Updated 3/28/2017
I’ve been on Pinterest for awhile and I do pin some of my blog posts. Truth be told, I haven’t been all that fired up about pinning articles because they seem boring compared to some of the beautiful pins by retailers and product-oriented businesses.
So I’ll admit I didn’t react right away when Pinterest announced rich pins. Pinterest article rich pins add extra details to your pin, which makes it easier for pinners to find and save articles that are important.
The article headline and author as well as a description will display for Pinterest article rich pins. Pinterest article rich pins show extra information about your blog post based on the tags you’ve added. They help differentiate your work and validate your authenticity.
So when a client who is an avid blogger recently asked me about Pinterest article rich pins for her WordPress blog, I decided it was time to investigate what it would take to help her set all this up.
Set Up Pinterest Article Rich Pins with Yoast SEO Plugin
First, install Yoast SEO plugin.
1. Log into your dashboard.
2. Click on Plugins > Add New.
3. Search for Yoast SEO and install it.
Once you have Yoast SEO plugin installed, setting up article rich pins is a snap.
1. Log into your dashboard.
2. Click on SEO > Social.
3. Click on the Facebook tab.
4. Make sure “Add Open Graph meta data” is enabled:
That’s all you have to do for your blog.
Next, you have to validate your rich pins to get them on Pinterest.
Simply visit this link and type in the URL of a recent blog post as shown in the screen below:
If the URL validates, you next have to apply to get your rich pins approved. This process took just a few days.
Here is what an article-rich pin looks like:
Notice the author details, post meta description, and the bold heading text. These are the items that make up a “rich pin.”
Now that I’ve set this up, I am more inclined to pin articles and blog posts because of the brand visibility with Pinterest article rich pins.
Other types of rich pins you can apply for are products, recipes, movies, and places.
The more I use Yoast, the more great features I discover.
Sometimes it’s not feasible for a website to use free plugins such as WordPress SEO by Yoast. We experienced that with a recent client and had to look for an alternative way to set up article rich pins.
Do you use rich pins for your business? If so, which types and have they helped you reach more followers?
Leave a Reply
89 Comments on "Set Up Pinterest Article Rich Pins with Yoast SEO Plugin"
This blog post is out of date. I just installed Yoast SEO and there is no option in the WordPress menu for SEO -> Social. I looked around the plugin but didn’t see much with regards to social at all.
Actually I just installed Yoast SEO and SEO -> Social did not show, but it shows if you enable advanced settings. https://kb.yoast.com/kb/remove-advanced-yoast-seo-settings/
Thanks for the clarification, Christine!
Hi Michelle,
Do you know if Pinterest still shows bold titles? I was just approved for rich pins. And I place my titles and descriptions in Yoast SEO, but Pinterest only shows the descriptions.
Hi Christine, So sorry for the delay in response. Yes, Pinterest should still be showing bold titles. That’s part of the rich pin experience. I just tested it and it did show the titles as bold.. Have you been able to resolve it on your site? If not, have you tried clearing your browser cache?
Hi Tracy,
Thank you for your comment. The Yoast plugin has gone through a lot of changes and some of the screen shots in this post needed to be updated. The procedure, however, is pretty much the same. I did update the screenshots so I’m hoping the updated post helps you with the rich pin validation process.
Very helpful article – I didn’t know it was so easy to set up rich pins through Yoast. I’m so glad I found this website. 🙂
Glad to hear you found the article useful! Thanks for letting me know!
Hi Michelle! Such helpful information. The problem I’m having is the wrong post name is showing up on the rich pin. The title from the main page is showing. It did work, but now it’s not. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.
Hi Michelle, Just wanted to say this tutorial was really helpful thank you!
Hi Gina! I’m really glad that you found the post useful! Thanks so much for taking time to let me know!
[…] Phillips, in her post Set Up Pinterest Article Rich Pins with Yoast SEO Plugin, also walks through the steps and also suggests using Yoast SEO. She provides screenshots of the […]
Thanks & now have to find/fix error when I click to apply
Hi Tina, sorry for delayed response. Have you had any luck getting approved?
Michelle, Yes I’ve gotten approved & now seeing rich pins (articles). I’m also discovering I’ve got a problem with disqus as I’m not getting notifications or they’re landing in spam folder due to migration (ugh) to gmail
@tinagleisner:disqus Glad to hear you’ve got the rich pins working; hopefully, you’ll iron out the Disqus issue soon!
Hi Tina, Glad to help. Have you been approved yet?
Hi, thanks so much for this article! SO helpful – and so easy to do 🙂
Thanks for taking time to leave a comment, Emily! I’m glad the article was helpful to you!
[…] If you are not on the Genesis platform it is still a simple process. Simply install the Yoast SEO plugin, which we cannot recommend enough, and follow these steps. […]
Silly question, but is this only for wordpress. Is there a way to do rich pins with standard HTML website?
Hi Chuck, thanks for your great question! I’ve only applied for article rich pins for WordPress sites. However, Pinterest supports Open Graph and Schema.org formats. So you should be able to markup your pages by pasting the proper code between the tags. This link gives the technical details: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins_overview/
If you do try this, let me know how it works!
HI Michelle…thanks for the easy to understand awesome info.
Do I need to fill out anything in Yoast plugin before validating and sending for approval? Where does the description come from? Do I need to create it first? The only thing you said to do in Yoast is to: Make sure “Add Open Graph meta data” is checked. Is there any other areas that I need to fill in or is that done automatically? SEO is my weakness still…sorry…but thanks so much for making it so much easier!
Hi – I have successfully applied for rich pins on one of my blogs, and validated the url on pinterest absolutely fine (I am using Yoast and checked the box as required) – HOWEVER – for my second blog the url just won’t vaildate and I have no clue why not – any ideas? many many thanks!
Hi there, thanks for your question! Are you getting an error message from Pinterest as to why the URL won’t validate? Have you had any problems with your website? If Pinterest can’t get to your URL because your site is slow, they won’t be able to create a Pin so it won’t validate.
Hi! Looks like you figured this out before I read your initial comment. Thanks for posting what you found out about verifying more than one website with your Pinterest account. It’s an interesting situation and something I hadn’t thought about. I’m going to do a little more research on it, too.
Actually, that’s just a guess that’s what’s stopping my Rich Pin approval. I’ll keep researching too.
Yes, I think it’s a great guess though! I’ve been thinking that I’ve needed to test the whole process since it’s been awhile since I’ve gone through the validation. I want to make sure the information I posted here is still accurate. I have a second website that I can test this on. However, I did a little research this morning and found a post in a WordPress forum where someone reported you can only validate one website per Pinterest account. But I’m still looking into it…. 🙂
I’ve got a question into Pinterest…
Awesome; thank you for the update!!
Well, you don’t have to have your site confirmed on your Pinterest profile to get rich pins. So it’s some other way that my site isn’t tagged correctly.
I’ve got Genesis as well as SEO Yoast; when I used your method before I had SEO Yoast, but not Genesis. I’ll keep looking! I’d rather not start messing around with code directly. 🙂 Eager to hear if you come up with something as well.
Ah, I was so confused wondering why my links wouldn’t validate, but resaving the permalinks worked first go. Thanks for posting this!
(And thanks to Michelle for the guide!)
You’re welcome!
You’re welcome, Katie! I, too, appreciate the E.S. Ivy took the time to post this troubleshooting tip. Glad that you have been validated! 🙂
Wow, @E.S. Ivy! That’s great news! You are the hero of the week! 🙂 I actually never would have thought of re-saving permalinks, although oftentimes it is a troubleshooting tip for 404 (page not found) errors. I really appreciate that you took the time to share your journey with the readers here, so thanks very much!
Could be; I was also wondering if it could possibly be a caching issue? I’ll continue to monitor this thread and post any additional information I can find. I agree that lots of times other issues can get resolved through readers’ comments.
I do not have a caching plugin installed yet, if that’s what you mean. (They are a pain during development, I’ve found. Ha!)
Working on my second site I just found that WordPress’s own plugin, the Plugin Importer, completely fails to download and import all the media attachments. It appears the plugin has been broken regularly for over 4 years.
I resaved permalinks and I am still getting this error: It looks like your URL is missing some required info.
Any others ideas?
Hi Tim, sorry for the delay and thanks for your question. I haven’t seen this particular issue but did a little research on it and didn’t find much in the way of WordPress sites. I’m assuming you have the WordPress SEO plugin installed. Hopefully someone on this thread can weigh in.
wow, that was easy, thanks!
Great! Glad to hear it helped. Thanks for taking time to leave a comment, Yamile 🙂
I went through this process a few days ago and haven’t heard back from Pinterest – how long does the approval process typically take? Does the rich pins apply to previously pinned posts or only to new pins?
Hi Janice, thanks for your question. It only took a few days when I applied; however, I have heard others say it’s taken up to 3 weeks. Once approved, rich pins will show for previous and future pins. You only need to apply once. Hope this helps!
Thanks Michelle – I was just approved, yay!
Terrific! Seems like you had to wait awhile, but glad to hear it all worked out, Janice 🙂 Thanks for letting me know!
Thanks Michelle!
Michelle, you are a wonderful woman! Thank you for this incredibly concise rundown on setting up article rich pins with Yoast. You rock…and then some!
Wow, Constance, you just made my night 🙂 Thanks for the feedback; I really appreciate it!
@maphillips:disqus, if it brings back the wrong image, what do you suggest to change it? The post has a featured image.
Christian, thanks for asking an interesting question! I’ve not run into this problem yet and just did a quick test on a post with a featured image and it worked fine. When the user tries to pin, is the featured image not showing as a pinnable image? Or is it showing correctly but the wrong image is pinned in Pinterest?
@maphillips:disqus, when I run it through Rich Pins, it pulls up the wrong image. This is the link I tried.
http://www.christiankonline.com/canva-keyboard-shortcuts/
This is the image that it should be pulling up (the featured image).
http://www.christiankonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/canva-keyboard-shortcuts-featured-507×264.png
When I try to pin it, the featured image doesn’t seem to show up.
@maphillips:disqus, thanks! It shouldn’t be the theme – I use Studiopress Genesis and the Epik theme. I did think about embedding the image and hiding it in the post so that it would at least show up. Might do that – if I can’t find a work-around.
You’re welcome, Christian; I will follow-up if I find out anymore on this!
Thank you for making this process SO easy peasy!
🙂 Anna
You’re welcome, Anna! Glad to help, and thanks for your comment 🙂
Awesome. I can’t wait to try this! Thank you and pinning!
You’re welcome, Elizabeth! Glad to help, and thanks for letting me know!
Thank you so much for your great instructions. Maybe this is a silly question, but once they are validated and you’ve applied, do you have to continue validating each new post you make on your blog? Or is it site wide? Thanks again!
Rachael–thank you so much for asking that question–I’ve been wondering that myself!
Michelle–thanks for a clear article and a great answer!
You’re very welcome, Carrie! Glad to help 🙂
You’re very welcome, Rachael! That’s actually a very good question; you only have to validate your blog once. Any subsequent posts you pin will appear as an article-rich pin. Thanks for your comment!
THANK YOU for making this so easy to do. I was attempting to do this the other day and was totally lost as to where to start. Thank you. I’m so glad we are a part of the learntobloghangouts.com/vip forum together.
You’re very welcome, Crystal. I’m glad you found the post helpful, and thanks for taking time to let me know!
Hi Michelle! Great article- very helpful information! I’ve been trying to implement rich pins for products using the Yoast plugin, however, for some reason the product name is not pulling. I validated the url using the Facebook Open Graph Debugger and the title is pulling (example: ) and the title is showing up for an article rich pin but not for the product rich pin. The product name field is blank and in red. I’ve been scouring the internet for help for hours. Any advice? Thanks so much!
Hi Kristen, Thanks for your comment. As you know, this blog post deals with setting up article rich pins, and I think if your product url is a single product page you are ok. As time permits, I will try to find an answer for you and see how to fix the missing info and if we can fix it with the Yoast plugin. Stay tuned!
Thank you so much for taking the time to get back to me, Michelle! I really appreciate it! If I find a solution, I’ll be sure to let you know in case it could be helpful to anyone else.
Hmmmm…sorry you are still having trouble with this! I think it’s a great idea to ask the author for insight since he is successfully using both plugins for his product rich pins. I’ll be anxious to hear what you come up with! Thanks, Kristen and good luck! 🙂
I feel SO silly….I seriously thought I had to add all sorts of code and other markups to my blog in order to apply for rich pins….I read your article, and 5 minutes ago, submitted my application. Thank you for sharing this!!
Hi Rachel, Don’t feel silly at all! Many of us had the same idea that rich pins were much more difficult to implement. And I was surprised how easy it was, too, especially since I already had the Yoast plugin installed! 🙂 Thanks for taking time to let me know you found the post helpful; much appreciated!
Thanks for sharing this. I was able to get validated and apply really easily.
Great to hear! Thanks for letting me know 🙂
Not working for me- price data is missing. I had all my open graph markup ready to insert- but how to get it in my WP store HTML? Still searching for a free way to do it w/o purchasing a pro plugin…
Hi Nicole, are you using the free Yoast SEO plugin? Once you install it, go to the plugin’s Settings >Social> and check ‘Add Open Graph Meta data.’ That should work. If not, check out this guide for more free tools and advice: http://www.koozai.com/blog/social-media/pinterest-rich-pins-guide/. I hope this helps!
Thanks for your response. I had seen that article in my search. I am using a woocommerce template for my store and the item was listed as on sale. I changed the sale price to the regular price and now it works! It was validated. However, one of the big attractions for RichPins for products is that the pinner would be notified when if price drops. If I’m using open graph I’m assuming that will happen automatically? I had downloaded additional plugins beyond Yoast, wonder if I can deactivate them now. Hooray, little victory!
Excellent; glad to hear, Nicole! Thanks for letting us know. You are correct. My understanding is that Pinterest will automatically send out a notification to pinners when there is a price drop. It is not dependent on any plugins.
OK, so I heard back from Pinterest that my rich pins not approved because were marked up as articles -not products -despite being pinned frm a simple little furniture estore ( CampaignFurniture.us). Not sure how to remedy this. Perhaps I need to deactivate the other plugins I tried in addition to Yoast’s. This tech jungle is ceratinly a challenge!
Aha, your answer helped! The approval is 2 part- first one validates the URL, then once validated, you click “apply now”. Perhaps I had applied with the root /home page originally instead of the product urls since now that I enter the product page it shows me a preview of my product rich pin. Thanks again! Fingers crossed.
Sure! Glad to help :). Good luck!
Fantastic step-by-step instructions, Michelle. Great information for Yoast SEO users; I have Yoast but have not set it up for rich pins. Thank you!
Really appreciate your comment, Nancy! There are so many features of the Yoast SEO plugin that I keep discovering. It really simplifies so many tasks just like the setup for article rich pins. Thanks for letting me know you found this article helpful!