If you have been keeping up with the hype on Pinterest then you may have heard about Pinterest Rich Pins.
Honestly, I have had a Pinterest account for YEARS but I never heard about it before.
But as soon as I made my new Pinterest Business account, it seems that all the algorithm was showing me was pins about Rich Pins.
I can take a hint.
I decided to dive deep into what rich pins are, how they can help build my audience, and why they are important.
I couldn’t believe what I found!
Rich Pins are a blogger and business owner “must-have” on Pinterest. I was astonished that I had gone so long without having them. I also realized that if I didn’t know about it, then there are probably others who don’t know about it either.
So today I am going to walk you through everything you need to know about Rich Pins and how to set them up.
What are Rich Pins on Pinterest?
As far as my research can find, Pinterest Rich Pins became a thing back in 2017.
Pinterest decided to make a system that could automatically sync data from your own website and connect it to your Pins.
That’s when Rich Pins were born.
Rich Pins are special pins that will fetch your logo, meta description, author name, and content title and automatically connect it to the Pin that you make.
Along with these aspects, your pin will also have other special features (which we will get into in a bit.
Why does this matter?
Keep reading.
Why are Rich Pins Important?
Rich Pins are important because they allow your content to stand out from the sea of pins on people’s home feeds.
Let me make it very clear:
If you have a Pinterest account just for yourself to save a bunch of recipes that you will never cook, do not waste your time on Rich Pins.
They will not help you one bit with your new DIY project.
However, if you have an online business, blog, website, or eCommerce store, then enabling Rich Pins is A MUST!
Here are two main reasons why Rich Pins are important:
- They make your life easier as a Pinner.
- They give a better user experience to your audience.
How do Rich Pins help you as a Pinner? Well, they do a lot of the grunt work for you. As a website owner, I change titles all the time to work on my SEO.
If you have enabled Rich Pins, then the title of the pins connected to your website will also change accordingly!
No need to go back and do all the work yourself.
What about the user experience? The true beauty of having Rich Pins is that they give your audience more information on the Pin and even allow them to follow you directly on the Pin page.
This works especially well if you have Product Rich Pins or Recipe Rich Pins. Your audience will be able to see how much your products costs. If you share recipes, all the ingredients will also be listed in the pin for you.
Not only does this save you work, but this makes it easier for your audience to identify if your content is right for them and eventually click onto your website to find out more.
When people know exactly what they are getting into, they tend to stay longer. This will result in a lower bounce rate and a longer session duration.
5 Benefits of using Pinterest Rich Pins:
- “Follow” button on the Pin page.
- Bolded titles on the Pinterest search feed.
- Optimized branding with your logo and account profile on every pin.
- Extra information will be added from your meta data on your website.
- Full control over the information that is attached to your Pins from your website.
Types of Rich Pins:
Up until recently, there were 4 types of Rich Pins available. One of them was called the App Rich Pin made for app owners and developers. It had a special download button available right on Pinterest.
However, that function is no longer available unless the Pin is promoted (meaning you are paying for it).
So here are the types of Rich Pins that you can get:
Product Rich Pins
If you have an eCommerce store, then having Product Rich Pins will be perfect for you.
These Pins have all of the real-time information about your product on the Pin page. This includes, the price, whether or not it is in stock, and even where you can buy it.
If your product happens to be popular in a certain category and performs well on Pinterest, then it may even receive the “Best Seller” title or “Popular” title if it gets a lot of clicks.
Customers can see that not only is it a product that they want, but it is also something that a lot of are interested in as well.
The installation is not too complicated and Pinterest has explained exactly how to do it in this article.
Recipe Rich Pins
Recipe Rich Pins are among the most popular on Pinterest.
They are the Rich Pins that give the most amount of information and data to the viewers.
You will be able to see the title, ingredients, portion sizes, cooking time, and ratings from your website all on the pin.
Because this is so detailed, unfortunately, you may have to install a long piece of code to your website. You can find a detailed explanation from Pinterest here.
If you follow it correctly, then you will be all set.
Article Rich Pins
if you are a blogger, then Article Rich Pins are what you are going to want to focus on.
These are the pins that connect your metadata from your website to your pins. They allow you to show the headline, meta description, and the author of the blog post.
If you have added the right keywords to your titles and meta description, then you are already ahead in the game.
VERY IMPORTANT to note, however, that if your post is just a long list or a bunch of images, Pinterest does not count this as an actual article.
As much as we all love a good listicle, you need to make sure there is actually substance behind it as well.
How to Add Rich Pins to Your Blog
I am using WordPress for my website. Matter of fact, over 60% of all websites on the internet are managed through WordPress.
Setting up Rich Pins in WordPress does include a few extra steps but it is fairly easy and quick.
I will go through the step-by-step guide in a bit.
However, there are other platforms that other people use that also allow Rich Pins.
How to Add Rich Pins on Wix
If you are a Wix user, you can easily go into the Wix App Market and add a Pinterest Pin button.
You can read the full guide here.
How to Add Rich Pins on Squarespace
Squarespace turns all of your pins into Rich Pins once you connect your Pinterest account to your site.
If you want to learn more about how to do that, then you can find that information here.
How to Add Rich Pins on Etsy
Etsy is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms on Pinterest. So much so that whatever you Pin from your Etsy page, automatically becomes a Rich Pin on Pinterest.
This saves you a lot of headaches and research because they don’t even have a guide on how you can set it up.
Why?
Because they don’t need it! It’s already done.
If you are interested in finding out how users feel about their Rich Pins on Etsy then I suggest this popular Etsy thread here.
How To Add Rich Pins in WordPress
Like I mentioned earlier, there are a few extra steps when it comes to getting Rich Pins on your WordPress website.
Step one: Download an SEO Plugin
If you want to make your life easier, I suggest you download either the Yoast SEO or AIOSEO plugin on WordPress.
Not only for the Rich Pins but for your actual SEO. Having these plugins will enable metadata and other vital information that will help you optimize your SEO for search engines.
This will also keep you from having to add a bunch of code to your site just to get Rich Pins.
Instead, you will be able to enable metadata directly from the plugin.
So download the plugin and make sure it is activated.
Step two: Add Metadata to your site
Once the plugin is installed and active, you will notice that your pages have some new boxes on the bottom.
Here is where you can add metadata to your pages and posts.
This is a very important part of SEO so make sure you at least fill in your titles and meta descriptions.
This is the information that Pinterest is going to pull from your site and add to your Rich Pins.
Step three: Enable Open Graph Metadata
Whether you are using Yoast or AIOSEO, the process is basically the same.
Go into the Social Settings of your plugin and navigate to the Facebook tab.
Here you are going to activate Open Graph Metadata.
Very important that this is enabled because your Rich Pins will not show up otherwise.
Step four: Validate and apply for rich pins
Once all of this is set up, you need to head over to the Pinterest Rich Pins Validator.
You will need to enter a valid URL from your website for validation.
It does not matter which page it is from as long as it is not your homepage.
I personally recommend that you choose a blog post where you have all of the necessary metadata.
Push the “Validate” button and Pinterest will tell you whether or not you have the correct metadata on your page.
If it is not validated, you will need to go back to your site and fix what is missing.
Click the Apply Now button and you will get a confirmation message:
Now here is where the warning comes in.
Pinterest used to take only 24-48 hours to enable Rich Pins.
But lately, users have found that it can take days, weeks, or even months before your pins turn into Rich Pins.
But don’t let this discourage you.
Take this time to make sure that all of your metadata is available and correct. That way, as soon as Rich Pins are enabled, you will be all set.
How do I get rid of rich pins on Pinterest?
Now that you have learned how to set everything up with your Rich Pins, you may be wondering if it will be permanent.
You are able to remove Rich Pins if, for any reason, you do not like them. You can simply go into your SEO plugin again and disable the Open Graph Meta function.
You can even choose to only remove them for certain pages.
In that case, you will just need to add a simple code of text onto those pages:
<meta name=”pinterest-rich-pin” content=”false” />
This code will override all of the metadata tags from Pinterest for that specific page.
Conclusion:
Rich Pins are a must if you want to take your Pinterest journey seriously.
Not only will they save you a ton of work, but they look more professional and will give your viewers a better user experience.
I know that some people worry that Rich Pins will give the audience everything they need and not make them click over to their website.
As someone who was a consumer on Pinterest for years, I can tell you that the more I know about what I am getting into, the more likely I am to click through to that page.
If you are doing recipes, I want to know the ingredient first to make sure that I will not waste my time reading a recipe that I do not have the ingredients for.
If you are selling a product, I want to know if the product price point fits my budget before I get to your page.
Focus on what is important for the user.
This is the best mindset to keep when you have any online business and this is what will turn people from viewers to customers and subscribers.
