My husband loves dinner parties. Last minute dinner parties, to be exact. I eat, he cooks (except for desserts), therefore I’m glad for whatever dinner is made and if friends join, well, even better! Until. Until I decided that I wanted to start making desserts other than brownies from a box.
With a last minute dinner party beckoning and my desire for baking in high gear I scrambled to my iPad to look for recipes for things I had in the cupboards. Immediately I found a link to a Pinterest board of “no-bake cheesecake” (Yum!). Here I instantly received all the info I was looking for – ingredients (yes, I have cream cheese, no double cream though), prep time, cook time, servings, and instructions. Man, that was easy! So easy that I now want to share how any company website can implement these lovely recipe rich pins for Pinterest so you can hook recipe hunters like me.
Overview of the Rich Pin for Pinterest
Recipe Rich Pins on Pinterest include ingredients, cooking times, and serving info in order to optimally get Pinterest cooks excited and ready to immediately hit the kitchen. Recipe search filters help Pinners narrow in on vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, indulgent meal ideas, and more.
Recipe Rich Pins enable a Pinterest user to see more detailed information about the recipe without being forced to leave Pinterest. This increases the likelihood of the Pinner using the recipe and sharing the Pin themselves, expanding the visibility of that Recipe Rich Pin.
Recipe Rich Pins can be blog posts for recipes from chefs, drink recipes, and/or text versions of infographics.
Recipe Rich Pin from Epicurious:
Requirements
There are two main requirements to having Recipe Rich Pins on Pinterest: implementing the necessary markup on the recipe page / blog so the pin can function as a rich pin, and applying to Pinterest to have Recipe Rich Pins through your Pinterest Business Account – and yes, it must be a business account. Both requirements are detailed below.
Implement Recipe Rich Pin Markup
There are two options for Rich Pin Recipe markup – schema markup and hRecipe formats. I recommend implementing schema markup as this is also beneficial for SEO, enough said.
Schema can be added to pre-existing recipe blogs and recipe pages and should be added to each new one as they’re written. Each blog that is eligible for Rich pin schema will need to have the schema implemented on the post itself. Schema markup does not change the look of the page or text. Schema can be implemented by a blog author by selecting the HTML editor and pasting the appropriate schema around the text in the HTML.
Schema Markup for Recipe Rich Pins
Below is an overview of schema recipe markup supported by Pinterest. Each field details what the markup code is, what it relates to, and if it is required or not for the recipe pin to work as a Rich Recipe Pin. The schema should be implemented prior to Pinterest’s acceptance of your Rich Pin application.
Schema Types and Requirement:
Field |
Description |
Required? |
OG Sitename Markup |
This is the open graph declaration that social networks use to gather information about the site. |
Y |
Schema Declaration |
This informs website crawlers (such as search engines or social media networks) that schema markup is beginning and what type of schema markup is implemented |
Y |
Name |
Title of the recipe. All formatting and HTML tags will be removed. Long titles may be truncated on Pinterest for display purposes. |
Y |
Ingredients |
Ingredients used in the recipe. Annotate each individual ingredient separately. |
Y |
URL |
Canonical URL for the page, e.g. “http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-white-cake/” (The canonical URL may also be specified with standard HTML head tags: <link rel=”canonical” href=”…”/>) |
N |
Image |
URL for a high resolution image for the recipe. Up to 6 images can be provided. |
N |
Cook Time |
Time it takes to cook the recipe, in ISO 8601 duration format. Not used in example |
N |
Prep Time |
Time it takes to prepare the recipe, in ISO 8601 duration format. |
N |
Total Time |
Total time it takes to cook and prepare the recipe, in ISO 8601 duration format. |
N |
Recipe Yield |
Quantity yielded or servings made by this recipe, e.g. “5 servings” or “Serves 4-6” or “Yields 10 burgers”. |
N |
Description |
Recipe description. This field is not displayed on Pinterest, but may be indexed for search purposes. |
N |
Aggregate Rating |
Recipe ratings as defined in http://schema.org/AggregateRating. |
N |
Related Item |
URL (must be the same domain) representing the related recipes. |
N |
An example of recipe and schema implementaion can be found at: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/.
Once rich pin schema has been added to a blog page, you must validate it here: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/validator/.
Apply for Rich Pins via Pinterest
Once schema is implemented on at least one recipe post and you’ve submitted the URL to validate the schema implementation, you may apply for rich pins on Pinterest through your Pinterest business account. After applying, it may take a few weeks for Pinterest to respond to your application – this is normal.
Your site only needs to apply with one page that has had recipe schema implemented on the page. Once Pinterest approves your application, Rich Pins will be enabled for all new Pins from your site.
More on Pinterst Recipe Rich Pins: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/
More on Schema Markup for Recipes: http://schema.org/Recipe
3. Review
Recipe Rich Pins can enhance the exposure of your recipe webpages and blogs by creating a more engaging recipe pin for Pinterest users. Below are the steps for implementation:
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Recipe Rich Pins for Pinterest are created by implementing recipe schema.org markup on the relevant webpage or blog.
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Once one webpage or blog has schema recipe markup implemented, this must be submitted to Pinterest to validate.
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Apply to Pinterest to have rich pins available for its site.
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Pinterest will then ensure the schema is implemented correctly and if it is, Pinterest will approve recipe rich pins for all pages that have recipe schema implemented and for all that will be created in the future.
That’s it! you’re on your way to having Pinners and Non-Pinners searching, finding and sharing your recipes like never before!