How to Add a Pinterest Button

Getting your amazing content onto Pinterest should be simple, and a 'Save' button is the most direct way to make that happen. Adding a Pinterest button to your website empowers your audience to become brand advocates, saving your images, products, and articles directly to their own boards with a single click. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add Pinterest buttons to your site, covering the easiest plugin methods for WordPress and the official manual approach that works for any platform.

Why a Pinterest Button is a Must-Have for Your Website

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." A simple button might not seem like much, but it's a small change that delivers big results. Pinterest isn't just another visual discovery engine where users actively plan purchases, find inspiration, and save ideas for later. Having a presence there is powerful.

• Effortless Content Sharing: It removes all friction. Instead of a visitor having to manually save your image, find the URL, and create a Pin themselves, they just click. The easier you make it, the more people will do it.
• Durable, Evergreen Traffic: Unlike a tweet or a Facebook post that disappears in a few hours, a Pin can drive traffic for months or even years. Every time someone saves your content, it gets exposed to their followers, continuing a cycle of discovery that brings new visitors back to your site long after you've published the content.
• Boosts SEO and Domain Authority: Every Pin links back to your website. While the SEO value of social links is often debated, a high volume of quality links from a trusted domain like Pinterest sends positive signals to search engines about your website's credibility.
• Builds Social Proof: When a user sees that your images or products have been pinned multiple times, it acts as a user-generated testimonial. It signals that other people find your content valuable, which builds trust and encourages more people to engage.

Understanding the Different Types of Pinterest Buttons

First off, it's helpful to know that Pinterest offers a few different types of buttons or 'widgets' you can add to your site. The two you'll almost certainly want to consider are the Save Button and the Follow Button.

The Save Button

This is the classic "Pin It" button that most people think of. When a user hovers over an image on your website, this small button appears, usually in a corner of the image. When clicked, it opens the Pinterest interface, allowing the user to save that specific image (linked back to your page) to one of their boards. This is the functionality that directly turns your website content into Pins.

The Follow Button

The Follow Button is different. It's a static button that you place somewhere on your site - like in your sidebar, header, or footer - that directly links to your Pinterest profile. Its goal isn't to save a specific piece of content, but to encourage visitors to follow your entire Pinterest account to see your future content. It's great for growing your overall follower base on the platform.

For this guide, we'll focus primarily on adding the Save Button, as it’s the most dynamic tool for spreading your content, but the methods shown for installing it can easily be adapted for the Follow Button, too.

Method 1: The Easy Way for WordPress Using Plugins

If your website is built on WordPress, you're in luck. Using a plugin is by far the simplest and fastest way to get Pinterest Save buttons on all your images without touching a single line of code. There are several great plugins out there, but they all generally follow the same setup process.

Step 1: Choose and Install a Social Sharing Plugin

Most modern social sharing plugins include Pinterest integration by default. You don't need a "Pinterest-only" plugin. Plugins like Shared Counts or Social Warfare are excellent, lightweight options that handle this beautifully.

To start, log in to your WordPress dashboard:

1. Navigate to Plugins >, Add New.
2. In the search bar, type the name of the plugin you want to use (e.g., "Shared Counts").
3. Once you find it, click "Install Now" and then "Activate."

Step 2: Configure the Plugin Settings

Once activated, you'll find the plugin's settings, usually in your main WordPress sidebar or under the "Settings" menu. This is where you'll tell the plugin how you want your buttons to behave.

• Select Your Networks: Look for an option to choose which social networks you want to display. Make sure Pinterest is enabled.
• Choose Button Location: Most plugins let you automatically add sharing buttons before your content, after your content, or as a "floating" sidebar that follows the user as they scroll. Enabling sharing on images is often a separate toggle.
• Enable "On-Image" Pins: This is the key setting. Look for an option called something like "Show Pinterest 'Save' Button on Image Hover," "Pinterest Image Pins," or "Media Sharing." Turn this on.
• Customize the Appearance: You can often choose the shape, size, and color of the buttons to match your branding. For the on-image button, you might be able to set its position (e.g., top-left, center).

Step 3: Save and Verify

Hit "Save Changes" in the plugin settings. Then, open your website in a new tab (or in an incognito window) and navigate to a blog post with images. Hover your mouse over one of the images. You should now see a Pinterest "Save" button appear automatically. That's it! The plugin will now add this button to every image on your site without you having to do anything else.

Method 2: The Universal Way for Any Website Using Pinterest's Widget Builder

If you're not on WordPress, or you want more direct control without a plugin, you can use Pinterest’s official tool. The Pinterest Widget Builder is a free tool that generates the code you need to paste directly into your website's HTML. This method works for Squarespace, Shopify, Wix, Webflow, custom-coded sites - any platform that allows you to add custom HTML and JavaScript.

Step 1: Go to the Pinterest Widget Builder

You can find the tool easily by searching for "Pinterest Widget Builder" or navigating directly to developers.pinterest.com/tools/widget-builder/. Once there, you'll see options to create several types of buttons.

Step 2: Generate the Code for Your Save Button

1. Click on the "Save Button" option.
2. Choose Your Button Type: You have a few options for how the button appears. The best choice for most people is "Image hover." This makes the button appear only when a user's cursor is over an image, keeping your site design clean. The other options are to have a button for one specific image or show a button for any image on the page.
3. Customize the Appearance (Optional): You can select a round or rectangular button and choose a large or small size.
4. Get the Code: The tool will generate two pieces of code. The first is a line of HTML that triggers the button, and the second is a JavaScript file that should be included once on your site.

The code will look something like this:

<,!-- Code part 2 - Place this script right before your closing <,/body>, tag -->,
<,script async defer src="//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js">,<,/script>,


Step 3: Add the Code to Your Website

This is the part that can feel a bit technical, but it’s quite manageable. You only need to add the JavaScript line (part 2 of the code) to your website once.

• Your website should have a template or theme file that includes code for every page. The best place to add the <,script>, line is right before the closing <,/body>, tag in your site's main HTML file.
• On Squarespace: Go to Settings >, Advanced >, Code Injection. Paste the <,script>, line into the "Footer" section.
• On Shopify: Go to Online Store >, Themes >, Actions >, Edit Code. Find the file named theme.liquid. Scroll to the bottom and paste the <,script>, tag just above the <,/body>, tag.
• On a custom website: Open your main template file (often index.html or footer.php) and again, paste it right before <,/body>,.

Once you've added this script, the Pinterest "Save on Image Hover" functionality will be enabled across your entire site. You do not need to add any other code. As long as that one script is installed in your footer, it will automatically find the images on your pages and add the hover button.

Best Practices for Pinterest-Friendly Images

Simply adding the button isn't enough. You need to make sure your content is worth pinning in the first place. Here are a few tips to make your images and your website more appealing to Pinterest users.

• Use Vertical Images: Pinterest is a vertically-oriented platform. Images with a 2:3 aspect ratio (e.g., 1000 x 1500 pixels) perform best because they take up more screen space and are more visually appealing in the Pinterest feed. Create at least one pinnable, vertical image for every blog post or product page.
• Optimize Your Alt Descriptions: When a user pins an image from your site, Pinterest automatically pulls the image's "alt text" to use as the default Pin description. Don't leave this blank! Write a descriptive, keyword-rich sentence that describes the image and what the linked content is about. This is a huge opportunity for a little extra SEO on both Google and Pinterest.
• Include Your Logo or URL on Images: Subtly add your website URL or logo to the bottom of your vertical images. This ensures that even if the source link somehow gets broken, your brand is still attached to the content as it circulates on Pinterest.
• Place Main Images Near the Top: Encourage saving by placing your most compelling, pinnable image "above the fold" - meaning, visible without the user having to scroll down too far.

Final Thoughts

Adding a Pinterest Save button is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort marketing moves you can make for your website. Whether you use a simple plugin on WordPress or copy-paste a small snippet of code from Pinterest's official tool, you’re turning your site into a powerful source of evergreen content that drives growth and traffic around the clock.

Just as a 'Save' button removes friction for your website visitors, our goal is to eliminate friction from your entire social media management workflow. At Postbase, we built our tool around a beautiful visual calendar that lets you see and plan your content strategy across every platform at a glance. Instead of juggling multiple tabs and logins, you can schedule everything in one clean, reliable space and be confident it will publish exactly as planned.