Open Graph Meta Tags
Open Graph Meta Tags are snippets of text that are used to communicate a page’s content with social media (such as Facebook and Twitter). It allows integration of your site and Facebook and tells what content shows up when you share a page on Facebook. They are slightly different than standard meta tags, which are used for Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Open Graph was introduced by Facebook in 2010. It was designed to integrate Facebook with other websites. It helped sites to become rich objects in the social graph; i.e., it allowed webpages to have the same functionality as other objects have on Facebook.
There are various Open Graph meta tags that help you control your pages on Facebook. They have different meanings and provide different information to Facebook so that your page could be displayed accurately on social media. Although these tags do not directly affect on-page SEO, they are directly linked with the performance of your links on social media.
Furthermore, Open Graph meta tags allow you to strengthen your current strategy; here’s how:
- They allow you to have more control over what social media sites gather from your links.
- It allows you to display your content accurately, which helps increase Click-Through Rates (CTRs).
There are plenty of open graph meta tags each provides specific information to Facebook. You can add these tags manually to your pages directly to the code on the page or through a CMS if fields are available or programmatically.
OPEN GRAPH Meta Tags types with description:
- 1) <meta property=“og:type” content=“article”/>
This tag is used to show the type of object you are incorporating into the social graph like facebook.com.
- 2) <meta property=“og:url” content=“http://www.example.com”/>
This tag is used to set the canonical URL for the page you are sharing with social media, i.e., incorporating a web page into Facebook, Twitter, etc. Once the web page is incorporated, it behaves like a social graph (Facebook) page and enjoys the same functionality of other social graph pages. Its use is recommended when you have more than one URL for the same content.
- 3) <meta property=“og:title” content=“your title”/>
This tag is used to show the title of your content. You can use this as a headline to appeal the Facebook users. You can also use a different title here as long as it reflects the same message. It is suggested to keep the length of title between 60 to 90 characters as if it exceeds 100 characters, the Facebook will truncate it.
- 4) <meta property=“og:description” content=“your descriptive copy”/>
This tag is similar to the meta description tag in HTML. It is also used to describe your content. It is displayed below the link title on Facebook, so make it compelling so that more people click on it. It is best to keep it around 200 characters long.
- 5) <meta property=“og:image” content= http://www.example.com/image-name.jpg>
This tag is used to specify the image that you want in the screenshot of your content on Facebook. Choose a square image for the best visibility in users’ timelines.
- 6) <meta property=“fb:admins” content=“USER_ID”/>
This tag helps you add admin id. Multiple admin ids can be added by using a separate tag for each admin ID.
- 7) <meta property=“og:site_name” content=www.example.com>
This tag is used to display the name of your website.
