Quick and Dirty Guide to Hashtags on Pinterest

To hashtag or not to hashtag on Pinterest? The answer on almost every social platform is yes: use hashtags. In this article, I will give you a quick and dirty look at how to create an intelligent strategy for your Pinterest marketing plan. This updated Pinterest strategy will help you get more impressions and repins on your Pinterest Pins.

Are you wondering if it's worth it to add hashtags to Pinterest Pins?

Do hashtags matter on Pinterest or help in Pinterest search?

What's the difference between hashtags and keywords on Pinterest?

Should you add hashtags to Pins? This article will answer all of this and more!

This article will cover:

1. What are hashtags?
2. Should I use hashtags on Pinterest?
3. What are keywords on Pinterest?
4. What is interlinking? Will it help my blog?
5. Do you need a hashtag strategy for Pinterest?
6. What should you do if hashtags don't work on Pinterest now?
7. Should you edit Old Pinterest Pins?

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are words or phrases preceded by a hash (#) without spaces. Hashtags on Pinterest used to work like they did anywhere else, but they've updated their platform again. Adding hashtags to new Pins will not help their performance. Currently, hashtags are not clickable on mobile or desktop.  Whether those Pins are promoted or not, the freshest Pins will be right up top; however, hashtags do not help with Pin reach in search.

Instead of adding hashtags to your Pinterest Pins, use keywords in your Pinterest strategy.

What are keywords for Pinterest?

Instead of hashtags, focus on keywords for success and searchability on Pinterest.

Pinterest does not have an external keyword planner like Google. However, you can definitely leverage keyword targeting in which you can use match types and negative keywords to target Pinners’ search terms with even more precision.

From Pinterest, Keyword targeting lets you reach people as they search for a specific idea on Pinterest. To use keyword targeting, select keywords related to the content you're sharing. For example, if you’re promoting living room furniture, try targeting people searching for “living room decor” or “home decor ideas.”

Where to add keywords on Pinterest:

1. Your profile name & bio

2. Board names and descriptions

3. Pin titles

4. Pin descriptions

5. Text overlays on Pins

6. Image file names

7. Match your keywords to your on-page content to help show relevancy

When you're adding keywords on your Pins, make sure to work them into your description and don't keyword stuff.

Keyword stuffing is adding your key phrases too many times unnaturally in your content. You can create content that ranks in search engines better if you optimize for keywords. Adding too many can actually hurt you in search.

The Yoast SEO plugin also helps you with keywords and key phrases in your content. This is part of what you see at the bottom of your WordPress blog when you use this plugin – it's fantastic for giving you SEO magic on your blog without having to overthink it.

Where to Find Good Keywords

I hope you're already using keywords on your blog. There are lots of great articles and YouTube videos on how to do keyword research. Here are a few tips:

“Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.” [from Hubspot]

Here are free keyword search tools to try:

Word Stream

Ahrefs Keyword Generator

My favorite: Answer the Public

Don't forget that you can also use Google Search Console for keyword research as well.

What is interlinking?

Are you linking to your content on your website or your blog articles? Interlinking helps provide context to your new content and helps search engines. Internal links help showcase your content, share your expertise, and build your thought leadership with readers. You can plan your link strategy while writing your articles or go back at the end to link to relevant articles. The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin reminds you to hit all the essential SEO points.

The free version of  “Yoast SEO includes several checks and features to help you improve your internal linking.

On a post level, the Yoast plugin helps ensure you give internal links some thought. In the plugin’s meta box, the internal link assessment of Yoast SEO checks whether you’ve created links to other pages on your website in your text.”

Moz, the SEO expert blog, says, “Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. They are commonly used in the main navigation.

These types of links are useful for three reasons:

• Internal links allow users to navigate a website.
• They help establish an information hierarchy for the given website.
• They spread link equity (ranking power) around websites.”

Does interlinking help on Pinterest? Yes, it will.

The Pinterest Engineering blog shared, “Interlinking is an SEO strategy that creates internal links that connect one page of a website to another page in the same domain. This is helpful because:

1. It helps users navigate within a website.
2. It helps Search Engines understand the structure of your websites.
3. Interlinking on your website helps determine the page authority and ranking power within the site.

For the reasons above, Moz often sees that search engines reward websites with good interlinks with higher ranking, driving more SEO traffic to valuable websites that fulfill user intent.” We definitely want search engines to reward our websites, which means they'll send more traffic to your website. And remember that Pinterest wants you to link to quality content.

Do you need a strategy for Pinterest?

Yes! Having a solid strategy behind your brand can bring real results. But as I mentioned above, hashtags aren't going to help you on Pinterest. Think KEYWORD STRATEGY instead.

Having a solid strategy for Pinterest can bring real results for you and your brand. 

Can you Find Hashtags on Pinterest?

Hashtags on Pinterest are currently working on mobile only. You can discover related content by clicking on a hashtag in the Pin description. You can also search for a Hashtag in the top bar, like “#rainbowcakes” or “#weddingdress.”

Should you edit old Pins and remove hashtags on Pinterest?

I don't think so. Work forward and create fresh content for Pinterest using your updated keyword strategy.

I hope this article inspires you to take some time and create your own Pinterest keyword strategy. Stay tuned for more on Pinterest hashtags and keywording.

I'd love to hear about your Pinterest successes in the comments. Please Pin this to your favorite boards so you can reference it later. Pin this for later!