That is the question in today’s Ask an SEO Episode 6. The OG tag is a critical component of your website’s page construction. It allows you to promote your page to social media with the appropriate graphics and multimedia assets.
Brian Harnish does a deep dive into OG Tags and gives you the relevant best practices, syntax, and information you will need in order to implement them on your site successfully.
Watch the video today! Of course, don’t forget to like and subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
You can also read the “What Is an OG Tag and Why Is It Important for SEO?” transcript below.
Ask an SEO Episode 6 Transcript:
Today’s question comes from Dan.
What is an OG tag? And How do you use it in SEO?
An OG tag is known as the open graph tag. This is the protocol that Facebook uses for pulling site data into their social networks for display.
These are, essentially, small code snippets that guide specifically how URLs are displayed on social media.
They are also used by other social media platforms, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, although Twitter uses Twitter cards for their own purposes in this regard. So Twitter card markup needs to be absent for Twitter OG tags to work.
By using an OG tag, you can create highly customized display advertising for these social network platforms.
Why are these OG tags important?
It’s more likely that people will click on content that has OG tags because of their visually pleasing appearance. This means that you have a possibility of more social media traffic coming to your site.
In social media feeds, you have a lot of text interspersed by graphics and other media. When you use OG tags, you provide an opportunity for that content to be shared with a visually eye-catching design that’s more able to stand out compared to the alternative.
It’s easier for people to see what the content is actually about, without visiting the web page.
Which tags should you use, exactly? There are at least 17 OG tags in Facebook’s documentation, as well as many many types.
In our experience, these are the essential ones:
OG:TITLE
This is basically the title of the page.
Syntax:
Best Practices Include:
- Make sure that it’s added to any page you want to share.
- Use the original raw title without branding.
- Shorter is better and helps prevent overflow. 40-60 characters is recommended.
OG:URL
This is the direct URL to your content.
Syntax: <meta property=”og:url” content=”https://iloveseo.com/example-category/example-blog-post/” />
OG:DESCRIPTION
This basically includes a description of the content that’s brief in nature.
Syntax: <meta property=”og:description” content=”Find out about OG:Tags.” />
OG:IMAGE
This is the image that will be pulled by the social network! This is critical, so don’t forget it!
Syntax: <meta property=”og:image” content=”https://iloveseo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/open-graph-image-example.png” />
These are meant to enhance the title and make the snippet as desirable as possible.
You don’t have to rewrite your meta description entirely if you don’t need to.
Keep it short. Remember, you want people to click through to your website. So don’t use an article-length version of your text.
Be careful about the differences between OG:DESCRIPTION and the meta description tag. These are not the same thing. The meta description tag is for search. The OG:DESCRIPTION tag is for your social networks.
That’s it for today’s Ask an SEO Episode 6.
This is Brian Harnish signing off. Have a great day!
