How to Enable Pinterest Rich Pins in a Flash

Want to use Pinterest Rich Pins?

You should! They really pop your presence on Pinterest.

Rich Pins are absolutely free. They help both you and Pinterest users by providing more context about your product, recipe, or page on the Pin.

Read on!

What are Rich Pins?

Rich Pins are Pins that include extra information that’s seen when you click on the Pin.

This info is called metadata and is pulled from the linked web page.

Here is the official definition from Pinterest:

A Rich Pin is a type of organic pin on Pinterest that contains information (metadata) about the content. This information is automatically synced from the pin’s website landing page periodically to keep the information up to  date.

Of course we want to be up to date, am I right?

And only business accounts have access to them.

There are three types of Rich Pins you can use for free:

1. Product Pins include real-time pricing, availability, and where to buy.
2. Recipe Pins have ingredients, cooking times, and serving sizes.
3. Article Rich Pins show a headline, author, and story description.

There used to be free App Pins, but now these are just used for Promoted Pins. They’ll show an install button so people can download your app without leaving Pinterest. But, you must pay for that feature.

As a blogger with an audience that also includes bloggers, my article is specific to Article Pins for WordPress bloggers.

6 Benefits of Rich Pins

These elements add up to make Rich Pins look more professional and trustworthy:

1. Extra info – including more keywords to surface in search!
2. Control over the info attached to all Pins from your site.
3. Rich info on Pin is updated when linked page is updated. This includes price changes on product pins.
4. Bold title in the feed.
5. Branded with your interest account and profile picture / logo.
6. Follow button.

You can identify Article Rich Pins by the extra information above and below the image on closeup, and the bold title in easily visible in the feed.

This is the metadata pulled in from your website. If you’re sharp with keywording on your post titles and meta descriptions, your Rich Pins already have a big advantage! This info is attached to your Pin by the page it’s linked to and can only be edited by you.

When you update your blog post title and meta description, these will also update on all Rich Pins linked to that URL – regardless of who pinned it.

If you don’t set a meta description for your blog post, then typically the first few sentences of the article are used instead.

Rich Pins ensure that if I update an article yearly, such as Best Pinterest Pin Size, the publish date as well as the title change will be reflected on the Pins that link to that page.

Pretty cool, huh?

This info travels with your Pin regardless of who pins or repins it. It can only be changed by changing the page it’s linked to.

Same if you change the price on a product with Product Rich Pins – the price will be updated across all Pins.

Now when someone clicks the Rich Pin, they’ll see not only a bold headline, but a little push to follow the account that enabled Rich Pins! Priceless, right?

Non-Rich Pins are starting to look pretty blah, amiright?

Here’s a new video overview of Rich Pin basics from my friends at Simple Pin Media.

How to Add Rich Pins in 5 Minutes

Perhaps you haven’t added them because you didn’t realize how fast and easy it is – if you blog with WordPress.

If you don’t use WordPress, you might need some tech help to add the needed markup language to your site. But on WP, it’s done for you!

Of course, if you’re using your Pinterest account for business, you’ve got a Pinterest business account, right? This is required by their ToS.

If not, better get straight with Pinterest by converting to a business account here.

How to Add Article Rich Pins on WordPress

Article Rich Pins are perfect for bloggers. This tutorial only works for article pins.

Step 1: Add Yoast SEO Plugin.

Activate it.

Then go to the Social tab in its settings, then to the Facebook tab.

Yes, Facebook! Other social networks use the Open Graph metadata that FB instigated. So you want this ON.

Be sure Add Open Graph meta data at the top is set to Enabled.

Here’s a quick video walkthrough:

NOTE: If you use Genesis themes, you already have Yoast, so skip this step!

If you use a different SEO plugin, ask a techie for help.

Step 2: Validate Your Rich Pins

Just go to the Rich Pin Validator.

Enter a URL from your site.

Click the Validate button.

Check that the Rich Pin preview is what you expected.

Step 3: You’re done! or Apply for Rich Pins

If you get the green check and “Your rich pins are approved and on Pinterest” message, you are all done!

It will take a few days for your existing Pins to pull in the “rich” data.

Try to be patient 🙂

If you get the green check and “Your Pins have been validated!” message, click Apply Now.

You should get a “thanks for your application” message as shown below.

It could take a couple days to hear from Pinterest with your approval.

Once approved, it will likely take 2–3 days for your normal Pins to turn into Rich Pins!

Using the Rich Pins Validator to Update Rich Pins

Now, I said earlier that when you update your blog post, the meta data on all your Rich Pins will update.

But sometimes this doesn’t happen automatically.

No worries! Pinterest will help us out.

Visit the Rich Pins Validator and enter the URL with Pins that need updating.

Then click on the blue Validate button.

See if the information pulled in is correct.

Check all 5 things shown, but especially the asterisked ones:

1. Rich Pin type
2. Name* (this is your post’s meta title)
3. Publish date
4. Author
5. Description* (this is your post’s meta description)

If the information isn’t showing your updated meta title or meta description, click the ‘fetch new scrape information’ to update.

This prompts Pinterest to recheck the date, so it should see your recent changes. This new data will then pass on to the Pins linked to that article.

Below you can see the (old) title that was pulled in before I used the debugger, and then the updated one that corrected itself on the same Pin – after I entered the blog post URL in the debugger.

You can still edit this meta title that’s been pulled in. ‘LouiseM’ isn’t very compelling, so I edited this part to ‘Update!’

Because it’s a hot-button word!

Want to write Pin titles that get more clicks? Grab this cost-effective resource! If you purchase I’ll earn a commission.

Check out Pinterest Title Traffic Hacks eBook & video training.

If you’re using a plugin or hard coding to set Pin descriptions and titles at the page level, these won’t be pulled in by the Rich Pins Validator. What’s pulled in is the metadata of your blog post (or page).

In addition, if you added or edited the title of the Pin on Pinterest, the validator can’t update these. It’s only updating the metadata from the page attached to the URL you have entered.

But that’s cool, because your awesome meta titles and descriptions are still working for you, helping Pinterest see that your Pin and the content it links to are relevant and trustworthy.

Pin Titles Not Showing on the Home Feed

One thing people notice is that sometimes they go to the Home Feed and there are no Pin titles.

Does this mean Rich Pins aren’t working?

Not necessarily. Pinterest has been testing using Pin images with no text on the Home Feed. If you see this, you are part of the test.

But the titles, descriptions, and Rich Pin data are still there. Users can see it all when they click the Pin.

And it is still working on your SEO in the background, so your Pins get found in search. So don’t worry.

Rich Pins and Manual Pins

If you upload an image to Pinterest manually, rather than pin from your blog post, you need to add the information.

This is the title of the Pin, the description, and the URL.

You don’t need to add your meta description from your site.

What happens is that Pinterest ties up the URL with the meta description on the page. It pulls this once the Pin is live and adds the data to the Pin.

So you don’t need to worry about doing it yourself.

Duplicate Descriptions on Non-Rich Pins

If you have a personal account or one without Rich Pins, you might notice there are still two descriptions.

But if you study them, you’ll notice they are the same!

So if an account doesn’t have Rich Pins, Pinterest just uses the Pin description in both spots.

Be sure you know how to write the best pin descriptions.

Rich Pin Bugs

I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on this subject.

We already mentioned that you might see Rich Pins without bold titles in the feed. It appears that’s a test.

Another confusing aspect is that sometimes you’ll see Rich Pins display a duplicate Pin description instead of displaying one that’s the meta description.

If you see that, it’s doesn’t mean you don’t have Rich Pins! As always, check with the validator.

I believe that Pinterest still “knows” your meta description, and that it’s working for you behind the scenes.

They’ve already told us this in the case of missing descriptions! They’re still part of the Pin info, just invisible to you, but are working their SEO magic.

Lastly, sometimes Rich Pins get approved in hours. Other times it takes weeks or even months.

I have no secret connection to fix that for you! People who have written in to Pinterest have been told to be patient and give it 8 weeks.

Disable Rich Pins on Specific Pages

You can have the benefits of Rich Pins only where you want them.

If there’s a certain page or two where you don’t want Rich Pins (for reasons I can’t fathom, so please let me know in a comment!):

Add this tag to the header of your page before the closing body tag:

<meta name=”pinterest-rich-pin” content=”false” />

The tag will override the Rich Pin meta tags on that page only and not affect the rest of your site. If you ever want to turn Rich Pins back on, remove this tag.

Pinterest Rich Pins Rock

Take control of your Pins by enabling Rich Pins!

This whole process takes less than 5 minutes, and you’ll be so glad you took the time to set it up.

Share this post with others who could benefit from Pinterest Rich Pins. Thanks!