What is Open Graph?
When you share a website on social media, your post more often than not contains a picture about the post, the title of the page, and a description. Most individuals don’t think twice about how that data gets to your social media post since it’s all taken care of by the websites themselves with the use of Open Graph meta labels.
Open Graph markup is a code that enables web pages to become rich objects on social media platforms such as Facebook. By using Open Graph tags, you can essentially control what people see when they share your website. Including a pertinent picture, title, and description will get you a much higher chance of getting watchers interested and visiting your website.
What are the most commonly used markups?
There are a couple of Open Graph meta tags that are currently in use, and the most common ones are as follows:
- og:title – This is the title of your webpage. When creating a title, make it quick, snappy, and attention-drawing as this will be shown to everyone who links to your website.
- og:site_name – The name of your website. Remember that this differs from the actual title of your webpage and is usually shown under the title itself.
- og:description – A brief description of your website. This should be no more than 2 sentences. Make it concise and attractive.
- og:type – This is a tag to determine the type of content. A full list of types can be found on the Open Graph Protocol website. The type you use will change the way the content is displayed. For instance, using the “music.song” type represents a single song and opens up additional tags such as music:album – an album which represents the album, and music:release_date which is when the song was released.
- og:image – URL for an image that you want to display. The minimum size is 50 by 50 pixels and must be in JPEG, GIF, or PNG formats.
- og:url – The URL that you want your content to link to.
For more details about Open Graph Markup, visit their website https://ogp.me/.
Nick Berns is a web developer & SEO specialist.
