Pinterest Rich Pins: The What, The Why, and The How
Pinterest rich pins are probably another mystery to anyone who isn’t a Pinterest marketing expert. Honestly, Pinterest marketing is a FULL-TIME job. It also requires a good bit of education to figure out how to use this oh-so-amazing platform. I call it a full-time job because it is literally my full-time job so my opinion might be different than others.
You need a clear marketing strategy, lots of pins, consistency, and patience to get results on Pinterest.
I’ve learned over the years that A LOT of people are completely clueless about how to successfully and properly market their business on Pinterest. I totally understand too! I went through several online courses and years of experience to learn everything that I know about Pinterest. But it doesn’t have to be so scary. You can learn too and little by little successfully grow your business on Pinterest.
Today, I am going to teach you about Pinterest rich pins: the what, the why, and the how. You are going to learn what Pinterest rich pins are, why you should or shouldn’t use them, and how to create Pinterest rich pins. So…let’s dig into this mini Pinterest marketing training post.
Pinterest Rich Pins...What Are They?
Let’s start with the basics. What the freak are Pinterest rich pins? It’s totally okay if you have no idea. I didn’t either when I started my Pinterest marketing journey. So, let me tell you all about them in a short and sweet paragraph. Rich pins on Pinterest are pins that have been linked to your blog to grab metadata from your website that gets added to your Pinterest pin. Creating rich pins is the process of syncing your Pinterest account to your website blog so that Pinterest can grab extra information from your website and add it to the pin. It provides extra information about your article, recipe, or product…whatever you’re promoting on Pinterest from your website. You MUST have a Pinterest business account in order to set up rich pins.
There are 3 Types of Rich Pins:
- Recipe Rich Pins – Pulls extra data from your website related to your recipe.
- Article Rich Pins – Pulls information related to your article’s meta description that is displayed on your pin.
- Product Rich Pins – Pulls pricing information, quantity information, and other product details from your website.
Recipe Rich Pin Sample
Article Rich Pin Sample
Product Rich Pin Sample
Pinterest will also update the rich pin data if you make any updates or edits to your article or recipe post. You can get all the nitty gritty details on rich pins directly from Pinterest in this article on their site.
Why You Might Want Rich Pins on Pinterest.
There are a lot of benefits of having Pinterest rich pins. However, I am going to give you my real two-cents about it. And if by the end of this article, you’re still unsure about rich pins or how to set them up – don’t stress. Let me explain why.
Pinterest rich pins will help increase your pin clicks by giving your audience the extra information that’s taken from your website. It entices your Pinterest audience to want to click on your pin link and head over to your website by giving them just enough information to get them interested for more. This is an amazing benefit to have! And any client account that I manage has rich pins enabled. Also, having rich pins will help keep your pins updated anytime you make changes to your website. If you change your blog title or other information, it’ll automatically update on Pinterest. This saves you the work of going back to change pin information on Pinterest if you make updates to your blog posts.
These are great benefits to have! But if for any reason you don’t want to set up rich pins or you just don’t feel like focusing on that right now…it won’t be the end of the world. You can still successfully grow your business on Pinterest without rich pins. You’ll still be able to add a Pinterest SEO-rich title and description to help your pins reach your target audience on Pinterest. There is no penalty to your account if you don’t set up Pinterest rich pins. However, I still highly recommend enabling rich pins regardless.
How to Enable Pinterest Rich Pins
Ok, so we know what Pinterest rich pins are, and we know why you want to create them for your Pinterest business account – let’s talk about how to create rich pins on Pinterest. Now, I am going to teach you how to create rich pins for a WordPress website because that’s the type of website I use and the type of website I recommend (unless you have an e-commerce business – then I recommend Shopify). So, if you have a WordPress website, then you can follow along with my steps on creating rich pins (or enabling rich pins). Otherwise, you can get guidance directly from Pinterest in this article that goes over the steps.
For your WordPress website, you’ll want to make sure that you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed. You do this by going to Plugins on the left menu of your WordPress dashboard, then you search for “Yoast SEO” and choose Yoast SEO like I show you in the image below.
Next, you’ll want to go to your Yoast SEO plugin on the left side menu inside your WordPress dashboard. You’ll want to hover over “Yoast SEO” and then click “Social.” This will take you to a section with different tabs on top: Accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. And even though you would logically think you need to click the “Pinterest” tab, you’re going to want to go to the “Facebook” tab. There, you’ll find a section that says “Add Open Graph meta data” and it will either show “enabled” or “disabled.” You’ll want to make sure that it is “enabled” just like the photo below shows.
Validating Your Pinterest Rich Pins
After this, you’re going to need to validate your rich pins with the Rich Pins Validator. There will be a spot where you’re prompted to add a URL from your site. You’re going to want to add a URL with metadata like an article, recipe, or product. In WordPress, you add the metadata in the “meta description” section of your article. I am sure you’ll have a place for this on your non-WordPress website blog as well. This meta description will have the extra information that Pinterest is going to pull from your site to add to the rich pins.
Once you click validate, Pinterest will check your site to make sure everything is set up correctly and pull the data from the URL you validated. If you add a good URL and you’ve followed all the steps correctly, then you’ll see a message that says, “Congratulations! Your rich pins are approved on Pinterest.” And that’s all there is to it. Once this is done, your website is synced with Pinterest and your future pins will become rich pins. You’ll see the extra information from your meta description on your pins whether it’s article information, recipe ingredients, or product pricing and quantities.
What If You Get a Rich Pin Validator Error?
It’s very important that you submit a URL to the Rich Pin Validator that has metadata in it. You can’t use your homepage or just any webpage that doesn’t have the necessary data. If Pinterest can’t find data to pull from your URL, it’ll decline it and give you an error message that says, “We were unable to retrieve any data from your URL.”
If your website has a blog, I recommend you use a blog post URL because if you posted it correctly, you added a meta description to it. And if you’ve been blogging and don’t know what a meta description is then we need to talk – seriously, contact me and I would love to help you out. Or check our this free blogging course and learn some more about proper blogging techniques.
Ending Notes...
When it comes down to it, Pinterest rich pins are amazing. I highly recommend you set up rich pins for your Pinterest business account and make sure to offer your Pinterest audience the extra information. The reason I tell you that they are not 100% necessary for Pinterest success is because I genuinely believe anyone can succeed without them – as long as they have a solid Pinterest marketing strategy, Pinterest SEO-rich Pinterest content, and quality pin design.
I also don’t want people getting stuck trying to get rich pins and lose focus on what’s more important in your Pinterest marketing strategy…fresh content, consistency, quality pins, a solid strategy, and patience.
Hopefully, you know how to set up rich pins and have a good Pinterest marketing strategy in place to help your business grow. If you ever need help with Pinterest, feel free to reach out. I offer one-on-one Pinterest marketing coaching to teach you how to grow on Pinterest. And if you’d rather learn Pinterest marketing at your own pace, I highly recommend Levee Road Studio’s Scheduling Shortcuts that will teach you lots about Pinterest marketing and keep you up to date on algorithm changes.
Remember that Pinterest marketing takes time and patience.
It is a long waiting game before you start seeing results, but it is worth every second that you spend on it. I hope that you start creating Pinterest rich pins to help your business #thrive.
Happy pinning!
Check out my YouTube video tutorial on creating rich pins below!
Comments? Questions? Ask them below! I will answer as soon as I can 
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