Open Graph or og tags, are meta tags that live behind the scenes of a single page or multiple pages in your website. They perform a different task than the other meta tags in your website. There are other meta tags designed for search engine ranking and optimization, but these og tags are designed for visual display. For example, if you have ever tried to share the url of your website on facebook, the results can be shocking. Facebook tries its best to pick an image to display, as well as a title and description of your website. These robot choices are usually very far from what you’d expect.
So how do we tell Facebook or other social media, what you want to display when sharing your url? This is where og tags come in. Using these tags, you can create the exact title, description and image you want Facebook to display. These og tags will also create a nice photo and link when sharing your url in a text message.
Here is an example of what this looks like if you shared the url on Facebook….
What are the tag names?
Url tag
This sets the page you want users to see if they click on your post. Typically this is set to your homepage.
Image tag
This is the large image that appears after sharing your url. Facebook or other social media platforms will go out to the web to find this exact image that you have preset. Clicking on this image will also take the user to your website. I can create this image based on the main banner image on your homepage, so the branding is consistent between the og image and your website.
Title tag
This is the tag that shows the name of your company or service.
Description tag
This is a short description about your company or service that appears below the title.
The final step
Once these tags are set up, I need to jump over to facebook and visit their “debugger” page, to make sure it replaces whatever was in the cache there, with the information from those new og tags. There is a “scrape” option that needs to be run a few times before facebook will acknowledge this new info and display it correctly.
Please contact me for pricing if you would like me to create these og tags and image.