Which keywords should you be targeting this season? The ones that capture the hottest spring trends on Pinterest of course!
Keywords are an important part of your overall strategy on Pinterest. They can be used in many ways on Pinterest to help you target a specific audience. But how do you determine which keywords you should be using?
Today we’ll be talking about the why, where, and how of keywords. We’ll look at the seasonality component of Pinterest and how keywords play into that. Specifically, we’ll discuss spring trends on Pinterest that dictate which keywords you should be using this spring.
But first, a reminder…
This next week we are hosting our FREE 5-Day Pinterest Challenge. It is a fresh take on Pinterest that will walk you through how to spring clean your Pinterest strategy for 2021. Don’t miss out on this!
In the Challenge, we’re going to be talking all about the new direction that Pinterest is headed. We’ll cover how to get really good at story pins, video pins, and all these things that are going to give new life and truly spring clean your strategy.
Seasonality is a really important component of Pinterest. People search for topics such as fashion, recipes, decor, and travel based on seasonality. This makes seasonality vital to your Pinterest keyword strategy.
Keywords change with the seasons so it is important to stay on top of which words to use in your pin copy and pin descriptions to make sure they are currently relevant to your audience.
There are a lot of ways you can incorporate specific keywords into your pins in order to capture that search traffic.
Let’s talk about how to do that, keeping seasonality in mind, as we dive into spring keywords on Pinterest!
Why Use Keywords on Pinterest
First things first. If you are new to Pinterest you’re probably wondering why keywords are even a thing on Pinterest.
Keywords are big because Pinterest is a search and discovery platform. This means when people go to Pinterest they’re not thinking of it as social media. They’re thinking of Pinterest as a place to find ideas, to dream about something, to search for what they really want. They are very focused on that topic.
The focus of Pinterest users is similar to how you approach a search engine like Google. People are looking for the how-tos, tips, or tools that are going to help them fulfill a dream or complete a project.
The main reason we use keywords is to meet this objective of the Pinterest audience. Pinterest is a search and discovery platform and keywords are the best tool to help people search and discover the pin that will help them fulfill a goal.
Where to Put Keywords
If keywords are so important, then where do we put them?
We have a full blog post/podcast about this very question, but here are the top three places where keywords are important:
• Pin description
• Board name
• Board description
.
Related: How to Spring Clean Your Pinterest Boards
The number one place you need to put keywords on Pinterest is in your pin description.
When you are uploading a pin to Pinterest, you have the opportunity to add a title, ALT text, and a pin description. This description should be one to three sentences long and be written like a text to a friend.
Think about that. A text to a friend is peppered with really natural language, keywords, and a natural flow. A pin description should have those same elements.
I need to tell you that the focus of most pinners is going to be the images on Pinterest. Most pinners aren’t going to read your pin description, but that doesn’t change the importance of keywords.
The real importance of keywords is for the search algorithm Pinterest uses. Sure, some people will read descriptions, especially if they want more detail about the image. But pin descriptions are truly for the Pinterest algorithm.
Pinterest’s algorithm is going to help us create this perfect match between Pinner and Creator and this match happens first in the pin description.
Two other places to utilize keywords are in the board name and in the board description. Pinterest takes keywords from all three areas and matches them up so the algorithm knows what the pins on that board are about.
Let’s look at an example pinner named Susie.
Susie is a regular pinner on the platform and she is looking for women’s spring skirts. She goes into Pinterest, puts women’s spring skirts in the search box and Pinterest populates all the spring skirts for her.
Susie decides to save a pin from a board that’s titled Spring Fashion for Women. That tells Pinterest that Susie is really interested in spring fashion. The algorithm knows she is interested in this content, so the first place Pinterest gathers pins to show Susie is from that board. This allows her to re-engage with the content later.
Pinterest’s whole goal is to create this really great ecosystem that serves the pinner. They want the pinner to see all these things they’re interested in when they open up Pinterest. They want them to find these great ideas and discover new things.
Where we put keywords is really important. Keywords need to be in your pin description, board name, and board description.
How to Use Simple Pin’s Pinterest Keyword Planning Guide
The next hurdle is determining the right Pinterest keywords to use. It’s important that your keywords are specific. Seasonal terms, when appropriate, are part of that specificity.
Sometimes it’s really hard to think of keywords because we are either lacking creativity or we’re really tired and we don’t have the strength to do the search on our own.
Simple Pin has an answer for you!
We’ve created our Pinterest Keyword Planning Guide that contains a comprehensive list of keywords broken down by season. The Planning Guide is totally free and contains 22 pages of keyword gold (just fill out the form at the top OR bottom of this post to snag yours)!
As we break down this information, think about how terms are not only useful for keywording but also great for generating content ideas both for product sellers and for bloggers.
If you are tapped out of ideas and don’t know what content to create this spring, let our Keyword Planning Guide provide some inspiration!
I’m not going to repeat all of the spring keyword information for you today. But I am going to summarize some of the biggest spring trends on Pinterest by content category to give you a flavor of the great information you’ll glean from our Pinterest Keyword Planning Guide.
Spring Trends on Pinterest: Keywords You Should Be Using Now
Spring Holidays & Major Event Keywords
- Passover Cinco de Mayo
- Easter
- VE Day
- April Fool’s Day
- Mother’s Day
- Ramadan
- Graduation Day
- Kentucky Derby
- Memorial Day
- Star Wars Day
DIY & Crafts
When it comes to this category, think spring crafts, spring holiday decorating, anything DIY for spring, crafts for kids, and more.
Education & Books (including Digital Products)
During this time of year in education, you should target Earth Day, graduation, Mother’s Day, classroom & homeschool planning for next year. Adding seasonal components to any books or digital products you talk about is a great idea.
Entertaining & Events (including Weddings)
Spring brings a lot of entertaining events so suggestions include: Oscar night parties, Mother’s Day brunches, backyard weddings, Memorial Day parties, and graduation parties just to name a few.
These will still look different this year so think of a spin you could take on non-traditional ideas. However, we’re gradually coming out of quarantine so really think about how your content or keywords can transcend the pandemic.
Family, Kids & Parenting
Some ideas include: spring family photo ideas, May Day ideas for kids, family movie night, and Father’s Day DIY gifts. We have such an extensive list of ideas for this category in the Planning Guide so make sure you check it out.
Fashion & Beauty
Fashion and beauty are big. You’ll find suggestions such as spring makeup, spring skincare, casual spring fashion and so much more!
Finance/Frugal Living
This category includes keywords like how to afford tuition and the public vs private school choice. Spring is a time when people start thinking about traveling on a budget, frugal backyard entertaining, and spring cleaning your finances.
Food & Drink
There are so many spring trends on Pinterest that center around food and drink! Think of words like weeknight, healthy, and easy. Spring flavors are something to think about too such as asparagus, strawberries, or any fruit that comes on early in the spring (see the Keyword Guide for a ton of ideas).
Health, Wellness, & Fitness
A lot of people might begin training for certain events that happen in the summer like
5K’s. Look into detoxing. Here’s a funny one – armpit detox recipes. I know it’s weird but we pulled a lot of this from Pinterest so clearly Pinterest is saying that people are searching armpit detox recipes. Under health, wellness and fitness there is also decluttering your mind, beat the heat, and more. There is a lot within the health, wellness, and fitness space.
Home & Gardening
Gardening just explodes in the spring. Great gardening keywords include: seed starters, backyard patio designs, indoor house plants, and decorating small spaces.
Travel
Travel took a huge hit in 2020. Travel and weddings were industries that really got cut off at their knees. We want to look at how we can really help people dream about future travel.
One thing I’ve noticed even for myself is people are rethinking how much traveling to do in the future. People want their travel to be intentional going forward so they are looking for specific ideas.
Other spring keyword ideas to consider for travel are packing tips, spring break, travel essentials, how to travel in this new era, tips for plane travel, or things to bring in your emergency kit.
There are other ways people think of travel as well. Ideas for road trips, staycations, and mini-vacations are just a few.
I’ve just listed a few of the ideas you’ll find inside the Keyword Planning Guide. It is filled with quite an extensive list of ideas for each category with some taking up several pages. It is a resource that can play a key role in your Pinterest strategy.
I want to remind you that a great way to test out some of these ideas and keywords is to try them out with a Story Pin. You don’t have to write an in-depth blog post.
Test your ideas as a Story Pin first and see if it really takes off. If it does, then you can go more in-depth on that topic via a blog post.
Capitalizing on Spring Trends on Pinterest — What’s Next?
The next step is to download the Keyword Planning Guide (fill in the form at the end of the post). Then go through it and highlight the keywords you really want to incorporate this spring. Incorporate the words from your list into your pin descriptions, your board name, and your board descriptions.
Now you can test out a story pin as well and see if that pin generates activity.
Once you have that information, you have a good basis for creating more content surrounding that particular topic.
If you have not left a review for the Simple Pin Podcast on your favorite podcast player we would love for you to do that! We read those because we get great feedback from them. It also helps more people learn about this podcast and learn how we can help them grow their business using Pinterest.
For Further Listening/Reading:
Does it matter the order of the words? For example, if i use the pinterest search and it shows me high traffic term “bodycon dress”, and in my product description i have black bodycon denim midi dress, am i still relevant for the keyword “bodycon dress”? or i have to be an exact match for Pinterest to show my pin?
Generally speaking the order won’t make a difference but it is always good to test it using the Pinterest search bar.