Have you seen the little red check marks popping up all over Pinterest? They signify some great news for you as a business builder! If you've followed me for any length of time, you know I LOVE Pinterest! And in my mind, this new feature just makes it better than ever. I am going to share how you verify your Pinterest account and why you absolutely can't wait!
In the past, when you added a website to your Pinterest profile, it was a bit buried. If people wanted to find more about you or your business, they'd have to click on the little icon of Earth on your about page. It was there, but honestly it wasn't the best set up for encouraging people to click over.
With the new verification feature, Pinterest has created a way for you to confirm you're the owner of your website, and once you have verified your site, Pinterest will display your URL up on the top of your about section with a little red check mark signifying that it's verified.
By having your URL where it's actually visible as people browse your pins, you're able to more effectively brand yourself and your business, increase your audience and attract more leads and customers to your website.
I told you this was great news, right? <grin> But it gets even better and I'll tell you about that in a minute! But first – let me walk you through the how-to, because there's a reason you want to get to this RIGHT NOW and not to wait!
Here's how to verify your website on Pinterest: Log into your Pinterest account however you normally do, through Twitter or Facebook. Click on your profile and go down to Settings. Once your Settings page opens, go down to the bottom of the page where you've added your website URL to your profile. (and if you haven't done this, add it now!). To the right of your website will be a button that says "Verify Website" (click it).
A new page will appear with the verification instructions. Just to make it easy, leave that page open as you verify your website.
Click the words "Download the HTML verification file" in the first step. I recommend that you put it someplace easy to find like the desktop. (If you forget to do this, it's likely in your Downloads folder)
Upload the file to your server. This sounds complicated – it's not that bad, I promise you. And if you do run into problems, there's a way to work with the Pinterest support folks to get some help. But it's not that bad, and it's much faster to do it yourself (or have your web person do it for you if you have one). Most likely your web hosting came with web-based access to an FTP server (FTP stands for file transfer protocol), and it's how you move files onto the server where all of the files that make up your website are stored. You'll want to upload the file to the main domain, not a sub-folder. Also, you can only use this feature for top-level domains (like www.kimgarst.com) and not subdomains. If your site is an ecommerce site on someone else's site (like an eBay store), you won't be able to do this because you can't upload files to their servers.
Once you have uploaded the file to your site, head back to that page I suggested you leave open and click where it says "Click here to complete the process." Pinterest will then check your website for the bit of code they gave you, once it finds it, you'll see that nice little red checkmark with the words "Website Verified" in your profile.
Take a look at your About section, and you'll get the view that others get, with your website right up there along with that red checkmark.
The #1 SEO Reason To Verify Your Website on Pinterest TODAY
Now, I mentioned earlier that you won't want to delay verifying your Pinterest account, and here's why. If you've been building your website online for a while and boosting your visibility, you know that having inbound links (links into your site from other sites) is a huge boost for your placement in a Google search. The link to your site from Pinterest (a high-authority site) definitely helps your SEO all by itself and will continue to do so.
But… time is currently of the essence because the HTML code generated appears to be a special kind of HTML link called a "do follow" code rather than just any kind of link. This piece of code actually tells Google specifically to go follow that link when it is crawling the web. It's not clear if Pinterest will leave these as "Do Follow" links or will change this, so I would advise you to verify your website NOW and reap the SEO benefit from this special kind of link before it gets changed.
Pinterest continues to be a great source of engagement and traffic for business owners of all sorts – I see it every day among my coaching clients! Let this new feature boost your ranking and business. Go verify your website with Pinterest and leave a note in the comments saying "Done!"
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I am not sure you can do this? Have you tried it yet?
Ooh, I do think there might be a way to verify if one can change the HTML of a site, not sure. That expands the opportunity to more bloggers, etc.
I’m trying to verify my account but the confirmation email never gets to my inbox or junk box.
Thanks for short out my few doubts.
Cool. Works with me.!