No this is not a get-rich-quick scheme! This is an article on how to get cool information like your blog name and favicon onto each pin sent to pinterest from your website, so that you won’t have to continually remind yourself to add alt=”//mywebsiteisthebestest.com” to your images for Pinterest “copyrighting”. Thanks to schema.org microdata markup, Pinterest can add a bit more info to pins originating from your website, so that the viewer isn’t just looking at a pretty picture.
We’re talking about a really cool service called Rich Pins that is available for Business branded pinterest accounts.
What will this do? Check out these awesome examples available on Pinterest right now…
Do you see the differences to regular ol’ pinning? Here’s a little reminder, just in case…
More or less, you’re branding your images on Pinterest. Rich Pins code develops a type of copyright from where the image originates, along with some helpful stats based on the type of pin. So if you have a recipe to share, you can potentially add pertinent information of the recipe like Martha Stewart has above with “50 minutes to make, serves 4”; or if you have an article, your pin could potentially have author and website info, including a blurb from the post!
There is a waiting period involved, and I’m now keeping an eye out for an email from Pinterest to discuss/confirm my use of Rich Pins, but this type of branded information is well and truly worth the wait!
If you go the Schema.org route, by adding certain code to your theme, it can get quite technical, and even more technical for oEmbed (which unfortunately is the only route to dig into recipe data,) but Pinterest has a list of acceptable Rich Pin fields if you’re up for the challenge!
For basic article information though, WordPress folk can utilize the SEO by Yoast plugin to take advantage of the meta data developed with Open Graph!
Once you’re sure the meta box is checked, select and copy the url for any post on your website (not your main page, you’ll need a random article link,) and paste that link on Pinterest’s Rich Pin validation page to see if it reads your site’s Open Graph information.
If it does, congrats! You will then get to apply for approval! I’m not sure what happens after this point, as I’m waiting for approval myself, but I will update here once I know more!
If it doesn’t work for any reason, you may need to talk to your web designer about adding Schema.org or oEmbed code. A great way to tell what information is being data-mined from your pages is to check Google’s Rich Snippets tool (the image below shows data for my article The Measuring Tape is Your Friend.) I already have Schema code on my site to improve the way Google Search shows my entries, so I have no way of showing how my site would validate with only Open Graph (even though I have that active on my site too.)
Well, here’s keeping *fingers crossed* that it won’t take very long to verify my site for Pinterest Rich Pins!
I got the fabulous “you’ve been verified” email over the weekend, so I would guess that it takes roughly 5 days for pinterest to check out your Rich Pins request. This “upgrade” is definitely not instant, but ultimately, the timing isn’t bad for the return in this investment.
So here’s what pins coming from my site look like now…
Just to reiterate a few things to make this a simple process for you: as far as I can tell, this only works if you have a Pinterest business account – this account doesn’t cost a thing, and works exactly like a personal account; and if you use SEO by Yoast for a WordPress blog, chances are that your site is all ready to verify if you’ve told it to include Open Graph meta data to your pages.
Anyway, good luck on your Rich Pins adventure! 🙂
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Hey Aeryn, thanks for this awesome information. Loved your pun (or was it not) with the title! I never knew about this although I use Pinterest for all my sites on various niches (including diet/fitness, relationships, personal development, internet marketing and so on.
Thanks for the eye-opening post and also thanks for the instructions on how to do this.
sounds like a great tool! Is it available with blogger as well?
I haven't worked with a blogger template in ages, but in theory it could work? If you can add the key tags around items like the title and author areas found on a blogger post, then yes it will work. It's just seeing if, for instance, your article title is surrounded by either a <div></div> or a <span></span> (or if you can put one of those codes in there,) to add the itemprop="name" code as part of the open div/span tag. So you'd want to have something like <div itemprop="name">Blogger Post Title</div>
I'm thinking unless you've been entering the schema codes by hand (Something I do for maybe 70% of my recipe posts and nothing else), it's probably not worth trying to get this to work on Blogger... as there won't be anything for it to pick up and prepopulate, no?
In theory, it could pre-populate general post information, like post title and author for instance. For recipe specific Rich Pin meta, it probably won't work without hand coding. BUT if you create a recipe template that you keep on hand in a text file and use each and every time you post a recipe (which will also help in standardizing recipe posts,) then you're not manually adding the code each and every time and it would work for Rich Pins.
Thanks Aeryn!! I've been noticing this on certain pins, but didn't know how to go about it to get it too! Thanks!
Yay! Glad I could help! :)
I'm going to give this a try! Thanks.
Woot! Good luck! :)
I didn't even know this existed! I need to explore Pinterest a lot more but this looks like a wonderful feature. Thanks for all the details!
Glad I could help shine a bit of light on cool Pinterest features. :) Have fun with Pinterest exploring!
Um, well, I got lost as soon as you started referring to "alt=”http://mywebsiteisthebestest.com”" ... I haven't been adding any kind of code anywhere on pinterest! I think I need a Pinning 101 :)
Awwwh, yeah some websites will put their url into their alt tag info, so that there is some type of "origin" for where the pics have come from. If you have SEO by Yoast on your site, validating whether you can use Rich Pins should be pretty easy. :)
This is so interesting but, I'm so lost in trying to get set this up. You're so smart though, we need a Geek with Style School.
The book is coming! :D
I like this idea of a Geek with Style School! :)
i haven't heard of this either- but i will add it to my ever growing list
Adding Rich Pins to the list of things I need to do to improve my site. Thanks.
This sounds awesome! Thanks for the heads up on this. I use Pinterest all the time on my blog!