Last week on the blog, I talked about the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress and how it is extremely helpful when it comes to increasing the amount of traffic to your website through search engines. What if I told you that you could also use this plugin to get more traffic from Pinterest? Sounds awesome right?! Today, I’m talking all about Rich Pins and how they not only improve your SEO, but increase traffic to your website. AND as an added bonus, I’ll tell you how to activate these so you can start using them today!
What are Rich Pins?
Rich Pins on your Pinterest for business account will allow your pins to include more information about your idea. There are four different types of Rich Pins: product pins, recipe pins, article pins, and app pins. Product pins will help your clients shop products from your online shop with ease. If someone views your product pin while you have this feature activated, then your pin will display where they can purchase the item and the price of that item. Not only that, but it’ll also automatically update it if the price changes! Recipe pins entice pinners to click onto your website for your recipe by including the cook time, ingredients, and serving size right there on the pin. App pins display an install button so that pinners can install your app from your pin without ever having to leave Pinterest! This is only compatible with iOS at this time.
Article pins, which is probably what most of your posts are if you are in the photography industry, will allow viewers to know that they’re clicking on a page that has original content by displaying a headline, author, and a small description. In the image below, you can see that my pin reads, “Article from Emily Moore | Emily Moore Boutique Photo Editing.” It also has a “Read It” button on the pin, which will entice readers to click to your website to learn more! You’ll also notice that the description displayed below the pin is the copy that I wrote for the meta description for that blog post using the Yoast SEO plugin! I didn’t have to re-type that description when I pinned it from my website. How easy is that?!
So How Do I Activate Rich Pins?
You can activate these Rich Pins in just three easy steps! Seriously…this will only take you about two minutes! It’s SO easy to activate Rich Pins on your Pinterest for Business profile — AND it doesn’t cost a thing!!
Step One
First, in order to have the necessary meta tags on your website for Pinterest to activate Rich Pins for you, you need to install the Yoast SEO plugin. If you don’t know what Yoast is, click here to check out my blog post from last week to find out a little more about what this plugin can do! Once you’ve activated the plugin on your site, click on the plugin’s main settings page. You’ll then click the “Features” tab. Scroll down until you see “Advanced Settings Pages” and flip it to “enabled.”
Step Two
You will need to verify your Rich Pins before they’ll show up on Pinterest, so visit the Rich Pins Validator. All you need to do at this point is to take a URL from any blog post on your blog and enter it into the box. You’ll need to use a page on your site that you’ve added metadata to. Because we used Yoast to add the metadata, you will need to use a specific blog post and not your homepage for this step! Once you’ve entered a URL, click “Validate.” You only need to use one URL in order to apply for Rich Pins for your whole domain, so you do not have to do this for each page or post!
Step Three
After validating your website, you will see a message that says, “Your pin’s been validated!” Once your pin has been validated, click “Apply Now.” After you click “Apply Now,” Pinterest will display your website’s domain with “HTML tags” selected. Then click “Apply Now” again and that’s it! You’re done!
It will take a little while for your Pinterest to update all of your pins, but once it does, you’ll see your pins update with all of the correct information.
I can’t tell you how easy using Rich Pins with my Yoast SEO plugin has made sharing my posts on Pinterest. I used to re-type the description for each pin because it would only show the title of my post. Doing that time and time again is such a waste of time! Type the description once and let Pinterest easily apply it to everything for you. With the help of your Yoast SEO plugin, you can let these pins do all the work for you while driving more organic traffic to your site!
This is such awesome information! I had no idea that there were different types of pins or even how to use them to generate traffic to your site. Awesome post!
Thank you for writing this! I didn’t even know this was an option, I will definitely be using this in the future!
What great information. I have a squarespace blog so I’m not sure what I can do. I’ll have to look into it.
Wow this is a very helpful post on more than SEO and pins! Thanks for the info and I will definitely be checking back in.
Seriously?!?! I did not know you could do this with this plugin, I use it for my own website but I could definitely use it for Pinterest too!
You’re so wonderful to share this info! I need to up my Pinterest game, and I think I’ve been doing it wrong all this time… hahah. Thank you for posting!
So informative! Thank you so much I have Yoast but I need to step up my game!
I use Yoast, but didn’t know about the Pinterest aspect! What a great post, lots of useful info!
Wow, I had no idea Pinterest was like this! What helpful information! The way you wrote it was very clear and so informative!
Thanks for explaining Rich Pins!!!
hmmm you are an angel! thanks so much for this very informative post I am struggling growing my Pinterest and I will definitely do all these steps.
Wow I had no idea. Is there anything like this for squarespace?
I am just beginning to create a strategy for my pinterest marketing. Thank you so much for sharing this! Very helpful!
this was so informative!! i’ve been procrastinating getting my pinterest together for ever…i really need to get on the rich pins thing!
Wow! This is so interesting and great! I need to start implementing this information asap! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!
Super informative! I’ll have to keep this in mind for sure.
Wow what a coincidence! I was just trying to find out what a rich pin is. Thank you for writing everything out and explaining it!!