Every time someone pastes your URL into Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, or X, a bot fetches your page and builds a preview card. What that card looks like is entirely up to your Open Graph tags. Without them, platforms guess — and guessed previews are usually a cropped logo, a missing image, or your cookie banner text.
The four core tags
- og:title — the headline of the card. It can differ from your SEO title; social headlines can be more conversational.
- og:description — one or two sentences under the title. Keep it under ~200 characters; most platforms cut it sooner.
- og:image — the single biggest driver of clicks. Use an absolute URL to a 1200×630 image. Below 600×315 many platforms fall back to a small thumbnail.
- og:url — the canonical URL of the page. This consolidates likes and shares to one address.
Twitter / X cards
X reads Open Graph tags as a fallback, but adding twitter:card with the value summary_large_image guarantees the large image layout. Add twitter:site with your handle and the card gets attributed to your account.
Common mistakes
- Relative image URLs — always use the full https:// URL for og:image.
- One generic image for the whole site — give important pages their own.
- Forgetting to re-scrape: Facebook and LinkedIn cache previews aggressively.
- Text-heavy images — keep words large and centered; cards get cropped differently everywhere.
Preview before you publish
Don't wait for someone to share your page to find out the card is broken. Our Open Graph Preview renders your Facebook and Twitter cards as you type, and the Meta Tag Generator outputs copy-ready og: and twitter: tags alongside your SEO meta tags.