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Without having a pin description, Pinterest won’t know what your pin is about.

But how do you write an effective pin description for Pinterest?

There’s actually more to it than you might think.

To have an effective Pinterest marketing strategy, you don’t just want to write any random pin description.

You want to make sure that you write an SEO keyword-researched one that’s going to help your pin rank in search.

And there are a few important elements that you don’t want to miss.

It’s important to write an effective pin description because you can rank in search for keywords, make sure it is served up to the right people and give them a reason to click on your pin!

Rather watch the video instead?

Why is it important to write an effective pin description?

The first thing I want to talk about is why should you even care about your Pinterest descriptions?

Do people even read them?

How To Write An Effective Pin Description For Pinterest!

The pin description can help you rank in search

Getting your pins to rank in search is something you want to strive for.

This means if someone looks something up, your pin will show up in the search results.

The higher in search your pins rank, the better chance someone will click on them.

Plus, that is more eyes on your pins.

More eyes = a better chance for clicks.

Which means, more growth on your Pinterest account!

For example, my pin “How to Avoid Distractions when you Work from Home” ranks under the search term “work from home distractions”.

And I have a ton of pins like this that are ranking and bringing me traffic whenever someone searches up that term and clicks on it!

This is one of the major benefits of focusing on Pinterest SEO and making your pin descriptions better!

Pin descriptions tell Pinterest where to place your pin

Pinterest doesn’t know what your pin is about without a description.

There is no way of knowing just by looking at the pin picture.

Pinterest has said that they can detect some things based on the words or photos from your pin, but they also need a description to help them out!

Which is why it’s important to add relevant keywords to your descriptions.

In my opinion, writing your description is less about the average Pinterest user reading them and more about helping out the search engines of Pinterest.

You want your target audience to get served up your pin.

And since Pinterest has no way of knowing what your pin is actually about, you use the description of the pin, along with a few other key things, to tell them;

  • What your pin is about
  • Where they need to rank it in search
  • Who they need to show it to

Pinterest is just like Google because it isn’t a social media site, it’s a search engine.

And just like Google, Pinterest uses keywords to rank pins in search and shows related pins on your homepage using the keywords from pins you’ve interacted with!

Want to learn more about Pinterest? Check out my course called Pinterest Simplicity! It has extremely in-depth and easy-to-understand pinning strategies. You’ll learn something whether you are just starting out or experienced on the platform!

What to include in your pin descriptions

Now that you know why the description is important, what do you need to include to make sure you maximize your results?

Include important keywords

In order to write an effective pin description, you need to make sure you include important keywords.

We’ve talked a little bit about them, but what are keywords exactly?

Basically, they are words or phrases that people look up to get information.

For example, the keywords in the pin I have ranking was “Work from home distractions”.

You can use multiple keywords in your pin description because some people will look up different variations.

Like “Stop procrastinating” or “Work from home productivity tips”.

Anything that directly relates to the problem your audience has that they are looking for a solution can be a keyword.

Making sure you use good keywords is the next step!

How to find good keywords

You don’t just want to use what you think people are looking up to find your pin.

You need to make sure you are actually doing the research to find out a highly-searched keyword.

A keyword that doesn’t get any searches isn’t any good! If no one is looking for it, but you rank #1, you still won’t get any clicks!

You can find keywords that people are searching for by doing a little bit of testing. Type what your topic is into the search bar.

Let’s say you type “Blogging for”.

In the drop-down menu, you’ll see Pinterest is trying to guess what it is you’ll say next.

They are guessing these words based off of what everyone else is typing into the search bar.

That means these words are popular, and therefore it may be a good keyword for you to use in your blog post!

You’ll also get accounts that rank for those search terms as well, but you can just ignore them.

These keywords are okay, but you may want to do more research and refine them a bit more.

Try to have a keyword phrase that is a bit long, called a long-tail keyword. The most specific you can get, the better!

If you have a super unspecific keyword like just “blogging” it can be harder to rank for since a lot of people will be going after that keyword.

And on top of that, it’s hard to tell the intent of the viewer if that is the only keyword you use.

Do they want to start a blog? Learn how to make money? Write their first blog post?

You really have no idea what information they are going after with just the keyword “blogging” so try to add more words to refine your search!

Places you should put the keywords

Once you find the keywords you want to use, where should you put them? Because there is more than one place you should be using them!

  • The pin title
  • In the Pinterest graphic
  • In the description
  • The Pinterest board name you pin to
  • The board description
  • The first paragraph of your blog post

Yes, all of these places actually do matter!

That doesn’t mean the keyword you choose has to be the same for each of these places, or that you can’t change up and vary which ones you use.

But you should have similar keywords in all of these places.

Some of these places matter more than others, but Pinterest looks at all these factors to do its best to understand what your pin is about so it can place it on the feed in the correct places.

The do’s and don’ts of how to write an effective pin description

There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to write an effective pin description.

So let’s talk about some of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to writing an effective pin description!

DON’T: Keyword stuff your description

You may have heard of keyword stuffing before.

And if you haven’t, it’s basically when you look up a bunch of keywords and you “stuff them” into your pin descriptions.

Basically, putting keyword after keyword, separated by commas and there are no real sentences.

For example, something like “blogging for beginners, how to make money blogging, grow your blog” etc…

Almost like you’re adding tags to your pins.

This used to work before, but it doesn’t any longer. Pinterest has gotten smarter and they’ve decided that this is considered spammy.

DO: Add more than one keyword to your pin description

So you don’t want to keyword stuff your descriptions, but you do however want to add more than one keyword.

You don’t just want to be targeting one word.

I recommend using three to five keywords in your pin descriptions.

Here is an example of a pin description I would use:

I have keywords repeated from the title, followed by other things people may be looking up if they are looking to massively improve their Pinterest account.

I also reference some points in the video and leave a Call to Action at the bottom!

DON’T: Use hastags

When you are trying to write an effective pin description, you may be tempted to use hashtags.

They increase the reach on Twitter and Instagram, so it makes sense that Pinterest would be the same, right?

Well… not actually.

There used to be a time when Pinterest was pushing hashtags and suggesting we put them in our descriptions. But that time has passed.

Using hashtags is no longer useful, and I can see why.

Have you ever used or clicked on a hashtag on Pinterest? I know I never have!

| Watch the video: The do’s and don’ts of Writing a Pinterest Description |

How to write an effective pin description

Now I want to show you how I actually write my Pinterest pin descriptions so that you have an example.

I’m going to write a pin description for my video called “How to find your profitable blogging niche.”

Keyword research

The first step is keyword research.

I used the method I already showed you for the keyword “blog niche” and came up with these related words:

  • Start a blog
  • That makes money
  • Profitable
  • How to find your

As you can see, I already did the research before I even posted the video because some of those keywords are in my title.

It’s important to do keyword research before you write the post for a lot of reasons.

If you already have some blog posts written and you haven’t done research like this, you can either research all of your posts at once or do them one at a time as you pin.

I prefer to batch work and do it all at once.

  • Keeping track of the keywords

Then the question becomes, how do you keep track of all the keywords?

You could try to remember them all, or you could look them up every single time you go to pin that specific pin.

But that is going to take way too long.

So that is why I’ve come up with a Pinterest scheduling track sheet.

This is the track sheet that I use for every single one of the links that I pin to Pinterest.

Here’s what mine looks like all filled out:

I have a section for my blog post title, link, description, what boards I will pin them to, and the keywords that I’ll add to the description.

Off to the right, I have the exact same thing for my YouTube videos.

I give this exact template away in my Pinterest Simplicity Course!

Writing the description

Once all of my keyword research is done, it’s time to write the description.

I’ll pull up my keyword document and find the link for my video, and write out the description using the keywords I already have written down.

I also make sure to keep the description in the document so I can use it again the next time I pin!

This makes pinning go a lot faster because I typically create 2-5 pins for each link I’m pinning that week.

Saving the description in the keyword doc saves me from having to type it out again each time!

Here’s a mock-up of what I might use as a description:

There are a lot of elements that go into creating a good Pinterest pin, and if you want some more tips, check out one of these links here!

Blog Posts:

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