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?
HI, MICHELLE:
I have a blog post AND products (in a different section) on my website. I have article rich pins (I think I did it correctly) for my blog posts. However, I still need product rich pins for my products. Can I have two different rich pins on the same site? If so, how do I do that? Here is my site URL: http://bestpowerpointsforspanishclass.com
Thank you,
Angie
Hi Angie, That’s a really great question. You only need to submit one URL to have rich pins approved for your entire domain. But according to Pinterest: “If you have multiple types of Rich Pins, the type of Pin that appears will be based on priority. The priority of Rich Pin data is 1. App Pins, 2. Product Pins, 3. Recipe Pins and 4. Article Pins.” Their documentation is a bit vague, so I suggest you try submitting one of your product pin URLs and see what happens. Or, you could submit an inquiry to Pinterest at this link: https://help.pinterest.com/en/contact… Read more »
It says next you have to apply to get your rich pins approved. How do I do that?
Thank you for all your help!
Angie
Hi Angie, you are welcome!. To answer your question, you will need to visit this link: https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/url-debugger/ and follow the Pinterest instructions there. Hope this helps!
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.
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.
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?
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 Andi, glad you found the post helpful. Sorry you are having problems with rich pins. Yoast has made so many changes to the SEO plugin over the past few years, I am wondering if there is a setting that needs to be tweaked.? What I’m going to share here is what I am using for settings on this blog and rich pins are displaying titles properly. Could it be that under SEO>Titles & Metas>General “Force rewrite titles” is enabled? I’ve heard that can sometimes cause issues like you are having. You might try toggling that to disabled, clear your… Read more »
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, Glad to help. Have you been approved yet?
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, 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 Kathy, thanks for stopping by and leaving a great question! I’m glad you found the post helpful. It’s important that you fill out the general SEO information in the Yoast plugin.That includes the focus keyword, SEO title, and meta description. Those settings are found under the general tab of the Yoast plugin. Do this: 1. Log into the dashboard and open the post for editing 2. Next click the “Check” link next to SEO, which is found under the PUBLISH section in the right sidebar (I attached a screenshot for you) 3. Click the GENERAL tab (Another screenshot is… Read more »
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.
I’m having the same problem! Your instructions worked like a charm on my first website 9 months ago. 🙂 But I can’t get pins from the new website to validate. It tells me that I’m missing documentation even though the Open Graph Data is checked. And I also even went into the post, checked to make sure I did the SEO information, and updated the post, made sure to connect to Pinterest and Facebook in the Accounts tab of Yoast, but still no luck. Hmm… I read your other article about Pinterest and now I’m suspecting that it won’t validate… Read more »
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.
I got it to work! I’m not certain, but I think the trick was that I needed to resave my permalinks after having installed a plugin – possibly the Yoast SEO plugin itself or maybe you need to save permalinks after some of the settings you make in Yoast SEO but before you try to verify on Pinterest. For others that might be learning from comments :), to do that, on the WordPress Dashboard go to > Settings > Permalinks. You don’t have to actually make any changes, just click > Save Changes. Then try to verify your page URL… Read more »
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!
Glad to share as your tutorial really helped me and I find I can solve problems by reading comments. 🙂 I will be eager to hear if resaving the permlinks solves the problem for someone else. I actually stumbled across this because when I tried to generate my XML sitemap I got a 404 error and found the solution to that was to resave my permalinks. It might be the difference from trying to get rich pins on a site that’s been running Yoast SEO for awhile, and one where you’re trying to get rich pins AS you’re working on… Read more »
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.
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, Katie! I, too, appreciate the E.S. Ivy took the time to post this troubleshooting tip. Glad that you have been validated! 🙂
You’re welcome!
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!
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!
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.
Christian, now I see what you’re saying! You’re right, the featured image is not showing up in the list of images when you click the Pin button from the post link.I couldn’t pin directly from that post. I had to go to http://www.christiankonline.com/blog/ and scroll through your posts in order to pin that image. I’m wondering if it has to do with the theme? I think a work-around could be to embed the featured image directly into the post (which you may or may not want to do.) I’ve seen others do that on their blogs. That way, it would… Read more »
@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!
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!
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 🙂
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.
Kristen, I’ve done some digging around and I think we might have found the missing piece of the puzzle for product rich pins. In addition to WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin, there is an Add-Meta-Tag plugin you might need to use. It’s found at http://wordpress.org/plugins/add-meta-tags/ and helps you set up your metatags for product price, etc. Check out this great article: https://www.bootchkas.com/rich-pin-poor-pin-make-rich-pins-pinterest/. Scroll down to the Open Graph section of the post and see how he sets up his Open Graph code in the Meta Tags box. You can probably copy the codes you need and embed that in the… Read more »
Thanks so much for all of your help! I REALLY appreciate it!! I took a look at the article you posted and it was definitely helpful. I added in the meta tags using the Add Meta Tags plugin and the pin validation is showing duplicate categories for “Product Name,” “Price,” and “Currency” one of which has the correct information and one of which is missing. I’m assuming one is pulling info from the Yoast plugin and one is pulling info from the Add Meta Tags plugin. I’m not sure if this is still ok and would work to allow my… Read more »
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!
Nicole, in your earlier reply you mentioned you were validated. So I’m wondering what changed? There are 5 rich pin types: product, recipe, movie, article or place. Each type has it’s own spec. With mark-up for article rich pins as described in my post, I believe the product has to have its own url, but would probably be validated as an article rich pin. For example, what would happen if you tried to validate the following: http://www.campaignfurniture.us/shop/peyton-campaign-dresser/ with the current mark-up? Anyway, sorry for any confusion and the challenges you’re facing; I can try and help you figure this out… Read more »
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!