As a brand or web designer, you already have naturally Pinterest-friendly content, but many designers struggle to get that work actually seen. One of the biggest reasons for that is that you might not be using the right Pinterest keywords.
Broad keywords are a good starting point, but too often it’s where a lot of people stop when it comes to Pinterest marketing.
Designers need more specific, layered keywords to help Pinterest understand what their work and content is all about, which helps connect them to their target audience and dream clients.
So what do good Pinterest keywords look like for designers? Glad you asked! Let’s go over specific Pinterest keyword examples for brand and web designers that you can use when pinning your portfolio, blogs, products, and more!
Why You Should Stop Overlooking Your Keywords
When you work in such a visual industry like design, it can be tempting to rely just on your graphics to do most of the heavy lifting. As a visual search engine, it’s true that Pinterest does use the actual look of your pins to help distribute them in the algorithm.
But if you’re only relying on the machine recognition of pixels, you’re leaving a lot up to chance and overlooking one of the strongest levers you can pull to adjust your Pinterest marketing strategy — the keywords.
Pinterest uses all the information you give it about a pin in conjunction with the graphic to make sure that each pin is categorized correctly and is shown to the people who are looking for content like it.
Using the right keywords in your pin titles, descriptions, and boards can give you a huge leg up and makes sure that your pins get seen by the right people.
Pinterest’s own business help page says to use relevant keywords in all of these places.
And if you are adding keywords to your design pins, you might still be overlooking some prime opportunities.
Some common mistakes I see on brand designers’ Pinterest pins are keywords that are:
- Too broad
- Too sparse
- Using designer language instead of searcher language
- Not descriptive enough about the actual pin graphic
Broad keywords are a good starting point, but they’re rarely enough on their own. To make your Pinterest content easier to find, you’ll want to use more specific keywords that describe the style, details, platform, industry, and purpose of the content you’re sharing.
The goal isn’t to find the one perfect keyword for each pin, but to test as many different (but still relevant) keywords as possible to give your content as many chances as possible to be discovered.
Types of Pinterest Keywords to Use
When you’re choosing Pinterest keywords for your design business, you don’t have to choose just one.
A broad keyword like “brand design” or “website design” might technically fit, but most design content gives you so many more specific keyword opportunities than that.
Depending on what you’re pinning, you might use keywords that describe the service, the design style, the specific elements in the project, the website platform or page, the client industry, the colors, or really anything!
Here are a few types of Pinterest keywords brand and web designers can use in their Pinterest content.
Service Keywords
These are going to be the broadest category of design keywords you use on Pinterest. Generally, they’re describing the type of project or service you’re performing.
These keywords are just the starting point onto which you should layer the next level of specific detail.
Design Detail Keywords
A simple way to take your broad service-level keywords to the next level is just to describe the specific element of the design that a specific pin is highlighting.
As a brand designer, you’re doing more than just handing over a single brand. You create moodboards and color palettes, choose fonts, design logos and illustrations and patterns.
Each of those different elements can 1) be their own pin and 2) get their own specific keywords.
The same is true for web design Pinterest keywords. You’re also choosing fonts and color palettes, you’re designing different pages and different sections within each page. Those can be highlighted and described individually.
Style Keywords
These keywords will describe the visual direction and style of the work. It could be as broad as the style (modern, colorful, bold, etc.) or even get into details like the colors used, the types of elements, or even specific fonts.
Style keywords are one of the best ways to improve your Pinterest SEO as a designer, so don’t be afraid to use them liberally! Keep in mind that many people may describe the same design in different terms, so don’t get stuck on the same styles or adjectives.
Platform Keywords
This category of Pinterest keywords is fairly specific to website designers, but it’s too important to not mention. As a web designer, you’re likely working in one or two specific website platforms.
And in most cases, your potential clients are already locked in to a platform or they have a specific platform in mind. Use that to your advantage to specify what type of website design you’re offering.
Using platform-specific keywords can also help capture users who are further along in their customer journey. They’re already searching for a specific website platform and are likely narrowing down their choices.
Industry or Client Keywords
Similarly to how style keywords connect your work to users searching for specific styles of designs, industry keywords connect your work to users in specific industries. If you’re a brand and web designer who works exclusively with one type of client — or maybe you just want to attract more of a specific client — use that to your advantage in the Pinterest keywords you choose!
Adding these keywords to your pins can help drive Pinterest traffic that’s more aligned to the clients you actually want.
Educational Content Keywords
Not every Pinterest keyword has to describe a finished project. If you’re pinning blog posts, lead magnets, or other helpful, educational content, you should make sure to use keywords that accurately describe the content in terms that your audience is already searching for.
Most Pinterest SEO education covers this, so I’ll keep the overview here brief. But if you want to learn more about choosing the right keywords for your Pinterest content that isn’t portfolio work, check out these blog posts:
- How to Do Pinterest Keyword Research
- A Complete Guide to Pinterest SEO
- How to Pick the Best Pinterest Keywords
The trickiest part of choosing keywords as a designer is being able to step out of your designer brain and into your potential client’s brain. The words you may use to describe something may not be what that ideal client would use, which will limit your reach on Pinterest. Keep it basic but still specific.
Pinterest Keyword Examples for Brand and Web Designers
Now that you know the different types of keywords you can use for your Pinterest marketing, let’s see how those categories actually come into play. Below are dozens of examples of Pinterest keywords for brand designers and web designers, using the exact tips we just covered.
Service Keywords
- Brand design
- Web design
- Logo design
- Brand identity
- Custom website design
- Semi custom branding
- Template customization
Design Detail Keywords
- Color palette
- Typography
- Font pairing
- Logo suite
- Logo submark
- Brand illustrations
- Services page design
- Website color palette
- Website gallery section
Style Keywords:
- Modern branding inspiration
- Y2K color palette
- Colorful brand identity
- Editorial website design
- Blue and green brand color palette
- Hand-drawn logo design
Platform Keywords
- Squarespace website
- Showit website design
- Shopify design ideas
- Showit templates
- Webflow web design
Industry/Client Keywords
- Branding for coaches
- Wellness brand design
- Showit website for photographers
- Travel agent web design
- Wedding planner logo ideas
Educational Content Keywords
- Branding tips
- Personal branding
- Brand strategy
- Brand design process
- Squarespace vs Showit
This is far from an exhaustive list of every Pinterest keyword you could use as a brand or web designer.
Because once you start getting specific, that’s where your keyword research starts to get time consuming and you start to get overwhelmed. You may need keywords for your services, design style, project details, client industries, blog posts, lead magnets, products, and more.
And while you can research all of those from scratch, it takes time to find the right phrases, sort through what’s relevant, and organize everything in a way that’s actually useful when you’re creating pins.
All of that is before you even get to using the keywords!!!
You can absolutely use the examples in this post as a starting point. Please do! That’s the point! But if you’d rather skip the keyword research rabbit hole and get straight to writing stronger pin titles, getting more eyes on your work, and finally seeing results from Pinterest, I created these ready-to-use Pinterest keyword banks for designers to do exactly that.
Inside each keyword bank, you’ll find hundreds of keyword ideas organized by category and ready to pull from when you’re creating your next batch of pins.
Depending on what kind of design work you’re marketing on Pinterest, I have a few different keyword banks available. Not sure which is the best fit? Here’s the quick breakdown:
- Pinterest Keyword Bank for Brand Designers — best if your offers focus on branding, visual identity, logo design, color palettes, brand strategy, rebrands, etc.
- Pinterest Keyword Bank for Web Designers — best if your offers focus on website design, website templates, and applying branding to websites.
- Ultimate Designer Keyword Bundle — best if you offer both brand and website design and want the most complete design-focused keyword bank.
- Ultimate Website Keyword Bundle — best if your work overlaps with website copy, website strategy, or content for website projects.
Shop all Pinterest keyword banks for designers here! →
How to Use Pinterest Keywords in Your Design Content
Once you have a list of keywords to pull from, the next step is using them naturally throughout your Pinterest content.
For example, if you’re using the keyword “branding for coaches,” you might use it as:
- A board title → Branding for Coaches
- A portfolio pin title → Colorful Modern Logo Design + Branding for Coaches
- A blog pin title → Branding for Coaches: How to Design a Personal Brand that Stands Out
- A pin description → Looking for coaching business brand inspiration? This business coach brand identity is a perfect example of modern branding for coaches, with editorial logo design for coaches and minimal modern brand design.
You also can and should combine multiple keyword types in one pin title or description.
Ex. Colorful Brand Identity Design for a Wellness Business
That title includes a style keyword, a service keyword, and an industry keyword — all while still sounding natural and readable.
Ready to find the right Pinterest keywords for your design business?
Pinterest keywords for brand and web designers don’t have to be complicated, but they do need to be specific and plentiful. A solid list of relevant keywords you can pull from when you’re writing pin titles, descriptions, boards, and more makes it even simpler.
Start with the examples in this post, pay attention to what your content is actually showing or teaching, and get more specific than broad phrases like “brand design” or “web design.”
And if you don’t want to build your keyword list from scratch, grab a keyword bank that fits your design business best!
