Using social media meta tags

Social media meta tags control how your content appears when shared on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. These tags make your shared links more appealing, increase engagement, and drive more traffic to your site.

What Are Social Media Meta Tags?

• Open Graph (OG) tags: Developed by Facebook but used by many platforms, OG tags let you specify titles, descriptions, images, and more for shared links.

• Twitter Cards: Twitter uses its own set of meta tags to control how links are displayed in tweets (e.g., summary cards, large images).

• Other platforms: Many social platforms—LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp—read OG tags or similar meta tags for link previews.

Why Social Media Meta Tags Matter

• Increase click-through rates: Eye-catching, well-formatted previews encourage more users to visit your site from social feeds.

• Control your brand message: Set custom titles and descriptions that differ from your SEO meta tags, optimizing messaging for social audiences.

• Prevent incomplete or unattractive previews: Without these tags, platforms may display irrelevant images or truncated text.

Common Social Media Meta Tags

Here’s a quick overview of recommended tags:

Open Graph (OG) Tags

<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title"> 
<meta property="og:description" content="A concise, compelling description for social users."> 
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.com/image.jpg"> 
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.example.com/page-url"> 
<meta property="og:type" content="website"> 

Twitter Card Tags

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Your Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="A relevant description for Twitter users.">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.example.com/image.jpg">

Best Practices for Social Media Meta Tags

• Use unique, engaging titles and descriptions: Make your content stand out in busy social feeds—keep these concise but compelling.

• Set the right image size: Use images with at least 1200x630px resolution for OG tags; 1200x630px or 600x335px is ideal for Twitter. Always use the whole image URL.

• Test your tags: Use tools like Facebook Sharing Debugger and Twitter Card Validator to preview and troubleshoot your tags.

• Combine with SEO practices: While OG and Twitter tags are for social, also ensure your meta tags for search engines are optimized.

• Maintain good site speed: Heavy images can slow down social previews and impact user experience—see improving page load speed and how to optimize your PageSpeed Insights score.

• Use relevant alt text for images: Good alt text ensures accessibility and provides fallback descriptions.

Take control of how your content is shared and seen across key platforms.