Some links included in this post may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you—if you choose to purchase through them. I only share products I use, love, or believe in. Thank you for supporting my content and helping me keep the FLOW Life going strong!
Table of Contents
I used to think Pinterest boards were basically folders
For a long time, that is exactly how I treated them.
Travel stuff goes here. Business stuff goes there. Recipes somewhere else. If something looked like it belonged, I saved it.
Which is completely fine when you’re using Pinterest for yourself.
But when you’re using Pinterest for your business, those boards are doing more than holding pins.
They are helping Pinterest figure you out.
That was one of the things that finally made Pinterest make more sense to me.
We hear a lot about keywords when people talk about Pinterest strategy, and keywords absolutely matter. But finding a bunch of keywords is not really the goal.
Pinterest needs context around those words.
Your boards are part of that context.
Your Pinterest Keywords Should Start With Your Actual Business
Before worrying about where to put keywords, I think there is a better question to answer first:
What do you actually want people to find you for?
Not every topic you’ve ever talked about.
Not every possible thing you could write about someday.
What do you want connected to your business now?
If you’re a travel advisor and your business is focused on Disney vacations, that might mean Disney World planning, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, or Aulani.
If you’re a blogger, maybe your main topics are meal planning, home organization, or family travel.
If you’re a service provider, it might be the specific problems you help your clients solve.
You do not need to start with a massive keyword spreadsheet.
Start with the handful of topics that actually matter to your business.
Then Pinterest keyword research becomes much easier because you’re looking for phrases that support something real instead of collecting random words because somebody told you Pinterest SEO is important.
Your Boards Should Support Those Topics
This is where older Pinterest accounts can get interesting.
If you’ve had the same account for years, your board list might represent every version of you that has ever existed online.
Old blog topics.
Random hobbies.
A business you don’t run anymore.
Things you were absolutely convinced you were going to start doing in 2017.
I say this with zero judgment because I have been online for a very long time. There are digital breadcrumbs everywhere.
But if you’re trying to use Pinterest for business now, it is worth looking at your boards and asking whether they still make sense.
If one of your main topics is Disney Cruise planning, a board called Disney Cruise Planning gives Pinterest a pretty clear signal.
A board called Travel I Love does not.
It might sound nicer. It might even feel more like your personality.
Pinterest does not know what you meant by it.
Rude, maybe. But fair.
This Is Where Keywords and Boards Start Working Together
Let’s say you have a blog post about planning your first Disney Cruise.
You create a pin for that post.
The pin title uses language someone might actually search, like “First Disney Cruise Planning Tips.”
You save it to a board called “Disney Cruise Planning.”
Then the person clicks through to a blog post that is actually about planning a Disney Cruise.
Everything lines up.
Pinterest has a much easier job understanding what that piece of content is about because it isn’t getting mixed signals.
Now imagine you save that same pin to a board called “Travel Inspiration.”
It still technically fits.
But it is much broader.
That is the difference I want business owners to understand.
This is not about obsessing over Pinterest SEO or trying to squeeze keywords into every available space.
It is about making the pieces make sense together.
You Probably Do Not Need More Boards
This is where my systems brain can get a little dangerous because once I understand that boards matter, my first instinct is to organize everything.
New board!
Another board!
Perhaps a subcategory of the board!
No.
That is not the assignment.
You do not need to create a board for every keyword you find.
You need boards that support the main topics you actually have content for.
If you already have blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, freebies, service pages, products, or resources, look at those first.
What do you already talk about repeatedly?
What topics already have several useful pieces of content behind them?
Those are usually much better clues for your board strategy than trying to invent a giant Pinterest structure from scratch.
This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to existing content in everything I teach.
Your old content is useful information.
It shows you what you already have.
It shows you where you have depth.
And it can help you decide what Pinterest should be helping people find.
Take a Look at Your Pinterest Profile Like a Stranger Would
One of the easiest things you can do this week is open your Pinterest profile and just look at the board names.
Do not click anything yet.
Pretend you’ve never seen your business before.
Would you know what this person talks about?
Would you understand what kind of content you were going to find?
Do the boards match the business you are running today?
If Pinterest only had those board names to go on, would it have a decent idea what your account is about?
You may find that most of them are fine.
You may find a few that need to be renamed.
You may find some that belong to a completely different era of your business.
That is okay.
You do not need to fix everything at once.
Start with the boards connected to the content and offers you actually want people finding right now.
That is the bigger point behind all of this.
Pinterest works better when your content has a clear path.
Your keywords help Pinterest understand the topic.
Your boards help organize that topic.
Your existing content gives Pinterest something useful to send people to.
Once those pieces start working together, Pinterest feels a lot less like another platform you have to keep feeding and a lot more like the search tool it actually is.
If you want to take a closer look at the rest of your Pinterest foundation, my free Pinterest Profile Checklist walks you through the profile, boards, keywords, links, and a few of the common gaps I see.
You may already have more of the pieces in place than you think.
Leave a Reply