Out of all of our traffic sources, Pinterest is the biggest driver. We’ve been on the social media platform since it launched in 2010, when you had to be invited to use it. Since then, we’ve pinned over 10,000 pins to our boards. At first, it was simply a way to organize our ideas, much like a digital mood board to make your vision a reality. But with the ability to pin rich pins, it has become a traffic power house. Today we want to show you how to set up Pinterest Rich Pins on WordPress to start attracting more traffic to your website. 

What Are Rich Pins?

Pinterest Rich Pins are pins that include your website url and meta description underneath the pin image. In case you’re confused, you can check out recent Moose Studio pins here. You’ll notice they all say saved from moosestudioblog.com underneath them with the site’s moose logo.

Information in a Pinterest Rich Pin is independent of the Pin description, which means the important information will always be tied to your pin even if someone changes the original description.

There are 6 types of Rich Pins: app, movie, recipe, article, product and place.

So depending on what you’re blog is about, you will apply for that type of Rich Pin.

Why Do I Need Rich Pins?

Pinterest Rich Pins are incredibly powerful for growing your Pinterest following, and directing traffic to your blog. Since activating Rich Pins on our account, the number of people who have shared our pins has nearly doubled.

Pinners can see additional information about the pin, making it more valuable and useful.

Automatic Updates

Whenever ou change something on your website, for example adding an ingrediant to your recipe, this information will automatically be updated on your pin as well.

Free Price Drop Emails

If  you’re an eccommerce business, then you definitely need rich pins. Pinterest will automatically email the Pinner if the price drops on your product. Just imagine if your product was pinned by 1000 + people and you dropped the price by over 10%, that’s 1000 potential sales after they’ve been emailed!

How To Set Up Rich Pins

Setting up Rich Pins is a two-step process. But the good news is, it only takes about 5 minutes tops. Follow these simple steps to learn how to set up rich pins on Pinterest for your blog or business.

Step 1 – Install the Yoast SEO Plugin To Your Website

In order to set up rich pins, Pinterest requires you to add meta tags to your site. Luckily, the Yoast SEO Plugin adds these for you!

• Activate the Yoast Plugin.  
• Make sure to go to the Features tab to enable the Advanced Settings Pages
• Click on the “Social” tab in the Settings area.

• Click on the Facebook tab and make sure “Add Open Graph Meta Data” is enabled.

That’s it! You’ve now enabled the ability to have rich pins on your site. Now, time to validate your meta data with Pinterest.

Step 2 – Validate Your Metadata

Before your pins can appear on Pinterest properly, you must verify your Rich Pins. Choose any blog post on your site that you’ve added metadata to. (Hint: it can’t be your home page!) Enter your chosen url to the Pinterest Rich Pin Validator and click validate.

Step 3 – Apply For Rich Pins

After validating your blog post url, you should see a message that says, “your pin has been validated!” Then click Apply Now.

In the next screen, it should show your website’s domain, make sure to select HTML Tags if you followed the steps above with the Yoast SEO plugin. Then, click Apply Now once more.

If you’re setting up Pinterest Rich Pins for a Shopify account, then choose Shopify, instead of HTML Tags.

Congrats! You did it! Now, you’ll just have to wait a few hours for Pinterest to approve your application. You should receive an email once you’ve been approved. It can take up to a week to be approved, so be patient!

That was easy enough, right?