How to do Pinterest keyword research?

Last updated on 27 October 2025

Conducting keyword research on Pinterest means understanding how your customers express their curiosity before they express a need. The platform acts as a visual search engine, structured around its own semantic grammar. It links your visuals, titles and descriptions to specific queries.

For an e-commerce site or a B2B brand, this approach allows you to anticipate demand and transform Pinterest into a growth lever integrated into your multichannel strategy.

It then becomes a distribution channel, and a strategic listening tool.

Why has Pinterest keyword research become strategic?

Pinterest doesn't act like a traditional social network. Its users don't " scroll » not: they are looking for.
Their intention is often prior to the purchase: intuitive exploration, comparison, inspiration.

What this reveals: the visual engine functions more like a database of intentions than as an engagement platform.

Reminder : A Pin (or Pin) is the image or video you see, associated with a title, a description, and an outgoing link to your website.

In practical terms, this means two things for the brand:

• Keywords are not just a visibility lever, but a a way to map real intentions Users. Your target audience.
• A well-constructed Pinterest strategy connects visual usage to latent demand, thus feeding the global SEO.

In other words, searching for keywords on Pinterest means understanding the logic of association that links ideas before they translate into actions (explore, save, plan, click, buy). 

How to find relevant keywords on Pinterest?

Pinterest offers several entry points to observe how users formulate their ideas.

1. Automatic suggestions

By typing a word into the search bar, Pinterest displays a series of additions.
These suggestions are not random: they reflect the queries actually typed by users.

In practice: write them down, then classify them according to their dominant intention (discovery, comparison, action).
This sorting already reveals a user exploration path.

2. Keyword bubbles

Below the bar, Pinterest displays colorful bubbles.
They materialize the most frequent associations of ideas.

Example: for "Designer meeting room", the bubbles can include "Interior", "Modern", "Business" ».

Pinterest visually groups the semantic links between concepts.
Each bubble becomes a clue about how the user contextualizes his need.

3. Competitive analysis of pins

If you look more closely, the first pins for a keyword indicate what the platform values.

• What titles do they use?
• What keywords come up in their descriptions?
• Which tables group them together?

In practice: identify recurring formulations and differentiating angles.
These are signs of algorithmic success.

4. Trend tools

Pinterest offers an official tool: Pinterest Trends. It detects search peaks and highlights the evolution of queries by country, season and sector.

Complete with:

• Pinterest Keyword Tool For long-tail queries, it offers variations and complementary expressions. Ideal for expanding your semantic field without sacrificing relevance.
• Ubersuggest, SEMrush Or KeywordTool.io To estimate volume, difficulty, and related ideas. Useful for classifying your queries according to their strategic potential.
• Google Trends, to cross-reference Google / Pinterest volumes.

These tools transform keyword research into behavioral observation. They reveal the collective dynamics of a market.

How to choose and prioritize Pinterest keywords?

A keyword is not valuable for its volume, but for its contextual accuracy.
The ranking is based on five axes:

Criteria	What to observe
Relevance	Does the term correspond to the brand's actual promise?
Potential (volume and trend)	Is the trend upward? Is it seasonal?
Feasibility (competition)	Is the level of competition visually and semantically manageable?
Search intent	Does the keyword convey learning, comparison, or action?
Seasonality / timing	Should we publish now or anticipate the curve?

Prioritize the long train Precise queries, easier to rank for and driven by a clear intent. In other words, it's not about "finding keywords," but about to compose a meaningful structure which links your content to users' search logic.

How to use AI to find or test Pinterest queries?

An AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity…) allows you to quickly generate an initial list of queries.
But these suggestions are only linguistic hypotheses. They reflect how a model generalizes language, not how users actually look for it.

What this implies:

• AI accelerates the exploratory phase.
• But only direct observation on Pinterest (via Trends or actual results) confirms this.

Formulate an explicit request to the AI. For example:

«"Generate 20 Pinterest queries related to meeting/seminar room rentals, with explicit search intent (examples: 'rent', 'quote', 'price', 'flexible room', 'event venue'). Rank them from the most general need to the most specific need."«

Then compare these suggestions with Pinterest: which ones appear in the search? Which ones don't exist?

Value is created in the intersection between the hypothesis generated by AI and field validation.

Where should I place Pinterest keywords?

Pinterest reads both the text and the image. The consistency between these two semantic layers reinforces the classification.

Position your keywords in the hot zones and the most visible.

Location	Action	Example (sector: rental of meeting rooms)
Pin Title	Include the main term + concrete benefit.	«Modern meeting room in Paris – ideal space for your seminars»
Description	Describe the offer naturally, using 2–3 similar phrases. Develop the semantic field (approximately 200 characters).	«"Rent a bright room for your meetings, training sessions or corporate seminars. Modular and equipped spaces for your professional needs…"»
Table name	Associate the offer with a promise or target.	«Professional spaces and meeting rooms for rent»
Description of the painting	Summarize the added value and possible uses.	«"Discover our inspiring venues for your team meetings, conferences or client workshops…"»
Image file name	Describe the content concisely.	bright-paris-meeting-room.webp
Alternative text (alt)	Describe the image accurately and naturally.	«Photo of a modern meeting room equipped for a professional seminar.»

Common mistakes

These mistakes are common when researching and integrating search terms on Pinterest. They limit the reach of pins and harm their semantic relevance.

Using overly broad keywords

Terms that are too broad, such as "meeting" or "office," dilute the signal of intent.
Pinterest values specific formulations that closely reflect the user's actual actions.

Repeat the same expressions on all pins

Redundancy reduces understanding of the thematic field.
Once again, performance doesn't come from a repeated keyword, but from a aligned lexical ecosystem.

Neglecting research intent

Each word corresponds to a cognitive moment : explore, compare, buy.
To fail to recognize him is like addressing a phantom visitor.

Decouple the pin and the target page

If the visual promises something other than what's on the landing page, Pinterest perceives a lack of consistency. Therefore, the promise must be continuous, from the visual to the conversion.

Overload keywords in descriptions

The accumulation of keywords impairs readability, but above all, it hinders the clarity of the signal sent to Pinterest.
Overly dense text becomes ambiguous: the platform can no longer prioritize which meaning to use. Use natural language. a clear main request, accompanied by a few semantic variations, is enough to anchor your content in the right search field.

Concrete example: on-the-job learning

Context

I supported an emerging brand in the world of home and decoration, whose Pinterest account had just been created.
The objective: increase visibility And attract an audience genuinely interested in its products, without resorting to advertising.

Method

Identifying queries through keyword grouping, analyzing Pinterest Trends, and selecting long train ("textured wall decor ideas", "handmade Mother's Day gift"). The idea: start with the users' language, no hasty assumptions.

Implementation (1 month)

In one month, 266 pins were published according to a silo architecture thought for semantic indexing: pillars, seasonal collections, opportunities.

Results

Dfrom 0 to nearly 1,000 daily impressions, A CTR greater than 1 % and one first sale attributed to Pinterest before the end of the test cycle (traced via UTM).

By working with the right vocabulary, in the right place, results come quickly and last over time.

What to remember

Pinterest is neither a shop window nor a social network: it's a visual intent engine.
The goal is not to "be present" there, but to be there. order the meaning of the brand.

Key points to remember about keyword research:

• Suggestions and bubbles: reading of associations actually used.
• Prioritization: relevance, potential, feasibility, intention, timing.
• Priority: long tail.
• AI: exploration possible; validation in Pinterest.
• Keyword placement: consistent title, natural description, table, file/alt.
• To avoid: overly broad terms, repetitions, overloading, inconsistency with the target page.

To go further

A Pinterest SEO strategy encompasses more than just pin optimization.
It is part of a broader vision: to make the language of engines and that of users communicate.

Support offered:

• Semantic analysis: identification of relevant queries based on Pinterest data.
• Visual and textual optimization: structuring of pins, titles and tables.
• Monitoring and adjustment: reading indicators (traffic, CTR, conversions).
• Evergreen strategy: continuity of signals over time and seasons.

Pinterest is becoming a measurable pillar of a global research strategy, generating qualified and sustainable traffic.

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