How to Claim (Verify) Your Website on Pinterest

You’ve been pinning your blog posts and portfolio galleries for months, and you’ve got a nagging feeling you skipped a setup step somewhere. Maybe you saw “claim your website” in your Pinterest settings and thought, I’ll deal with that later. Here’s the good news: it takes about five minutes, and once it’s done, Pinterest starts working a lot harder for you. Let me walk you through it.

What “claiming” your website even means

Claiming (Pinterest also calls it verifying) is just you telling Pinterest, “yep, this website is really mine.” You prove it by dropping a little code onto your site — kind of like showing ID at the door. It’s the same idea as verifying a domain in Flodesk, if you’ve done that for your email. One small technical step, one big payoff.

And the payoff is real. Here’s what claiming actually unlocks:

• Analytics on your Pins. You get to see how every Pin from your site is doing — impressions, saves, clicks. Not just the ones you pinned yourself, but any time someone else pins a photo straight off your website. That’s gold when you’re trying to figure out what’s landing.
• Your profile picture on those Pins. When anyone pins something from your site, your little profile photo shows up right next to it — with a follow option. So a bride-to-be who saves your venue photos knows exactly who took them.
• Attribution and more reach. Pinterest connects that content back to your profile, which tells the platform you’re the source. More trust, more distribution.

Basically, you go from being invisible to being the credited creator. Worth five minutes, right?

The step-by-step (this is the whole thing)

First things first — you need a Pinterest business account, not a personal one. If you’re still on personal, you can convert it for free in your settings, and honestly you should; the business tools are the whole point.

Then here’s the flow. (Pinterest tweaks these menu labels now and then, so if a word’s slightly different, you’re still in the right neighborhood.)

1. Click your profile icon in the top right, then head to Settings.
2. Look for Claimed accounts in the side menu.
3. Next to Websites, click Claim, and type in your domain.
4. Pick how you want to verify. Pinterest gives you three options, and you only need one:
   • Add an HTML tag — a snippet of code that goes in your site’s <head> (the most common route, and the one I’ll cover for WordPress below).
   • Upload an HTML file — you download a little file from Pinterest and drop it into your site’s root folder.
   • Add a DNS TXT record — a code you paste into your domain host’s settings (heads up, this one can take a while to kick in, sometimes a few days).
5. Once your code’s in place, come back to Pinterest and hit Verify.

That’s it. With the HTML tag method it usually confirms quickly. The DNS route is the slow one, so if you’re impatient like me, go with the tag.

The WordPress-friendly way to add the code

If the words “add this to your site’s <head>” made your stomach drop a little — deep breath. You do not need to touch your theme files or know a lick of code.

Grab a free plugin like WPCode or Insert Headers and Footers. Once it’s installed, you’ll see a spot labeled something like “Header” or “Scripts in Header.” Paste the HTML tag Pinterest gave you right there, save, and you’re done. The plugin tucks the code into every page’s <head> for you, exactly where Pinterest wants it — no editing header.php, no risk of breaking anything.

Then pop back over to Pinterest, click Verify, and watch that little checkmark appear. (I get a weirdly big kick out of that checkmark every time.)

One tip: don’t paste the code twice. If your theme or another plugin already has a “Pinterest verification” field built in, use that instead of WPCode — not on top of it. Two tags can confuse the verification.

Once you’re claimed, keep the momentum

Claiming is step one. The real magic happens when your Pins are actually built to travel — good vertical images, keyword-rich descriptions, links straight back to the right pages. That’s where a claimed site plus smart pinning turns into steady traffic. I break the whole thing down in my post on optimizing your blog for Pinterest, so start there once your checkmark’s in place.

If you got to the plugin step and quietly closed the laptop — I see you, and it’s okay. Wrangling code snippets and WordPress settings is exactly the kind of thing my monthly support plans exist for. You stay focused on the work you love, and I’ll keep the techy bits humming behind the scenes. Let’s take it off your plate!