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What are Open Graph tags?

Open Graph tags are lines in a page’s code that set the title, description and image shown when its link is shared in apps like WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack.

Also called: og tags

Why it matters for a small business site

Every time someone shares your link, the preview is a small advert. Without these tags, apps guess, and often show a cropped logo, a cookie notice or no picture at all.

How to check yours

  1. Paste your link into a WhatsApp or Slack chat with yourself and look at the preview.
  2. Use LinkedIn’s Post Inspector or Facebook’s Sharing Debugger to see what they read, and to refresh an old preview.
  3. View the page source and look for og:title, og:description and og:image.

What good looks like

For each important page: a clear og:title and og:description, and an og:image of 1200×630 pixels with any text kept away from the edges. X (formerly Twitter) reads its own twitter:card tag and falls back to Open Graph.

Common mistakes

  • One generic image for every page.
  • Images too small or the wrong shape, so they’re cropped or shown as a tiny thumbnail.
  • Changing the tags without refreshing the cached preview in the debuggers.
  • A relative image address. og:image should be the full https:// address.
Put it into practice

Try it on a design of your own

SketchXFlow’s Google and AI search panel adds the sharing preview to every page of a site you design: a title, a description and a 1200×630 picture.

Try:
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