Open Graph (OG) tags are meta tags that give you control over how your content is shared over social media, like Twitter and Facebook.

Why Are OG Tags Important?

They allow you to specify the title, description, image, etc. when you post a url to a social channel.

Content that uses OG tags are more likely to receive engagement. OG tags structure information and images, making the content much more appealing in a news feed.

How Do They Work?

OG tags are coded into the header section of a page. Here is an example of what OG tags look like for a Bed & Breakfast business:

WordPress sites have the advantage of access to plugins like Open Graph Metabox, which make adding OG tags and meta information a straightforward experience.

Using OG Tags Across Social Media Platforms

All major social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter use the OG protocol.

Each also uses its own set of specifications for tags. For example, Facebook states that OG descriptions should be between 2 and 4 sentences, while LinkedIn has a specific limit of 256 characters.

5 Things To Remember

Remember these 5 things when you are using OG tags with your content marketing:

1. Check the specifications of the social media sites you plan on posting to. Facebook for example requires that images be a minimum of 200×200 pixels.
2. Write your tag content for human eyes, not Google. OG tags compliment SEO, but ultimately it will be people who you want to like and share your content. Give them a reason to.
3. Use the tag og:ttl to control how often a crawler, like the one used by Facebook, checks your shared pages for new content.
4. Use the tags og:title, og:description, og:url, og:image and og:site_name to control how your content appears on social media and the tags og:type, og:locale and article:author to control how your content is classified, which can help improve social sharing.
5. Finally, some social media sites like Facebook have URL debug tools that you should use to make sure that your Open Graph tags are ready to go.

In the end, the more OG tags tags you use, the more control you have over how your content is displayed to users.

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Nick Seebruch

I am an External writer at ShoutEx. My interest lie in marketing, communications and journalism