What Are Open Graph Tags and Why Do They Matter?
Open Graph tags are meta tags that control how your page appears when someone shares it on social networks and chat apps: the og:title, og:description and og:image decide the title, text and thumbnail of the share card. They do not affect Google rankings directly, but ugly or missing share cards quietly kill referral traffic.
The two that do most of the work
- og:image: a 1200 by 630 image that represents the page. Without it, shares show a blank card or a random crop.
- og:title: usually your title tag, sometimes shortened for social.
Check yours free
Run the URL through the On-Page SEO Checker, which reports OG tag presence alongside the rest of the head checks, and the Schema Validator to confirm the structured data sits alongside the OG tags correctly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do OG tags affect SEO?
Indirectly. Better shares mean more visits and mentions.
One image for the whole site?
No. Per page images double the click through on shares.
Related reading
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