The “Smart Feed” is the algorithm that Pinterest uses to determine what a user sees in their Pinterest home feed.

Pinterest wants to show you a mix of content you care about. Good content. The kind of content that will have you clicking, saving, and coming back for more.

Pins used to be seen in real-time, however, that’s not the case anymore. Pins are shown as “best first” rather than “newest first”. And Pinterest’s Smart Feed is responsible for prioritising and ranking pins based on their quality, with quality being determined by their algorithm.

Pinterest shared there are three different pools of content your home feed is drawn from: 

• Saved pins from users and boards you’re following 
• Related pins 
• Pins from your interests

Pinterest chooses pins from each of these three pools to display in your Home Feed. Getting your pins into the Home Feed is a great way to see spikes of viral traffic, however, for long-lasting, steady traffic you need to get your pins ranking in the Pinterest search engine.

Pinterest has a recommendation system known as Related Pins. Over 40% of user engagement on Pinterest is based on related pins. Whenever a user clicks on a pin on Pinterest, if they scroll down, Pinterest shares other pins that are similar.

Related pins are selected and displayed based on: 

• Board co-occurrence – pins that are saved to the same boards. 
• Session co-occurrence – pins that are saved during the same session by users. 
• Search query relevance 
• Visual similarity of images

So how do you get your Pins into the related feeds?

There are a few things you can do to help your pins get into the related pins pool: 

1. Make sure your boards are carefully curated with highly relevant, top-quality pins (including third party pins). You want your own pins to be in good company! 
2. Save popular and relevant third-party pins at the same time as you save new pins to Pinterest for the first time. 
3. Use the Pinterest SEO guidelines to help your pins rank in search. 
4. Use relevant images on your pins so Pinterest can tell your pin is related to others with a similar image. 

These actions will help you give your pins the best possible chance of getting into related pin feeds.

Now, how do you get your pins found in search and how does the search algorithm work?

Well, like any search engine algorithm, Pinterest’s algorithms are complex, and they hold their cards close to their chest. They also update them frequently.

However, there are 3 main factors that are known to influence whether or not your pins show up on Pinterest: 

1. Quality of website 
2. Pin and Pinner quality 
3. SEO  

So first website quality – also known by Pinterest as your domain quality.
Pinterest can see how popular pins from your website are, and it learns whether your site is a source of high-quality content over time.

How do you improve your domain quality ranking and get Pinterest to trust you?

Have a business account 
Claim your website to show Pinterest you are a content creator.

Pinterest has stated that they give a 'boost’ to content creators pinning their own fresh content. This boost helps your pins get some initial visibility which helps your pin get the clicks and saves it needs to be shown more widely.

Pin Quality
Pin quality is determined by the popularity, freshness, and engagement level of your pins.

If a lot of people, click through, or save, Pinterest will view that as a high-quality pin. Please though don’t expect everything to happen at once! Don’t get disheartened though.

Your aim is to build impressions and grow your Pinterest account in steps and it won’t all happen overnight.  

While you might think this means new pins and new pinners have no chance to make it on Pinterest, this isn’t so – another important factor Pinterest considers is the ‘freshness’ of a pin. Pinterest is increasingly focused on providing fresh content to its users. We’ll dig into what exactly makes a pin “fresh” later on in the course.

If you’re not a graphic designer, don’t worry! Attractive pins are easy to achieve using templates – there are many free templates right inside Canva. There are also fab designers who will provide you with branded templates for your business or client.

Pinner quality is largely based on your activity levels and how well your content is received. 

1. Do you receive a lot of saves? 
2. Do you pin content that Pinterest already rates as high quality? 
3. Are you an active Pinterest user? 
4. How often do you pin?

You want to be active on Pinterest throughout the day. You can invest in a Pinterest scheduler. This keeps your account active on Pinterest throughout the day, without you spending all your time pinning.

Lastly Keywords. Up until this point, we’ve discussed how to increase your authority in Pinterest’s eyes. But even if Pinterest views you as a high-quality pinner, they won’t show your pins unless they think your pins are relevant to their users.

Relevance is how closely your pins fit your audience’s overall interests, specific searches, and recent search history.

If you know much about SEO, you’ll know that the only way for a search engine to know what your content is about is with keywords. Just like on Google, keywords influence what appears in searches on Pinterest.

While domain quality, pin quality and pinner quality tell Pinterest how important your pins are, keywords tell Pinterest what your pins are about.

In August 2019, Pinterest gave insight into how they extract and assign keywords to pin images.
Pinterest assigns keywords (called annotations) to your pins that are between 1 and 6 words long and analyses your pin’s relevance to these keywords with a confidence score.

The confidence score is based on the quality of the information extracted (text-based keywords are more highly rated) and how many times that keyword appears where they look for keywords.

So, Where Does Pinterest Extract Keywords From?

The answer may surprise you! Pinterest extracts keywords from: 

1. Pin title, description, and the URL of your blog post 
2. Board name and description where the pin was saved 
3. The page title and description of the link 
4. The names of objects identified in the image 
5. Your text overlay

Pinterest is also watching what search terms lead to clicks on your pin. If users search a keyword and click on your pin regularly, Pinterest will begin to associate your pin with that keyword.