Should You Still Use Hashtags on Pinterest? Here’s the Scoop.

Lately, I’ve been diving deep into Pinterest. I feel like it’s still undervalued in this industry despite so many Etsy sellers and artisans gaining a lot of traction from it. Of the three largest social media platforms (not including Twitter), Pinterest seems to provide the best opportunity for artisans to get their content found organically. Both Facebook and Instagram have made it increasingly difficult to build a following without paying for it, but Pinterest still has a huge organic reach. Yes, they do have promoted pins, but so far I’ve found that I don’t need to use them and most of the successful Pinners I know don’t use promoted pins, either.

So, all this thinking got me into researching Pinterest SEO and one of the first things I encountered was how to use hashtags. Should they be used in the same way as Instagram? Or is the system more similar to Facebook in that hashtags don’t really matter? Let’s dive in (at the end we’ll also discuss whether or not you need to add tags to old pins)!

Pinterest & Hashtags

The first problem I ran into when researching this subject was the plethora of information written between 2017 – 2018. Since social media changes so rapidly, I typically don’t like to read any advice about it that’s over 1 year old. I did read the content anyway just to get a feel for what’s changed and I found some outdated information which I’ll mention later.

Do Pins Help with SEO?

YES! When you use relevent, short hashtags they help Pinterest understand what your pin is about. For example, if you pinned one of your holiday products and used the hashtag #christmas, the platform would get further clarification as to what your pin is about. In August 2018, Jennifer from Smart Fun DIY did some experiments with her clients by having them add hashtags to their Pins and she got really good results. The hashtags seemed to boost her client’s Pins and they got better organic reach.

Additionally, using the hashtags puts your pin into a group with other pins that are also tagged (just like Instagram & Facebook). Meaning, your pin is now visible in a whole additional area on Pinterest.

Here’s what Pinterest has to say on the topic:

Add a few relevant hashtags to help people find your content. Hashtags function as search terms and people use them to find trending topics. 

Pinterest Team

How to Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Keep them relevant, short, and use terms that people actually search for. I recently pinned about a photography staging tutorial and used the hashtag #diyphotography. “DIY photography” is relevent and it’s something I would and have searched for if I wanted to learn about the topic. Sometimes you can get too specific with hashtags and end up using ones that aren’t going to get you much traction because no one is searching for that phrase on Pinterest. I could have used the hashtag #mobilephotographystaging but it’s so specific that I doubt people are searching for that term even though it’s relevant to my post.

Here’s an example of a hashtag I found that’s getting used on Pinterest, but likely isn’t doing the posters much good: #gluedtomycrafts. This isn’t a phrase or term that people are going to lookup on Pinterest.

Here’s what Pinterest has to say on the topic:

Unlike hashtags elsewhere, Pinterest hashtags aren’t used for jokes, memes or commentary. So for a fashion brand, something like #springfashion would work well—but #ilookterribleinhats wouldn’t. If you’re not sure which hashtags to use, try searching for your topic on Pinterest and use the autocomplete suggestions as guidance.  

Pinterest Team

Fewer tags is better. This is where I found conflicting information because Pinterest originally said to use under 20 tags and all the old blog posts recomended packing in those 20 tags. But now, Pinterest has backtracked and recomended only using a “few.” Posting too many hashtags appears spammy and doesn’t look good to the viewer. As always, the BEST thing you can do on social media is to make the viewer’s experience awesome. Posting content that people want to see will get your pins ranking faster than anything else will. No amount of hashtags will boost a pin that nobody wants to click on.

Here’s what Pinterest has to say about spammy behavior:

People depend on Pinterest for inspiring, useful ideas. To make sure we deliver on that promise, we have some policies in place that discourage spammy behaviors. Spam on Pinterest is repetitive, irrelevant, or unwanted behavior that purposely disrupts the Pinterest experience. You can learn more about spam in our community guidelines.

Pinterest Team

Should You Add Hashtags to Old Pins?

With a hashtag search, pins will always be shown by date. This means that if you add a hashtag to a pin that’s one year old, that pin won’t be ranked at the top for that hashtag. However, there’s a possibility that you could get a boost via the regular Pinterest search page. Personally, I don’t have time to go back and edit old pins, so I just selected the more popular pins and added hashtags to those. It didn’t take long and I’m happy that I did it.

Here’s what Pinterest has to say on the topic:

People often ask if they should go back and add hashtags to older Pins. You can, but it won’t help your content show up at the top of hashtag search feeds. Newer Pins with that hashtag will appear first.

Pinterest Team