Here’s a quick tip on how to make your site’s images larger, more attractive and more descriptive for Pinterest.
As Pinterest explains in this blog post, most images on a website are coded the following way in HTML:
But with this image tag, it will show up as a tiny, 150 pixel wide image if someone tries to pin it. It will also lack a description other than “Brownies.” Another issue is the pin will link to the only URL Pinterest can find, sometimes linking back to the blog or websites’ home page instead of the specific post or article. This could mean that by the time someone clicks on the link, the blog post could be removed from the homepage, making it difficult to track.
To make your site’s images show up larger and prettier in Pinterest, along with more relevant descriptive text, here’s an example of what you need to do to your image tag:
data-pin-url=”http://myrecipes.com/brownies.html”
data-pin-media=”http://myrecipes.com/brownies_large.jpg”
data-pin-description=”Yummy gluten-free double-fudge brownies!”/>
Now, when site visitors want to pin an image from your site, they will have a better description for it (“Yummy gluten-free brownies!”) and the image will have a more attractive, larger display. Of course, you have to make sure its a nice image in the first place for it to show up well in a larger size. But a good thing to remember, especially if you have content that is highly visual and relevant to the majority of Pinterest users, who are female.
