How to Easily Set Up Pinterest Rich Pins In 24 Hours or Less [From Scratch]

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You’ve clicked the validate button then hit the apply now button but cannot seem to set up rich pins on Pinterest.

Many days, weeks and months have passed and the promise of success on Pinterest is only a dream.

Everyone keeps saying that the process is easy.

You are constantly seeing report after report of fellow bloggers who managed to increase their traffic by 200%, 500% and even 900% in a short time.

Truth be told, you are this close to either tearing your hair out or totally avoiding any post that mentions Pinterest.

Oh, how your heart yearns to experience that success yourself.

Is it you, or maybe your blog. It could even be the platform you’re using or just the theme.

In this post, I will take you through a number of ways where you too can finally pop a bottle of bubbly after you set up rich pins on Pinterest.

What on Earth are Rich Pins Anyway?

In case you are brand new to Pinterest and have not yet had to go through the agony called rich pins let me explain.

Back in 2014, Pinterest introduced a new feature called rich pins which in layman’s terms means that more details can be seen by the end-user on your pin.

Depending on the type of pin, these details can include a larger title, more information in the form of two descriptions as well as a call to action button.

Let’s look at real-life examples.

In the above image, you will see a Pinterest pin where the rich pin feature is not enabled.

In this example, you can already see that there are a lot more details included on this pin.

This account has rich pins enabled for article pins so you can see much more information about this pin.

Types of Rich Pins

In case you are wondering if there are different types of rich pins, the answer is yes.

When the rich pin feature was launched there were 5 different kinds of pins.

1. Recipe pins
2. Movie pins
3. Article pins
4. Place pins
5. Product pins

It means that a wide range of businesses was being accommodated with this new feature.

However, at the time of writing this article only three types of pins continue to exist, recipe, product and article pins.

Pinterest also gives each business the option to remove rich pins should they decide to do this at a later stage.

You already saw an example of an article pin so let me show you what a recipe pin looks like.

Some experts may argue that there is already so much information on this pin that users will not click-through.

However, if you look carefully you will notice that the method of how to make the cake is missing from the pin.

I think it is a clever way to check the ingredients before clicking through to the page.

5 Key Things to Set Up Rich Pins

Before looking at the process to set up rich pins let’s look at the five (5) key things you need to have to make this work.

1. Blog post
2. A tags plugin like Yoast or All Meta Tags
3. Pinterest business account
4. Pinterest boards with pins to the URL for validation
5. Access to pin validator

Let’s look at each of these in a little detail.

1. Blog post

In order to set up rich pins, you need to have an existing article, recipe or product published and ready to go.

One key reason why many people fail at setting up rich pins is that they don’t have the required item like a blog post ready to be validated.

2. A Tags Plugin

In this post, I am specifically looking at setting up rich pins for a WordPress site.

If you are trying to do this for Squarespace go here. For Shopify try this link and for Etsy, you can find a great resource that explains how to do that here.

3. Pinterest business account

A key aspect of getting rich pins enabled is the fact that you need to have a Pinterest business account.

Rich pins will not work on a personal account at all.

4. Verified business account

It is possible that you may have set up a business account on Pinterest but you forgot to get it verified.

If you are unsure what I mean here is a quick example.

5. Pin Validator Access

The final step in the process to set up rich pins is the application process via Pinterest.

Having the link to the pin validator is essential to the rich pins process.

Rich Pins Set Up On Pinterest

As I mentioned previously this process to set up rich pins is focused only on self-hosted WordPress blogs.

The first thing you will need to do is install a plugin that helps with tags.

Many bloggers believe in the Yoast SEO plugin which works quite well but there are some instances when it does not work.

I will be adding a second option in case you don’t have the Yoast plugin.

In the meantime, head over to plugins and click on add new. Search for Yoast and you should see this in the results.

Install the Yoast plugin and activate it.

Head over to the ‘social’ option on the Yoast menu then ensure that open graph on the Facebook tab is enabled.

Click on the Pinterest tab and there you will see the option to confirm or verify your website with Pinterest.

Set up Rich Pins Without Yoast

I have encountered many cases where bloggers experience difficulty setting up rich pins using Yoast.

A great alternative is to use a generic plugin that is not specific to any brand.

The one that I found works most of the time is called All Meta Tags.

The plugin is by Space X-Chimp and looks similar to the above screenshot.

Go ahead and install it and activate it. Then find the Pinterest domain verification area.

Enter in the details that you got from Pinterest as indicated in the above screenshot.

Ensure that you click save then wait a few minutes for this change to propagate throughout your website.

Head over to the pin validator on Pinterest and enter a blog post, product URL or recipe post link.

Click validate and wait a few minutes and you should receive an email that looks like this one.

You may also see this approval screen after you click validate.

If you are still experiencing issues with setting up rich pins do send me further information or error messages that you received.

Real-Life Example from Scratch

In order to help you with your set up of rich pins, I decided to walk you step by step doing one myself.

As a blogger, I have several blogs that I have not yet set up on Pinterest so it would make sense for me to do one from scratch.

Here is a screenshot of my brand new Pinterest business account.

It was only created a few minutes ago so there is absolutely nothing on it just yet.

The first thing I want to do is edit the settings and claim my website. So, I downloaded the All Meta tags plugin and activated it on WordPress.

Here I identify the section where I need to place the Pinterest verification tag.

Now I can choose which domain verification option to use from the options available on Pinterest. I’ll go for Html tag.

After choosing that option I am then presented with a tag.

I grab that code and stick it into the All meta tag plugin on my WordPress site. Pinterest lets me know it will take 24 hours to get that completed.

Before Setting Up Rich Pins

Before setting up rich pins I am determined to make my Pinterest business account look a little presentable.

As you can see there is still no verified tick bedside my website address.

I also created 4 boards and filled them with other people’s pins. Following on from that I created 4 new pins, one for each board.

One thing I did is added a favicon to my site just to increase my chances of getting my rich pins validated.

Pinterest Rich Pins Validated

Although my site has not been verified yet I decided that I will go ahead and try to set up rich pins.

I went to the rich pins validator and entered the URL of my blog post that already has 4 pins on Pinterest.

As you can see I have not added anything special to the blog post URL just plain and simple.

Now, right before your eyes here is evidence that the process to set up rich pins on a self-hosted WordPress site was pretty easy.

Above is the pin before I set up rich pins and below you will see that rich pins are now set up.

The task that took me a very long time to get done is creating the pins for the blog post.

Summary

So, there you have it I did what I said was easy and very straight forward from scratch.

It could be that the ‘All Meta Tags’ plugin is the secret to getting rich pins approved on Pinterest.

My advice is for you to try all these seven (7) items.

1. Ensure you have claimed your website (mine wasn’t approved yet)
2. Your account must be a Pinterest business account
3. Create new pins for the blog post URL that you plan to validate
4. Place a favicon on your site as well
5. Enter the correct code in the meta tag plugin
6. Create 4-10 boards and fill them with pins
7. Complete as much information as possible

I don’t see why your rich pins validation would be delayed if you are doing all these things correctly.

Over to you what has been your experience with setting up rich pins on Pinterest?

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If you are just at the start of your Pinterest journey feel free to take a look at this Pinterest business account resource.

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