How to Claim Your Website on Pinterest
Claiming your website is one of those five-minute setup steps that quietly unlocks a lot. It tells Pinterest that a domain belongs to you, connects every pin from that site back to your profile, and is the gateway to analytics, attribution, and rich pins. Here's why it's worth doing and the three ways to do it.
Why bother claiming your site
Without a claim, pins from your website float around Pinterest with no confirmed owner. Claiming ties them to your account and switches on features you can't get otherwise:
- Attribution: Your name and profile picture appear on every pin that links to your domain, even ones other people saved from your site.
- Full analytics: You see impressions, saves, and outbound clicks for all your content, not just the pins you personally published.
- Rich pins eligibility: Claiming is a prerequisite for enabling rich pins, which pull live titles, prices, or article metadata onto your pins.
The three ways to claim
All three live under Settings → Claimed accounts. You only need one to succeed, so pick the method that matches your comfort level and platform:
- HTML tag: Pinterest gives you a single
<meta>tag. Paste it into your site's<head>section. Most SEO plugins and site builders have a dedicated field for exactly this — it's the fastest route for WordPress users. - HTML file upload: Download a small verification file from Pinterest and upload it to your site's root directory (so it's reachable at yoursite.com/filename). Good if you have FTP or file access but no easy header field.
- DNS TXT record: Add a TXT record with the value Pinterest provides to your domain's DNS settings. This is the most durable method — it survives theme changes and site migrations — but it's the most technical and can take a little time to propagate.
After you claim: verify and enable rich pins
Once you submit a method, Pinterest checks it — the HTML tag and file usually verify within minutes, while DNS can take longer to propagate. When the domain shows as claimed, your next move is rich pins. Because your metadata is already on the site, you validate a single article or product URL in Pinterest's rich pin validator and the feature turns on across your whole domain. In practice, claiming and rich pins are a two-step combo: the claim establishes ownership, and rich pins put that ownership to work by pulling live data onto every pin.
Common snags
A few things trip people up. If verification fails, double-check that the tag went into the site-wide header and not just one page's body, and confirm the uploaded file sits at the domain root rather than in a subfolder. For DNS, remember records don't update instantly — give it a few hours before assuming it broke. And if you moved from a subdomain to a custom domain, you may need to claim the new one fresh, since Pinterest treats them as separate.
Now make those tracked pins rank
Claiming gives you the data. PinRank gives you the keywords and SEO score to improve it — free, no login.
Open PinRank →Frequently asked questions
Do I need a business account to claim a website?
Yes — claiming lives in the business account settings. Converting a personal account to business is free and takes a few minutes.
Can I claim more than one website?
Yes. Pinterest lets you claim multiple domains on the same account, which is useful if you run several sites or shops.
Which claiming method is best?
The HTML tag is fastest for most people, while a DNS TXT record is the most durable since it survives theme and platform changes. Any single method that verifies is enough.