Which Pinterest Keywords Should You Actually Track? (Fewer Than You Think)
Most people track too many phrases, the wrong ones, or only the ones that flatter them. How to choose a short tracking list that tells you something, and when to change it.
By Mia Bennett · Pinterest strategist
Confession time.
The first time I set up rank tracking properly, I tracked 140 phrases.
It felt thorough.
Turns out it was useless.
Every Monday, coffee in hand, I opened a wall of numbers, most of which had wobbled a place or two, and I closed it again feeling busy and knowing nothing new.
By the fourth week I’d stopped opening it at all.
The tracking was never the problem.
The list was.
And since choosing the list is the part nobody talks about, here’s how I pick phrases now.
Far fewer of them, for much better reasons.
Every phrase you could track140
Your pins are genuinely about it60
Somebody actually searches it35
A move would change what you do18
An illustrative list. The last cut is the one that removes the most.
One question decides if a phrase makes the list
Before you add any phrase, ask yourself this: if it moved a lot next week, would I do anything differently?
If the answer’s no, don’t track it.
Doesn’t matter how relevant it is or how many people search it.
A ranking you’d never act on is just another number to have feelings about, and your analytics already hands you plenty of those.
That one question cuts most lists in half.
Phrases you rank first for by a mile, phrases you’ve got no hope of touching this year, phrases that are basically a rewording of another one.
None of them would change what you do on Monday.
A useful list has a shape
It isn’t a pile of everything relevant.
Mine usually looks something like this.
Money phrases
about half
Close calls (6–20)
a handful
Rising bets
two or three
Head terms
one or two
Is my income safe? Where are the easy wins? Is my bet working? Did the whole niche move?
Money phrases, about half the list
These are the phrases attached to pins that send people somewhere that matters: a product page, an email sign-up, the posts that earn.
If one of these slips you want to know this week, not 2 months from now when a sales report looks odd.
Finding them is easier than it sounds.
Look at which pages on your site actually earn, then at which pins send traffic to those pages, then at the phrases those pins are built around.
Tracking Pinterest traffic in Google Analytics covers the first step if you haven’t set that up yet.
Close calls just off the top
My favourite group, and the most underrated.
These are phrases where your pin sits somewhere between sixth and twentieth: visible, but not getting what a top-5 spot would get.
They matter because that’s where effort pays off fastest.
Pushing a pin from twelfth into the top 5 is often just a sharper title or a fresh pin pointing at the same page.
Pushing one from nowhere into the top 5 is a much bigger job (I learned that one slowly).
Track the close calls and you always know where the easy wins are.
Rising bets, two or three of them
A couple of phrases that are growing and that you’ve deliberately started publishing for.
You track these to see if the bet is working, and to catch the moment it either takes off or clearly won’t.
Spotting Pinterest trends early is how you find decent candidates.
Head terms, one or two for context
The big broad phrase your whole niche lives under.
You probably won’t rank for it, and that’s fine.
It’s on the list as a thermometer.
When everything in the niche shifts at once, the head term usually shows it first, which stops you blaming yourself for what’s really just the season changing.
Leave these off
Just as important, and a bit harder emotionally, because some of these really do feel like they belong.
Leave these off
Phrases you have owned for months
Head terms you can’t win yet
Near-duplicates of a tracked phrase
Anything you’re only curious about
Put these on
Phrases behind pages that earn
Phrases where you sit at 6–20
Two or three rising bets
One head term, as a thermometer
If a move wouldn’t change what you do on Monday, the phrase doesn’t earn a slot.
- Phrases you already dominate. If you’ve held the top spot for 3 months, checking it weekly is reassurance, not information. Check it once a quarter.
- Head terms you can’t realistically win yet. One for context is useful. Ten is a list of disappointments, and keyword difficulty explains how to tell which is which.
- Near-duplicates. “Small bathroom storage” and “storage for small bathrooms” almost always move together. Track one and save the slot.
- Phrases you’re just curious about. Curiosity is lovely (I’m nosy too). It isn’t a reason to spend a slot, though, because a slot you never act on could have been a money phrase.
How many is right?
For most people, somewhere between 10 and 20.
Honestly.
Under 10 and you miss the context.
You see one pin move but can’t tell if it’s you or the whole search.
Over about 25, unless publishing is your full-time job, you’ll stop reading it properly.
And the list only works if you look at every line.
Brand new and not sure where to start?
Start with 5.
Five phrases checked every week for a month will teach you more about how rankings behave than 100 checked now and then, and the by-hand method, with a private window and a notebook, is perfectly fine for five.
Check the phrase is worth watching first
A phrase can pass every rule above and still waste a slot because hardly anyone searches it. Before it goes on your list, spend 15 seconds on the free keyword checker. It shows the demand behind a phrase, no account needed.
Changing the list once a quarter
A tracking list isn’t set-and-forget.
But it isn’t something to fiddle with weekly either, because every change breaks the comparison you’re slowly building.
I review mine every 3 months, with three questions.
- Has anything settled? A phrase that’s sat happily in the top 5 for 3 months can move off the weekly list and onto the quarterly check.
- Did a bet fail? A rising phrase that hasn’t moved after 3 months of publishing for it has told you what you needed to know. Take it off and jot down what you learned in your notebook (you’ll want it later).
- Is there a new money phrase? New product, new page, a new post that earns. Its phrases go on.
Everything else stays put, so the history keeps meaning something.
Most of the value in tracking comes from a phrase you’ve watched for months, not one you added last Tuesday.
Competitors, if you want them
One last group, and it’s optional: phrases where a particular competitor keeps beating you.
Tracking a couple of those tells you when they start slipping, which is often the best moment to publish something better.
Working out who your real competitors are comes first, because it’s rarely the account you think.
Keeping the habit alive
Tracking 10 or 20 phrases by hand every week works for a while and then quietly stops.
That’s not a character flaw.
It’s what happens to weekly chores that never feel urgent.
This is where PinPinterest makes life easier.
Save the phrases from your list and it records where the top pins for each one rank every time the phrase is crawled, then shows you which ones moved (“#12 → #4” and so on).
So your Monday check turns into reading a short list instead of running 20 searches, and because you picked the list on purpose, every line on it is one you’d act on.
Save your shortlist of phrases and see which ones moved
Whatever you end up using, pick the list first and keep it short.
The full rank tracking guide shows how the rest fits together.
My own list is 17 phrases right now.
It was 140 once, and I haven’t missed the other 123 for a second.
#rank tracking#keywords#pinterest seo#keyword research
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