiliated, just a big fan due to its effectiveness and its affordability. I paid less than $30 for an entire year subscription. I will note that not all the features are 100% accurate (more on that below), but I still like having peace of mind knowing a keyword has search volume and that I stand a chance to have my content seen.

Keywords Everywhere Features

I will note that this tool works for other apps and software too. It even works for Google and Instagram, so if you're looking for an economical keyword research tool, this could be a good option.

When you use the search bar, the keyword in the search bar and the recommended keywords are all accompanied by these additional features:

• Search volume: monthly search count

• Competition score: on a scale from 0-1, how competitive is it

• CPC: the average cost per click

• Trends: how the keyword is trending over the past period

• Keyword recommendations: additionally, most keywords give you an option to find topic ideas which will generate a spreadsheet of related keywords with all of the above metrics

• Pin data: when using the plug-in, every pin in your feed will have a little banner across it revealing the pin's metrics (not just yours!). This is the one feature that I am not sure I can rely on because when I see my pins, the stats don't match what's in the metrics report.

Recording Your Findings

These days I use a project management tool to record my findings as I go, but in the past I've used Google Sheets. You'll just want something where you can record the word or phrase along with its associated metrics. Using a table of some sort allows you to sort, highlight, sum, and analyze your findings a lot more easily than a word doc.

Now that you've learned all about the best tools to find your keywords, you're ready to optimize your profile and create your optimized Pinterest strategy. Be sure to check back in the next week or so for posts all about next steps.

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