As a blog designer, a question I am often asked is, how do I verify my blog or website on Pinterest? And how do I get Rich Pins? Fortunately, both of these are really easy to do and take virtually no time at all.
I can’t say enough about domain verification and rich pins, or Pinterest in general, for SEO. I get over half of all of my site traffic from Pinterest. And the cool thing about Pinterest and SEO is that it’s not just about people pinning images from your site or blog, simply being active on Pinterest and pinning a lot is really good for site traffic as well. I pin at least 20-30 images a day and I rarely watch tv without pinning (I have a macbook pretty much permanently affixed to me lol!). Plus, pinning is happy and fun! So make all the pinning count with 2 easy steps to improve your SEO.
First, verify your domain with Pinterest (you need to have a Pinterest account to do this). Here is the link to the official Pinterest guide to confirming your website.
- Log into your Pinterest account, and click on the Settings link (this is on the dropdown menu that appears when you hover over your circle icon in the upper left corner of your Pinterest page).
- Scroll down to the Profile area. Type in your domain name, and click the red Confirm Website button. Leave this window open.
- CMD or CTRL+C to copy the meta tag that is provide.
- Log into your blog or website.
- If Little Blue Deer is your blog designer, you have the Genesis WordPress theme, and you have Genesis Simple Hooks installed. So in your blog dashboard, navigate to Genesis > Simple Hooks. Find the genesis_meta hook. Simply paste the meta tag in the box, and save.
- Go back to Pinterest, and click the red Finish button. That’s it! Your domain is now verified. If your blog or website is not designed by Little Blue Deer, you simply need to add the code to the <head> section of your site. This location varies by theme.
Now, what are Rich Pins? Go to Pinterest.com. Do you see where there are often icons and bold text beneath a pin? This means that that pinner’s Pinterest account has enabled Rich Pins. This is easy to do, but you do need to have a blog incorporated into your website to enable Rich Pins. To enable Rich Pins, go to this link:
https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/url-debugger/
Simply paste the URL of a blog post (any blog post, but not a page!) into the box, and click the blue Validate button. Then, click Apply. That’s it.
You will receive an email shortly from Pinterest verifying that your blog has been validated, and when you pin something from your own website or blog, your Site Title and Pinterest icon will appear below the pin. Happy pinning!
As a blog designer, I learn a lot along the way and am always looking to share my knowledge with you guys! If you are interested in a custom blog design or custom website (or a logo too!) be sure to check out our Services page, summer is such a good time for new blog or website design so you can hit the ground running in the fall, we would love to help you out!
