I am going to share with you 4 easy steps to get your pins on Pinterest to be RICH PINS (cute name, I know). If you don’t know, you’ll also find out why it’s best that they are rich pins.
When I had my personal Pinterest account years ago, I was very happy with it. Since I’ve started blogging, however, Pinterest and all things related, have taken on a new meaning in my life. I mean, I now have Pinterest on my mind all the time and I check in with him it every day to see what my pins are doing! To put it briefly, I’m addicted to Pinterest. Maybe like you, I’m not a tech person at all so I’m going to make it crystal clear and also use a few pics from my iPad as I go along.
To be honest, I had always heard the term rich pins before but I didn’t know what it meant… until yesterday. My friend Diona who I met on the Elite Blogging Academy course asked if bigger bloggers would pin posts from little fish (less experienced bloggers). Quite a discussion ensued about this and then there was a comment from someone (I think it was a big fish) who said that she only pinned pins that were rich pins! OMG. What’s that?
So I got on the case, I spent all night last night reading up about what rich pins were, why they were necessary, and then so as not to fall asleep last night and do the wrong thing, I enabled rich pins on my own this morning!
What are rich pins on Pinterest
Have you noticed that when you click on some pins on Pinterest they have the website name (for example joleisa.com) and a description about the pin? Well, those are rich pins! When your pins are rich pin enabled, it’s easy for others to know the source of the article, and that’s a good thing if you want repeat traffic. There’s usually a little favicon. My favicon is a little picture of my sister and I. It will be the image that you currently use on your Pinterest profile. And your pin will also have the description that you typed (alt text). You can use anything you want as your favicon such a photo or your logo.
How to Enable Rich Pins (easy as A B C)
A/
If you have a WordPress site then you most likely have Yoast SEO Plugin. If you haven’t, it only takes a minute or so to install and activate, and is very good because it helps with SEO. It uses a sort of traffic light system as you create your blog posts. The free version is great.
On your site go to installed plugins and scroll down to the Yoast settings’ ‘social’ tab. Make sure that Add Open Graph meta data box is set on ‘enabled’. Here is a quick pic I took on my iPad.
B/
For this next step, you have to go to this address and put in the valid URL link to one of your posts on your site. Make sure it’s one where you have filled in the metadata description. The good thing is that if you do it for one, it will do it for all of them. Click on validate. And here’s what the page should look like before you insert your URL and click Validate.
C/
See, you’re halfway there! After you click validate you will get a message informing you that your pins have been validated. All you need to do is to click ‘apply now’. you will see another pop up with all the necessary information for your website. Just click ‘apply now’ again. That’s it!
D/
The hardest part is the wait (usually a few days) while the Pinterest fairies work overtime trying to approve the application of all the clever bloggers and online business people who want to enable Pinterest Rich Pins.
Once you have rich pins enabled, check out this post on how to use Pinterest SEO.
That’s not too bad, is it? Drop me a line if you are stuck! Otherwise, let me know how much of a boost your posts are getting after you enabled Pinterest wealthy rich pins.
By the way, sorry I am only familiar with the WordPress platform so I am unable to talk about using Blogger, WIx, etc. If you are having any WordPress issues, here’s my absolute go-to for setting up sites, transferring to WordPress or fixing problems.
xoxo
I have the rich pin finally enabled on my Pinterest site, now I need to work on cleaning up my blogs and getting my branding in order. I have only been on Pinterest for about 3 months but enjoying it more and more. The one thing I cannot still figure out is how when people click on my social media Pinterest share button, how to get just one image to show up rather than several images from the post……I keep reading online about it but it is not clear for a beginner like me.
Loving this site by the way – first time on here.
Oh Sheri I wish I could help with that one too! Shall I go figure it out? If it can be done, I’d love that too as when it’s a lot of pics it’s harder to keep up with how many times a post has been pinned. At first I thought it was a good idea to have options to use as the pin image, but your query has me thinking it isnt such a good idea! Watch this space and I’ll go figure it out.
Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you’ll be back soon.
Great post! I will now have to go figure out how to enable them on blogger! Thanks for explaining what a rich pin is!
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If you use YOAST SEO PLUGIN you should be fine.