How Does Pinterest Search Work
In this post we cover how does Pinterest search work.
Understanding how to use keywords and Pinterest search to improve your reach is important for content creators to know.
We will also look at what you’ll need to do- to get Pinterest to learn all about your content.
Before I jumped into the world of Pinterest I thought it was just another social media platform.
Somewhere I could share photos and follow my favorite people. Boy was I wrong, or shall I say misinformed about the world of Pinterest.
This platform is really unique.
Pinterest A Visual Search Engine
On one side you do have social media components ie: followers, and the ability to share photos.
Pinterest is a visual search engine. This means you can add content to the platform and other users can discover your content.
So consider this!
I have 250 followers on the platform. I can add content that can be found through Pinterest search.
If optimized properly this could generate tons of organic traffic, and out perform the Pinterest user who has 10,000 followers.
That’s powerful!
If your wondering what’s the big deal about Pinterest? Here’s some interesting facts to know.
Pinterest Facts
Pinterest reports having over 400 million monthly active users worldwide.
85% of pinners say that Pinterest is where they go to start a new project. 89% of people on Pinterest use it to find inspiration to purchase.
71% of global Pinterest users are female, according to Statista.
85% of women on Pinterest use it to plan future moments, compared to 44% for Instagram and 53% for Facebook.
58% say it helps them make shopping and purchasing decisions.
With about 20% of Pinterest users being men. There is a growing segment of users making Pinterest an online hub for planning and purchases.
Of the 20% male users currently 40% of them are dads. For dads when it comes to the way they use Pinterest is more specific.
Compared to other Pinners, dads are especially focused on getting things done.
They’re actively considering what they want, and search 62% more than the average Pinner.
There is so much more to discuss when it comes to Pinterest and the vast amount of users on the platform daily.
If you want to grow your organic website traffic for free Pinterest is definitely a great place to start.
Pinterest Content Life Span
A very powerful and important fact to consider is the life span (the time your content will see 50% engagements) of content on social media platforms.
According to Wisemetrics, the life span of a Tweet is approximately 24 minutes.
On Facebook, your posts only have about a 90 minute life span at best to see that 50% mark of clicks and views.
A Pinterest pin has a three and a half month life span where it will see up to 50% of it’s views and engagements.
How To Use Pinterest Search
I am always looking to learn more about Pinterest and the finding the most effective strategies to use.
After running different pinning scenarios I’ve discovered some things that work and get results.
I’ll be sharing some of my Pinterest SEO for bloggers tips that get pins ranking on page 1 of search, and drive clicks back to my website.
Pinterest is a visual search engine. That simply means they display images with links to relevant content.
The major difference in Google and Pinterest is Google uses text based links and Pinterest uses image based links.
When it comes to ranking your content on Pinterest remember we are dealing with a search engine, and you want to optimize your content to be discovered.
Google uses some 200, or so ranking factors to determine the best content to show, and Pinterest has an algorithm as well that looks for relevance, authority, and trust from a website.
How do I Search My Pins On Pinterest
Pinterest will show the most relevant content for search queries of established pinners.
The two major factors that show your authority on Pinterest are pinner’s quality and website signals.
Improve Pinner quality
You can improve your pinner quality by focusing on three areas:
- Relevance
- Quality pins
- Consistency
If you have not created your Pinterest business account yet, take a look at this post to get your account started.
Assuming you have created your Free Pinterest business Account the following attributes are what you’ll need to focus on to increase your profile quality.
Relevance
Content relevancy matters more than anything else on Pinterest.
Focus your energy on creating great content that’s tailored to your audience’s interests and needs.
You will set up relevant niche boards that your audience will be able to view and discover your content.
Setting up boards is strategic and you will need to use keywords in the descriptions to tell the story of your content.
Now regarding how you organize your boards you can choose to add board covers with titles or no board covers.
I haven’t seen where adding board covers increases your potential to be discovered in search, but using board covers will create a consistent and clean look to your profile.
Below is a few boards from my profile. The boards are centered around blogging as the niche.
All boards are titled with keywords I discovered on Pinterest search.
We will jump into using keywords shortly.
Quality pins
While Pinterest has stated that new original content will receive priority distribution over your saved content and others content.
You can still repin (save) relevant content from others. You will want to be saving high quality pins that are relevant to your niche.
This can help your pinner quality.
Consistency
Pinterest loves active users on the platform. However you schedule your pins do not bulk pin all at once. you will want to spread them out during the week.
It’s recommended to pin anywhere from 5-15 times per day. This will help to show consistency and time on the platform.
If your wondering how you can manage your time when it comes to effectively pinning there would be the option to manually pin.
Uploading your pins from a website or just adding them in the “create pin” section different times throughout your day.
You can also use the native scheduler within Pinterest to schedule out pins over a set day and time.
There is also an option to use an approved 3rd party scheduling tool.
Tailwind is an approved scheduler that is easy to use and can be linked to your profile to provide additional analytics data.
Besides the ability to schedule out your pins, Tailwind will provide you with optimal times to reach your audience, and break down stats on how your pins are performing.
There is also a bonus option!
Tailwind tribes (now called Tailwind Communities) are communities within Tailwind that you can share your pins and receive additional engagements.
When a tribe mate discovers your pin they can repin to a relevant board on Pinterest.
Tribes are like Pinterest group boards, each member of a tribe must repin content from other tribe members to keep the tribe engaged.
PRO TIP being active in tribes can give your pins more exposure.
In the time that I’ve used Tailwind Tribes I have increased my reach and boosted my engagements.
I’m seeing a huge increase with my repin rate Based on pins submitted to tribes. This is an awesome extra way to add exposure to your pins!
Tailwind will give you the first 30 days of your account FREE.
This gives you time to test it out and learn how to use it as a part of your strategy.
After the trial period your account will be $15 per month.
Get started with Tailwind here for free
Website signals
Google has stated the importance of website speed and how it could affect your organic traffic.
Pinterest also places ranking factors that consider website performance.
Website Speed and Performance
Due to the growing number of mobile users it’s important that your website is optimized.
According to Google 53% of visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Related reading: Page Speed
If you are unsure of how your website performs head over to Gtmetrix.com to measure your site speed.
You will be provided with a report that details any area of improvement your site may need.
Great website speed can make the difference in gaining online customers.
PRO TIP One of your starting points for a well optimized website will be with your hosting.
There are a number of hosts out there that can do a decent job.
I prefer using HostGator as they are a moderately priced and super easy to navigate for brand new bloggers.
You will have hosting with a 99% uptime (your websites time without interruption).
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed when it comes to hosting, or need a little extra instruction.
The support over at HostGator will be perfect for you.
Don’t have a website or blog yet? No worries-you can enroll in our FREE go at your own pace course that will walk you step by step and help you create your very own stunning website!
Setting up your very own website has never been easier!
Learn more about HostGator here
Repin rate
Increasing your repin rate is important. This sends a direct signal to Pinterest that your content is appreciated by your audience.
A Pinterest user does a search, your pin is displayed and they click through to your website.
The pinner decides after reading your content to come back to Pinterest and save your pin to one of their relevant boards.
You want this to happen to all your content. How do we get users to save our pins more often.
Make your content shareable!
For each of your blog posts you want to create 3-5 pins. Share these pins on Pinterest to increase your exposure.
Use social share buttons on your blog posts. As your readers come across your content the share buttons will make it easy to share to there favorite social platform.
For my social sharing buttons I use the Social Warfare plugin.
It’s a simple to use and lightweight plugin that has a free basic option and a more robust paid option.
The block style is neat and fits right on your content. You can display different social icons right above your content and under your content.
Your content will be discovered and your website visitors can easily “pin” (share) your content to their profile.
Get started with Social Warfare here
How to Increase Searchability on Pinterest
For your content to be discovered on Pinterest, you will want to use a Pinterest keyword tool to do your research.
Let’s first determine what your niche popularity is on Pinterest.
Open a browser and type in www.pinterest.com/topics/your niche.
As an example we will use “WordPress” as our potential niche idea. This will show us if a topic is searched on Pinterest.
What we end up with is an idea of the popularity.
From the screen shot below we see that there are 25k followers for this specific search term.
We can see there is an interest in this topic on Pinterest.
Using Pinterest Keywords
I will share some insights on Pinterest keyword targeting. Let’s explore the Pinterest search bar to discover how does Pinterest search work.
Here’s a search for “Pinterest SEO”. Notice the additional terms given to us by autosuggest.
These are all additional and related terms that users are searching for. You can choose a few of these to create your boards.
Pinterest Board Descriptions
For your board descriptions the related keywords that Pinterest shows us in the search bar will be perfect to create long-tail keywords.
This is a simple way to identify niche related keywords that will describe our boards.
How to Get Your Pins to Show Up In Searches
I will show you two ways to find keywords all from within the Pinterest platform
- Pinterest search bar
- Ads management
Pinterest Search Bar
Using the Pinterest search bar enter in your search phrase and see what related terms pop up.
Remember these are additional search terms by users related to your topic.
When Pinterest provides these additional terms you will want to rank for as many as possible.
Using these terms on your pins descriptions can help your content be discovered in search.
You can dominate a search phrase by using the right keywords on your different pins.
Another quick way to check for potential keywords would be by scrolling down on the until you notice the section of related searches.
Pinterest Ads Management
So I learned this from a course I took, and it shows how using the Pinterest ads search can generate really great results.
We won’t be paying for any ads here just taking advantage of a resource Pinterest provides for business accounts.
This will be totally free and another way to uncover great search phrases.
Head over to the Ads section from the top of your business hub. Select “create ad”
Set up your campaign using the choices Pinterest offers. Generally I select “traffic”.
This is a basic campaign that will allow you to generate keywords. Scroll down to hit “continue”
At the bottom of the page you have an area to enter keywords.
Once you enter in a term it will show you the monthly search volume for that term and give you several related searches.
Each keyword you find that’s related to your niche click on the plus icon to add in your results.
You can add up to 25 terms here and come up with lots of keywords for your campaign.
Once you finish here simply copy the list of keywords you came up with, and save them so that you can use them in your profile.
How to Make my Pins Searchable on Pinterest
To get the best results with your pins let’s optimize and use great keyword placement. The following areas are where we have to insert keywords.
- Pin title
- Text on the pins
- Pin Description
- Image name
PRO TIP using different related keywords in these areas on your A/B testing can rank multiple pins that lead to the same blog post.
Finally after setting up your profile, and including keywords in your BIO, your board titles, board descriptions, and pin descriptions, this is how to get your pins to show up in search.
In conclusion
I hope this post was helpful and makes it easier to understand using Pinterest search.
On the Pinterest platform we need to be specific and creative with our keyword use, and pinning strategy.
My recommendation is to optimize your profile with the keywords you discover on Pinterest search. Remember to optimize your:
- BIO (profile)
- Board descriptions
- Pin descriptions
- Images (alt text)
- Pin titles
- Blog post
- Blog post URL
In your strategy you want to pin at optimal times so that your audience can engage with your pins.
A great way to determine the best times to pin is by using Tailwind.
One of the added features that Tailwind offers is that it analyzes your profile to determine the best times to reach your audience.
Experiment with pin design and different descriptions to learn what your audience likes.
Make sure to include keywords as we have discussed earlier and create useful and meaningful content that will turn visitors into fans.
Now over to you
I’m curious, what are some best tips you have for growing your profile on Pinterest? Leave comments below. We love to hear from our readers!
