Writing Pinterest Descriptions for Etsy Products That Rank Your Pins Strategically

Tara Jacobson
February 10, 2020

Today we are going to talk about how to write product pin descriptions that will help your pins get shared on Pinterest! This works for any eCommerce site, but the examples are specifically for Shopify and Etsy sellers!

Step 1: Make A Compelling Pin

Because Pinterest is such a visual site, none of this will work without having a compelling pin to share. You can design pins with Canva, Gimp, Photoshop, PicMonkey or any other graphic design program. I recommend Canva because it is easy to use!

Step 2: Figure Out What Words to Use

This is where the magic happens! Why do words matter so much? This next part will determine where on the Pinterest search engine your Pins show up, and you want your listings to show up in front of the right people.

PINTEREST IS A SEARCH ENGINE

Pinterest calls itself a visual search engine! This means that they are acting very much like Google, but returning visual search results instead of blog posts or product listings. For example, say we were searching for a specific product like “leather stacking bracelets,” this is what a Google search results page looks like…

As you can see, it’s a mix of products, images, videos, how to’s, and kind of a mish mash of everything all at once!

This is Pinterest’s search results page…

Now you can see that we have a much more homogenous look. There are functionally 3 kinds of pins: white background, bracelets on arms, and more “marketing wordy” pins. Today we are going to focus on more marketing/wordy pins!

HOW PINTEREST SEARCH WORKS

Before we get too far into this, let’s talk about how Pinterest search works and how they make it easy to figure out what to write in your pin descriptions!

For example, let’s say we were selling a super cool, upcycled jean jacket with butterflies, roses and tassels like this one from OrquidiasCreations on Etsy. Seems like it might be a bit hard to write a great pin description that would help someone find that exact product to save and buy in the sea of pins on Pinterest…. but never fear! We can do this!

DOING YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH

First, we start with the base level of what this is… a jean jacket! Here is the Pinterest search for jean jackets…

Not too close to our fancy-pants jean jacket, but right up there under the search we see more words that Pinterest thinks are related to our jean jacket search! Here are some of the keywords that could also apply to our jean jacket…

Patches
Refashion
Painted
Vintage
Art
Dark

Now if you click the button with “patches” on it, we find that these are like old fashioned girl scout patches or souvenirs, NOT Like our jacket so we don’t need patches!

But when we click through the “refashion” suggestion we get these…

This is the exact right place for us to put our fancy jean jacket! But wait, there is more! We can keep checking the keywords that Pinterest is suggesting so right now we have…

Jean jacket
Refashion

But under that search is:

Upcycled clothing
Products
Etsy
Fun

And if we click through the “upcycled clothing” button we get this search…

And underneath there are no more words so we need to try to something else if want more keywords to use! So let’s do “jean jacket art” to see if we get any more keywords!

And these fit right in so using the extra keywords we got here, we wind up with a great list to write our pin descriptions…

Jean jacket
Refashion
Upcycled clothing
Products
Etsy
Fun
Art
Street styles
Ideas
Recycled denim
Inspiration

Hold the phone… what the heck is that “inspiration” doing there in an Ecommerce post?!?!

Whoa lady, hang on there… WHY would I put “inspiration” there? We are talking about trying to SELL a custom handmade product that Orquidea put a ton of time and a piece of her soul into making.

Well, let’s put it this way, more people are looking for jean jacket inspiration than are looking to buy an expensive jacket that might not even be in their size.

Also, our goal is to promote her shop as a whole, not just to sell that one item so we want her jean jacket to spread far and wide, being pinned over and over again until everyone knows her great work!

Step 3: Writing the Actual Pin Description

Okay, now we need to use those words we have collected to write the pin description! I tend to do this super fast while I am posting the picture I have made (as you can see in the video), but you could do it in a spreadsheet or Word if that makes it easier to visualize.

Here is what I came up with using all those keywords:

This fun, refashioned jean jacket is such a great example of upcycled clothing art and street style trends! I made this from a recycled denim jacket that I got at a thrift store and currently have it listed for sale among my Etsy products. Feel free to use it for inspiration or ideas if you are creative like me.

As I was doing the research I saw “thrift store” in there too so I threw it in for fun!

Again, wait one minute… why is “Etsy products” in there?

Well, when you are selling on Etsy itself, you don’t have to clarify that it is an Etsy product, but when we were doing the keyword research we saw that Pinterest suggested that term, so of course we used it!

Writing a Product Pin FAQ

There are a few questions that have come up during this post!

CAN I USE HASHTAGS ON PINTEREST?

As you can see I did add two little hashtags on the end of the description. They are not totally necessary because they expire super quickly, but if you know how to do them it is worth taking a second to add them.

HOW MANY HASHTAGS SHOULD I USE ON PINTEREST?

Some of the gals I have seen on webinars from Pinterest have said no more than 3-5 hashtags is optimal. This is not Instagram, so don’t spam it with 20+ Hashtags.

Writing Pinterest Descriptions for Etsy Products That Rank Your Pins Strategically

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