How to Claim Your Website on Pinterest and Enable Rich Pins

To claim your website on Pinterest, open the Claimed accounts section of your business account settings, choose Claim next to Websites, and verify your domain with an HTML meta tag, an uploaded HTML file or a DNS TXT record. Then add Open Graph article tags to your posts so Pinterest can show Article Rich Pins across your site.

This guide is part of our step-by-step guide to Pinterest for blogging. It covers the technical setup most bloggers skip: proving you own your site, turning on Rich Pins and, for anyone running a hand-coded or PHP site, the exact tags and Save button code to add.

Why should you claim your website and use Rich Pins?

Claiming tells Pinterest that you own the domain. Pinterest says it gives you insight into how often content from your site gets shared, and for a blogger that adds up to three practical benefits:

• Analytics for your site. You can see how pins linking to your domain perform, including pins other people save from your pages.
• Attribution. Pins saved from your site are tied to your profile, so people who find them can find and follow you.
• A verified website on your profile. A claimed domain makes a new account look established and trustworthy.

Rich Pins build on top of that. Article Rich Pins pull the headline, author and description from your page, so a pin carries accurate context even when someone saves it without writing a word. Update your page's metadata, and new saves follow it.

What do you need before you start?

• A Pinterest business account. Claiming is a business feature, so set up a free business account first if you are still on a personal one.
• A finished profile. Claiming makes the most sense once your name, bio and boards are ready, and our guide to setting up your profile and boards covers that.
• Your own domain, such as yourblog.com, plus a way to change it: access to your site's head section, its web server files, or your domain's DNS settings.
• Your preferred site address. Decide whether your blog uses www or not, make sure it loads on https, and use that exact version everywhere.
• About 20 to 30 minutes, plus some waiting time while Pinterest checks your site.

Which claim method should you use?

Pinterest's own help page on claiming your website lists four options: an HTML tag, an HTML file, a DNS TXT record, or a connection to Google Merchant Center for online stores. For most bloggers, the choice comes down to the first three.

For bloggers, the meta tag is my default. It is quick to add, easy to check in your page source, and Pinterest can confirm it right away. Choose the DNS record if your site builder will not let you edit the head section, or if you switch themes often and do not want to redo the claim.

Claim the root domain

Enter your root domain, for example boredlisted.com, rather than a single post URL or a tracking link. That way pins linking to any page on the site count toward your claimed domain. If your blog lives on a subdomain (blog.example.com) or a subfolder (example.com/blog), Pinterest's business community team says those can be claimed too, as long as you can add the verification code to that part of the site.

How do you claim your website on Pinterest, step by step?

1. Log in to your Pinterest business account in a desktop browser.
2. Open Settings from the menu at the top right, then go to Claimed accounts.
3. Select Claim next to Websites.
4. Choose Add HTML tag, Upload HTML file or Add TXT record, and copy the code Pinterest gives you.
5. Add the code to your site or DNS using the instructions below, then clear any site or CDN cache.
6. Return to Pinterest, enter your website URL and continue. Pinterest checks your site and marks the domain as claimed or pending.

Menu labels shift from time to time, so if a name above has changed, follow the current wording on Pinterest's help page. The meta tag looks like this, with your own code in place of the example value:

<meta name="p:domain_verify" content="1a2b3c4d5e6f7a8b9c0d"/>

On WordPress

• SEO plugin field. Yoast SEO and Rank Math both include a Pinterest site verification field (in Yoast, look under Settings, then Site connections; in Rank Math, under General Settings, then Webmaster Tools). Paste the full tag or just the code, whichever the field asks for.
• Header code plugin. A plugin that inserts code into the head section, such as WPCode, works with any theme.
• Theme file. Pasting into header.php works, but a theme update can wipe it. If you go this route, use a child theme.

Plugin menus change between versions, so check the plugin's documentation if you cannot find the field.

On custom, hand-coded or PHP sites

Paste the meta tag inside the head section of the template every page shares, such as your main layout or header file, not a single page. Then open your homepage, view the page source and search for p:domain_verify to confirm it is there before you continue in Pinterest.

For the HTML file method, upload Pinterest's file to your public web root (the folder that serves your homepage) and check that it opens in a browser at yourdomain.com/ followed by the file name.

With a DNS TXT record

Log in to the company that manages your domain's DNS, such as your registrar (Namecheap or GoDaddy, for example) or a DNS host like Cloudflare. Add a new TXT record with the host set to @ (meaning the root domain) and paste Pinterest's value, which starts with pinterest-site-verification=. It is the same kind of record you add to verify Google Search Console, and the two can sit side by side.

How do you enable Pinterest Rich Pins for your articles?

Pinterest offers Rich Pins for articles, products and recipes. Bloggers want article Rich Pins, which show your headline, author and description with the pin, pulled straight from tags on your page.

Step 1: Add Open Graph article tags

Rich Pins read standard Open Graph metadata (or schema.org markup) from your page. Most WordPress SEO plugins already output Open Graph tags, so check a post's source for og:title before adding anything. These are the tags that matter for articles:

A solid on-page SEO checklist asks for the same tags, because other platforms use them for link previews too.

Step 2: Test one URL

Rich Pins work at the domain level: once Pinterest accepts the metadata on one of your URLs, the format applies to pins from across your domain. In the past, you ran a post through the Pinterest Rich Pin validator and clicked Apply. Pinterest's business community team has since said there is no need to enable Rich Pins manually, because the information is now taken from your website automatically, and many accounts no longer see the validator.

So test it the practical way. Pick one published post, create a pin with the Save from URL option, paste the post URL and publish without typing your own title or description. If the pin shows your headline and site name pulled from the page, your Article Rich Pins are working. If your account still offers the validator, running the same URL through it is a quick extra check.

Step 3: Let the metadata do its job

According to the same community answer, Pinterest keeps any title and description you type into a pin instead of using your page's metadata. That is fine for pins you design for search, but it means a pin with a hand-written title will not show your article headline. Keep your og:title and meta description strong, because those are what people see on pins others save from your site.

Developer guide: Rich Pin tags and a Save button for PHP sites

If your blog runs on a custom PHP setup instead of WordPress, you add two things to your templates: the article metadata in the head, and optionally the Pinterest Save button script.

Output the article tags from your page data

Generate the tags in your shared head template from each post's own fields, and escape every value so a quote mark in a title cannot break your HTML:

<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:title" content="<?= htmlspecialchars($post['title'], ENT_QUOTES) ?>">
<meta property="og:description" content="<?= htmlspecialchars($post['meta_description'], ENT_QUOTES) ?>">
<meta property="og:url" content="<?= htmlspecialchars($canonicalUrl, ENT_QUOTES) ?>">
<meta property="og:image" content="<?= htmlspecialchars($post['featured_image_url'], ENT_QUOTES) ?>">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Your Blog Name">
<meta property="article:author" content="<?= htmlspecialchars($post['author_name'], ENT_QUOTES) ?>">
<meta property="article:published_time" content="<?= date('c', strtotime($post['published_at'])) ?>">

Use og:type article only on posts. Your homepage and category pages should use website instead.

Add the Pinterest Save button

The Pinterest Save button lets readers pin your images straight from your page. Pinterest's Save button documentation says to load its pinit.js script once per page, just above the closing body tag, and to leave it off pages that have no Pinterest buttons. To show a Save button when someone hovers over an image, add data-pin-hover to the script:

<script async defer src="https://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js" data-pin-hover="true"></script>

Then control what gets pinned with attributes on your images:

<img src="/images/claim-website-pin.jpg" alt="How to claim your website on Pinterest" data-pin-description="How to claim your website on Pinterest and turn on Rich Pins">
<img src="/images/logo.svg" alt="Site logo" data-pin-nopin="true">

The first attribute sets the description that fills in when someone saves that image. The second stops logos and icons from showing a Save button. A note for sites with UK or EU visitors: pinit.js is a third-party script, so check whether your cookie consent setup needs to cover it before loading it for everyone.

How we set it up on Boredlisted

Boredlisted runs on a custom PHP setup, so it follows the hand-coded route:

• The p:domain_verify tag sits in the shared layout head, so it appears on the homepage and every other page.
• The claimed site is the root domain, boredlisted.com, not a www version or a post URL.
• Each article's og:title, og:description, og:image and article:published_time come from the same fields that fill the post's title, meta description, featured image and publish date, with article:author set to the byline, Denjie Garcia.
• pinit.js with hover buttons loads only on article templates, and logos and icons carry data-pin-nopin.

Because the tags come from fields every post already has for search, there is nothing extra to remember when a new article goes live.

What if your claim is stuck or Rich Pins are not showing?

Most problems come down to Pinterest not seeing what you added. Work through this table from the top.

To check your tags quickly, view the page source and search for og:, or run the post through our free SEO page audit tool to see the title and description your page actually outputs.

What results should you expect?

Once the claim succeeds, your website shows as claimed in your account settings, and Pinterest Analytics can show you how content from your site performs. New pins that link to your posts display your headline and site name pulled from the page.

Pinterest does not promise a traffic lift from either step, so treat this as groundwork rather than a growth hack. It makes every future pin more accurate and gives you the data to see what works. Before you move on, confirm these four things:

• The verification tag or TXT record is in place and the root domain is claimed
• Every post outputs og:type article plus a title, description, image and URL
• One test pin saved from a post URL shows your headline
• The Save button script loads only on pages that use it