How to Generate Open Graph Meta Tags
Create Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags for your web pages with our free OG Meta Generator. Preview how links appear on social media.
Steps
Enter your page URL
Type the URL of the page you are generating tags for. This populates the og:url property and is used by social platforms to canonicalise the link. Use the full URL including https://.
Set the title and description
Enter the og:title (recommended: 60–90 characters — slightly longer than SEO meta titles since social cards have more display space) and og:description (155–200 characters). These appear in the social card preview and should be compelling for click-through, not just SEO-focused.
Upload or link your OG image
Set the og:image URL. The recommended dimensions are 1200×630 pixels (1.91:1 ratio) for Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter summary cards use 2:1 ratio. Images that do not meet minimum dimensions (600×315) may not display. Use an absolute URL — relative paths will not work in meta tags.
Set the page type
Choose og:type: 'website' for most pages, 'article' for blog posts and news (adds published time and author properties), 'product' for e-commerce, or 'video.movie' for video content. Article type adds important structured data for news aggregators.
Copy and paste the tags
Click Generate to see the complete set of meta tags. Copy them and paste them inside the <head> section of your HTML, before the closing </head> tag. Validate the implementation using Facebook's Sharing Debugger or Twitter's Card Validator.
Why Open Graph Tags Matter for Content Marketing
When someone shares your URL on Facebook, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp, the platform reads the OG meta tags to construct the link preview card. Without OG tags, the platform guesses — it picks an arbitrary image, truncates the page title, and uses random text from the page. This often results in a generic, uncompelling preview that generates far fewer clicks than a properly crafted card. Research consistently shows that content with compelling visual previews generates 2–3x more click-through from social shares. Given that social sharing drives significant referral traffic for content sites, investing a few minutes in properly setting OG tags for every published page is one of the highest-ROI content marketing activities.
Open Graph for Articles: Additional Properties
For blog posts, news articles, and editorial content, the og:type='article' value unlocks additional properties. article:published_time (ISO 8601 timestamp) tells social platforms when the content was published, enabling sorting and freshness signals. article:author links to the author's profile. article:section indicates the category or section of the website. article:tag adds keyword tags. These additional properties are used by Facebook's news feed algorithm, LinkedIn's content recommendations, and news aggregators to contextualise and surface content. If you run a blog or content-driven website, implementing full article OG tags on every post is part of a complete on-page SEO implementation.
Testing and Validating Your Open Graph Tags
After implementing OG tags, validate them with the official platform debuggers. Facebook Sharing Debugger (developers.facebook.com/tools/debug) shows exactly how Facebook sees your page, lets you force a re-scrape, and highlights any warnings. LinkedIn Post Inspector (linkedin.com/post-inspector) does the same for LinkedIn. Twitter Card Validator (cards-dev.twitter.com/validator) previews your Twitter Card. For ongoing monitoring, Screaming Frog (desktop SEO crawler) can audit OG tags across your entire site. Common issues found during audits: missing og:image causing no image in preview, og:title identical to SEO title rather than optimised for social, og:description empty or duplicating the body text, and og:url not matching the canonical URL.
Frequently Asked Questions
Open Graph (OG) is an open protocol created by Facebook (now Meta) that is supported by most social platforms including LinkedIn, Pinterest, and WhatsApp. Twitter Cards are Twitter's proprietary system for controlling link previews on Twitter/X. In practice, Twitter falls back to OG tags if Twitter Card tags are absent, so you can get away with only OG tags. However, Twitter Card tags (twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image, twitter:card) give you additional control specific to Twitter's layout.
Social platforms cache OG data aggressively. Facebook and LinkedIn store scraped OG data for up to 7 days. To force a re-scrape: Facebook uses the Sharing Debugger at developers.facebook.com/tools/debug; LinkedIn uses the LinkedIn Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector; Twitter updates automatically within hours. Always validate using these official tools after updating your OG tags.
1200×630 pixels is the most widely recommended size, supporting Retina/high-DPI displays at 600×315 minimum dimensions. Keep file size under 8MB (Facebook's limit), but aim for under 300KB for fast loading. Use JPEG for photographs and PNG for graphics with text. Avoid placing critical content too close to edges — different platforms crop the image differently.
Open Graph tags do not directly influence search engine rankings. However, they indirectly affect SEO through social sharing: better-looking social previews generate more clicks and shares, which can earn backlinks and drive traffic that signals quality to search engines. They also ensure your content looks professional and intentional when shared, which builds brand trust.