Wondering what the heck rich pins are? You’re not alone, this is actually one of the more common questions I get in regards to Pintetrest and its features. So common I decided to write a whole blog post about them!
Pinterest Rich Pins might sound a little scary when you’re first getting started but they’re actually one of the easiest (and totally free) things you can do to improve your Pinterest account and drive more traffic from Pinterest to your website! After reading this post you will have learned exactly what Rich Pins are, what they look like, why you should use them, and how to set them up!
What Are Pinterest Rich Pins
Rich pins are a type of organic pin that automatically pulls data from your website to add to your pins. Here’s the official definition from Pinterest:
“Rich Pins show metadata right on the Pin itself, giving Pinners a richer experience and increasing engagement. Information in a Rich Pin is independent of the Pin description, ensuring that important information is always tied to the Pin.”
Don’t see the word “metadata” and run off on me now! I promise, it’s not as terrifying as it sounds. Were gonna get you all set up here in easily just 5 minutes and then that will be it. You will never have to set them up again! Sounds good, right?
What Pinterest Rich Pins Look Like
They’re are currently 3 different types of rich pins: article, recipe, product. Let’s take a quick look at each.
Article Rich Pin ↓
Recipe Rich Pin ↓
Product Rich Pin ↓
Benefits of Pinterest Rich Pins
Using rich pins will help you show up in search and get more people clicking through your pins to your website, they help with this by:
- Giving more context to the viewer
- Increasing your domain authority on Pinterest
- Giving you control over the info attached to all Pins from your site.
- Give Pinterest more confidence in your keywords so your pins will show up in search.
- Automatically updates whenever you change the information on your site.
How To Activate Pinterest Rich Pins
- If you haven’t already done so, open a Pinterest business account and claim your website. If you need a little help getting set up, this blog post will help you open your business account in a jiffy.
- Make sure you have the correct metadata on your site. This is a little different for each website host. For example, Squarespace already has this setup, you don’t need to do any extra work. If you use WordPress, it’s possible your theme might have it built in, but if it doesn’t you can download the Yoast SEO Plugin. Wix unfortunately doesn’t support rich pins at this time. If you need more help with this, Pinterest provides a detailed explanation of how to do this and what they need here.
- Once you’ve made sure you have the correct metadata on your website, hop on over to Pinterest’s Rich Pin Validator, choose a page on your website that includes metadata, enter that URL in the validator and click validate. (you only need to do this for one page on your site to validate rich pins for your entire domain). It will let you know if there are any problems with your metadata. Once you’re approved, your rich pins should show up within the hour.
Pinterest Rich Pin Bugs
Sometimes rich pins can be a little glitchy, if you’ve been verified but still aren’t seeing your recipe pin show ingredients or product pins show pricing, reach out to Pinterest support. This happened to a food blog of mine and it was fixed in just a couple days.
Sometimes Pinterest will duplicate the pin description instead of showing the rich pin metadata on article pins. This doesn’t mean you don’t have rich pins. Check the validator and reach out to Pinterest support.
Pinterest loves to run tests on their platform. Just because you’re not seeing the metadata doesn’t mean other pinners aren’t. This reminds me of a similar problem regarding missing pin descriptions. Pinterest has told us in the case of missing pin descriptions, that the description is still running behind the scenes, working its SEO magic. I believe this is the case for rich pins as well, so try not to stress out too much over this if it happens to you.
The Big Picture
Pinterest rich pins are beneficial to your account in more ways than one. If you’re able to apply for rich pins I highly recommend you do it. You really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. New to Pinterest? Be sure to grab your FREE Pinterest Quick Start Guide. This guide will help you set up and optimize your Pinterest account to get you in front of your target audience and drive more traffic to your content from Pinterest.
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