I’m a big fan of Pinterest and recently when I went to check out my pins Pinterest asked me to verify my own Web site.. How do I do that?
However fancy things are now, Pinterest is still really a bookmarking tool. As such, wouldn’t it be useful for you to know when other people “Pin” or bookmark pages from your site? You could then see which content is proving most interesting to the online world. Darn useful, whether you’re a hardcore marketing person or just curious about which of your blog posts gets the most shares.
If you’ve validated your site ownership for Google Analytics you’ll know how to proceed with Pinterest too. Basically the requirement is that you prove that you own the site by being able to either add something to the home page or actually upload a file to the home directory of the site. But let’s not talk about it, let’s do it!
To start, here’s the message you got. I know, because I’ve got the same message on my own Pinterest account:
To proceed, well, click on “Claim your website”. Makes sense, right?
Even though you likely have your Web site already specified in your bio, Pinterest asks again for your site URL:
You don’t need to worry about https versus http, just enter the base URL, as shown above.
A click on “Next” and you’ll find that there are two options for validation:
If you’re comfortable editing your own Web pages and have access, adding an HTML tag to your home page can be easier to accomplish and it’s really just a copy and paste task. But downloading a file and uploading it to your server is probably pretty darn easy too, so let’s do that. Choose “Upload HTML file” and click “Next“…
Download the file, then use your Cpanel, SFTP or other interface to be able to upload it to your own Web server. Not sure how to do that? You might find that emailing your site admin or web hosting support team can accomplish the task too!
Once you’ve done that, click “Next” again and you’ll get this update…
Click on the “Submit” button and you’ll have to wait 24 hours to hear back. Right? Well, not so much. I found that I received an email message within less than 2 minutes of submitting my site ownership verification for review.
Once done and approved, I now see this cheery message:
That’s it. Now check out your new analytics and relish the extra information you’ll be able to access!
Pro Tip: Please follow us on Pinterest and while you’re here, also check out all our Pinterest help too.
