How to Find Low-Competition Pinterest Keywords (That Still Get Searches)

Chasing the biggest keyword is how most people stay invisible.

The real game is finding phrases with genuine demand but beatable competition — the ones you can rank #1 for while everyone else fights over the head term.

Here’s how I find them.

1. Go long-tail on purpose

“Bedroom ideas” is a war zone.

“Small cozy bedroom ideas for renters” is winnable and often converts better because it’s specific.

Longer, more specific phrases almost always have lighter competition — the foundation of good keyword research.

2. Judge the competition, not just the volume

Search your candidate phrase and look at who ranks.

Huge, polished brands top-to-bottom?

Hard.

A mix of smaller accounts and mediocre pins?

That’s your opening.

Volume tells you it’s worth it; the results tell you if you can win.

3. Mine the gaps competitors miss

Your competitors’ winning keywords have neighbours they never targeted — closely related long-tails with demand and no strong pin.

Those gaps are the easiest wins on Pinterest.

4. Stop guessing competition by eye

Eyeballing “does this look hard?” is slow and unreliable.

Real demand data plus the actual ranking pins for each phrase — side by side — turns this into a sort-and-pick job.

That’s exactly what PinPinterest’s Keyword Explorer does: real demand data per phrase so you can filter to the low-competition winners fast.

5. Use Pinterest’s own suggestions

Start typing a topic into Pinterest search and note the suggestions that appear, because those are phrases people actually search.

Then run a search and look at the related searches shown with the results.

Each one is a candidate long-tail keyword, often more specific than the term you started with.

6. Read the competition signals quickly

• Age of the top pins: if the top results are old, there is room for something new.
• Match quality: if the top pins only loosely match the phrase, a pin made exactly for it can compete.
• Destination quality: thin or broken pages among the top results mean the bar is lower.
• Account mix: a mix of small and large accounts is more winnable than a wall of big brands.

7. Build a keyword shortlist

1. Collect 30–50 long-tail phrases around your topic.
2. Remove any your content cannot genuinely answer.
3. Mark each one for demand (low, medium or high) and competition (low, medium or high).
4. Keep the medium- or high-demand, low-competition phrases as your first targets.
5. Plan one page or set of pins for each, and review the list every month.

Mistakes to avoid

• Choosing phrases with no demand at all, just because nobody competes for them.
• Targeting ten variations of the same phrase with near-identical pins.
• Picking a keyword the destination page does not actually cover.

A worked example

Say your blog covers home organisation.

The broad term “home organization” is crowded, so narrow it step by step: “closet organization”, then “small closet organization”, then “small closet organization ideas for renters”.

At each step, search the phrase and look at the top pins.

When the results stop being dominated by big publishers and start showing pins that only loosely match, you have found a phrase worth targeting.

Then check that your content genuinely answers that phrase before you make a single pin.

Then rank them with pin descriptions that convert.