Pinterest SEO Tips To Find The Best Keywords in 2026

ByYolanda Ridley Published On Updated On

Want more traffic, leads and sales in 2026 and beyond? These Pinterest SEO tips are here to help you find the best Pinterest keywords so you can reach your business goals.

If you are reading this article, you most likely know what a powerful platform Pinterest is for your business. But, you also may be frustrated that you’re not getting the Pinterest results others are seeing.

This is where Pinterest SEO comes in.

Woman using Pinterest in her laptop

The first thing to confirm is that Pinterest is a search engine and not a social media site. You, therefore, need to put thought and effort into SEO like you would for Google.

The great thing though is that you can drive traffic with Pinterest a lot faster than with Google, which as you know can take a long time to see results.

Let’s get into everything you need to know about Pinterest SEO so you can see your website traffic, leads and sales increase.

Related: How to Create High Performing Pinterest Pins

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share products and services I have personally used and love. Disclosure here.

How and What Do I Optimize For Pinterest SEO?

There are 3 core places you can optimize your Pinterest SEO (with the right keywords).

These include:

  • Pin descriptions
  • Board names & descriptions
  • Your Profile (name and description)
  • Tagged Topics

Below I’ll be going through exactly how to optimize these sections of your Pinterest profile, plus the best ways to find keywords on Pinterest.

How (and Where) To Find the Best Pinterest Keywords

How To Find the Best Pinterest Keywords To Drive More Traffic

Let’s first discuss the most effective ways to find Pinterest keywords.

Finding the right keywords to include in your PIN TITLE and PIN DESCRIPTION is one of the key factors that directly impact how your pins perform.

Just like Google, Pinterest is a search engine, therefore people find your content based on their searches.

Having the right keywords increases your Pinterest impressions, monthly views and most important traffic to your website.

1. Pin Inspector (Pinterest Keywords Tool)

There is FINALLY an amazing Pinterest keywords tool on the market that helps you optimize for Pinterest and saves you loads of time!

Screenshot of Pin Inspector Pinterest Software

Pin Inspector will help you:

  • Get the best Pinterest keywords for your next blog post
  • Spy on competitor pins that get the most saves and repins
  • Combine Pinterest & Google data to help you choose the best topic for your next blog post
  • Save loads of time when doing keyword research

The best part is you can also install this on up to 10 computers.

👉 Learn more about Pin Inspector HERE!

2. Pinterest Auto-Fill

The first place to look for relevant keywords to help you drive traffic is by using the Pinterest search box.

Type in a broad topic and the auto-fill box will show you the top terms people are searching for in relation to your topic. The example below for productivity shows us that quotes, tips, planner, hacks, etc are all top searches.

Pinterest auto fill search box showing terms for productivity

This is your first indicator that these topics are popular and great keywords to target.

3. “Ideas You Might Love”

This is a new way I’ve been finding more related Pinterest keywords.

  • Simply search for a topic you have written about… in this post’s case ‘Pinterest SEO’.
  • Then click on a few of the top-ranking pin results.
  • Once you have a top pin opened, scroll down and you’ll find the ‘Ideas You Might Love’ section (the grey bubbles).
Pinterest keywords Ideas You Might Like

The Pinterest Trends tool can be pretty powerful and is my new go-to way of finding the best keywords to target.

This tool is the best way to find your keywords and the search volume over time is included which will help you decide the keywords to prioritize for your pin title and pin description.

To access the Pinterest Trends tool go to ‘Analytics’ in the navigation and select ‘Trends’ from the dropdown.

Then simply add a topic to the search bar and Pinterest will give you a list of related recommendations.

See the example below of the results related to ‘make money’ topics.

5. Pinterest Suggested Keywords


Let’s walk through an example in the Money Niche.

Pinterest search: ‘make money’.  I then clicked on ‘fast’, ‘extra cash’.

This is one way to find content ideas and the right keywords to target!

The below keyword list shows in order of most popular searches. As you can see ‘fast’ is the 2nd recommended word Pinterest is using to narrow the search for the user. This is, therefore, a great keyword to target.

keyword search in Pinterest

General Tips for Selecting Pinterest Keywords:

  • As a rule of thumb – the keywords at the beginning of the suggested keywords are the most popular
  • Add complimentary descriptive keywords – look at the keyword results list for this
  • Include keywords in your Pinterest title and pin description

6. Pinterest Annotations

First – what exactly are Pinterest annotations?

Internally at Pinterest, they refer to keywords as ‘annotations’ and for every pin there are specific annotations that Pinterest assigns to each pin.

Why does this matter? Well, I’m glad you asked! You see, if you can discover what annotations are assigned to the top pins for a specific topic you can then target the same pins in your pin description and pin title.

Where can you find the official annotations for each pin?

There are two ways to do this. Let me walk you through the free way and the paid way.

Free Way to find Annotations

  • Open Pinterest in a different browser than your account and make sure you are logged out. (You can use a different browser to do this if it makes it easier – I recommend Opera or Microsoft Edge).
  • Once you have a new browser open, go back to your logged in Pinterest browser and find a pin that you want to get the assigned annotations to.
  • Copy that pins URL
  • Now paste that URL into your logged-out browser (this is where the magic happens). This is what you’ll find… See the annotations just above the arrows I added. You can scroll to the right and see all of the annotations added to this specific pin.
where to find Pinterest annotations

Paid Way to Find Annotations

The next way you can find annotations is through a brand-new keyword tool called PinClicks.

Why pay when you can do this for free? Well, PinClicks shows you the best-performing pins for your chosen topic so you can access the annotations for these specific pins.

After all – there’s no need to get the annotations (assigned keywords) for a pin that’s not performing. We only want details of what’s already worked great on Pinterest – those pins that are driving traffic and getting lots of saves.

This is a much faster process and PinClicks also has loads of other amazing features that up levels your Pinterest game. Learn more about PinClicks Here!

Related: Pinterest Analytics: What You Should Be Tracking Every Month

How To Use Pinterest Keywords

Pin Description: What Should You Include?

The biggest question I get from people is “what should I put in my pin description?”

The answer is actually quite simple. Your pin description should be made up of 4 components.

  1. Keywords
  2. Compelling, problem-solving copy
  3. A call to action

Let’s get into this in a little more detail.

Pinterest Keywords:

Above we talked about how to find keywords, so let’s now discuss how you should be using them in your descriptions.

  • You are adding keywords into your descriptions to help Pinterest users find your content in search, but also remember to write the description so it will encourage users to click on your content. Saying that, feel free to add a few more related keywords at the end of your ‘ user-friendly’ paragraph.
  • Target a handful of top keywords and add in a few descriptive terms as well
  • Write a different pin description for each different creative. This gives you the opportunity to target various keywords and to see what performs best for you.

Tip! When creating multiple pins for a specific blog post you CAN reuse a pin description and title, but only do this is you have another pin description (on a different pin design) that’s performing really well.

Go to your Pinterest Analytics and look at your top pins to see which pins/pin descriptions are generating the most impressions.

Compelling, Problem Solving Copy:

When writing your pin descriptions remember that (in some cases) people are reading them, so make sure to write your description in a way that is helpful and easily describes your blog post.

Also, make sure you don’t give away all the details in the pin as you want people to click through to find out more.

A Call To Action:

That’s right – in your pin description tell people what you want them to do. You could use some of these examples…

  • Download now
  • Learn how
  • Get the tips
  • Try these {enter descriptive keyword here} hacks now
  • Give it a try
  • Here’s what you need to know
  • Read to learn how
  • Grab the recipe

The topic of your blog post will help you determine the best call to action for your pin description.

How To Add Pin Descriptions to an Image in WordPress:

I notice many bloggers doing well with Pinterest pin descriptions, but they are forgetting to add the correct pin description (with relevant Pinterest keywords) to their pinnable image within the blog post.

This is an extremely important step for good Pinterest SEO so that when people are pinning from your blog post the correct pin description will be transferred to the pin on Pinterest.

Use the WP Tasty Pins plugin

This plugin is handy if you want a quick and easy way to add your pin descriptions without a lot of fuss or if you are not technically inclined.

Personally, I use the WP Tasty Pins plugin on all of my websites as this lightweight plugin saves me a ton of time and that’s important to me in my business.

The WP Tasty Pins plugin adds new fields to your image. These fields include:

  • Pinterest Title – You can add a unique title here that is different from your blog post title.
  • Pin Text – This is where you add your Pinterest description
  • Disable Pinning – This is handy if you don’t want people pinning certain images to Pinterest, such as horizontal images that don’t do well on Pinterest.
  • Pin Repin ID – You can add the pin ID of your best performing version of a particular pin so that when people pin from your blog post they are actually repinning your best pin and not creating a new pin.

To get the correct pin ID all you need to do is look at the URL of the pin.

You simply enter the ID into the ‘Pinterest Repin ID’ box that the plugin adds. See below…

Here is a screenshot of what the plugin fields look like:

Example of WP Tasty Pins plugin fields

**Get WP Tasty Pins Here.

Related: WP Tasty Pins Plugin Review + How To Use

Pinterest SEO: For Boards, Profile Name & Description

Pinterest Boards

Using Pinterest keywords in pin descriptions is not the only way to tell Pinterest what your content is about. You can also include the right keywords on your Pinterest boards.

This includes using Pinterest keywords in:

  • The board name title
  • The board description

The same way that you search for the best keywords for pin descriptions is the same method for your boards.

You may love creating unique names for your Pinterest boards, but if people aren’t using those terms to search, doing this won’t help you get more viewers and followers.

Pinterest Boards Tip!

Make sure your boards are niche as this is how people search – for niche-specific topics.

So, if you write a lot about bullet journals, have a board for this. Or if you write a lot about productivity, get more specific and create more niche boards, i.e. Productivity for businesses, Time Management for Moms, etc.

Pinterest Profile

Use your Pinterest profile to describe how you can help your ideal audience and use all of the real estate available to you.

This includes your profile name and profile description.

Think about the content that performs best for you and use those keywords to describe what your account and content is all about.

Pinterest SEO & Keywords: Final Tip

Pinterest is an art, not a science so I encourage you to test, test, test.

Test various keywords to see what performs for your content. Design multiple different pins for each article or product so you can test what designs get the best click-thru rate.

Here are some details on how to understand your Pinterest metrics so you can optimize your pins in a strategic way.

Pinterest FAQs

What is Pinterest SEO?

When it comes to your content ranking online it’s important to use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

There are SEO best practices to rank on Google, just as there are best practices to rank on Pinterest (remember – Pinterest is a search engine)!

Pinterest SEO consists of doing keyword research with tools like Pin Inspector and using this keyword information to make your Pinterest titles, descriptions and boards SEO friendly.

This means you can make it easier for people to find your content on Pinterest and link back to your website.

How do you rank fast on Pinterest?

Quite simply – you don’t! I don’t want to discourage you, but gone are the days that Pinterest shows brand new pins to people right away.

It typically takes 3 to 6 months and even longer for some pins to take off. Sure, you might get lucky and have your pins drive traffic sooner, but this isn’t typical in 2026.

The key is to be consistent with your Pinterest SEO and pinning, even if you don’t see results right away.

What are the best Pinterest Keywords to Use?

Above we talked about the various ways you can do keyword research for Pinterest, but once you’ve made your list – what are the best keywords to use?

I recommend using a mixture of larger keywords and long-tail keywords. An example of a long-tail Pinterest keyword would be “how to make money from home for moms”, versus a larger keyword – “make money”.

It’s also important to look in your Pinterest Analytics to see which pins are performing best. Now, look at your pin titles and descriptions for the best-performing pins and learn from this.

Have Questions on Pinterest SEO Best Practices?

Ask in the comments below and I’ll get back to you right away!