A good digital marketing strategy includes both engaging website visitors and generating social media buzz.

The open graph (OG) meta tags, which offer details about the content on your webpages and enable precise data analysis when shared with others, are a crucial component of that success.

Marketers need to be aware of the four different types of graphs and how they interact in order to guarantee the proper kind of interaction with their target audience.

Let's examine the key components of each and discover how to effectively and correctly use open graph metadata.

What are Open Graph Meta Tags?

Open graph meta tags are snippets of code that instruct social media platforms on how to display your URL when it is shared.

These open graph tags contain information such as the title, description, and image that will appear when your website is shared on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Open Graph tags are typically found in the head> section of a webpage.

Any tag that begins with the letter og is an Open Graph tag.

These open graph tags are part of Facebook's Open Graph protocol, as well as other social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn (if Twitter Cards are not used). Each open graph tag serves a specific purpose and serves as the foundation for your social media optimization strategy.

What is the significance of Open Graph tags?

People are more likely to see and click on shared content that has optimized OG tags, resulting in more social media traffic to your website.

This is due to three factors:

• They make content more visible in social media feeds.
• They provide a quick overview of the content.
• They help Facebook understand what the content is about, which can help your brand's visibility in search results.

What Open Graph tags should you employ?

In their official documentation, Facebook lists 17 OG tags as well as dozens of object types. Only four are required for Facebook to understand the fundamentals of your page, and a couple of others occasionally assist.

OG:Title

The heading of your page.

Best practices

• Include it on all "shareable" pages.
• Concentrate on precision, value, and clickability.
• To avoid overflow, keep it short. There is no official recommendation, but 40 characters for mobile and 60 characters for desktop is about the sweet spot.
• Use the original title. Include no branding (for example, your site's name).

OG:Url

The link to the content.

Best practices

• Make use of the canonical URL. It aids in the consolidation of all connected data, such as likes, across all duplicate URLs posted.

OG:image

The image URL for the social snippet. 

Take note that this is possibly the most important Open Graph tag because it takes up the most social feed real estate.

Best practices

• Use custom images for "shareable" pages (for example, the homepage, articles, and so on).
• For the rest of your pages, use your logo or another branded image.
• For optimal clarity across all devices, use images with a 1.91:1 aspect ratio and a minimum recommended dimension of 1200x630.

OG:Type

The kind of item you're sharing. (For example, an article, a website, etc.)

Best practices

• Use articles for articles and websites for all other pages.
• Describe object types in greater detail where appropriate (optional).

OG:Description

A brief summary of the content. 

Best practices

• Make the snippet as appealing and clickable as possible by complementing the title.
• If it makes sense, copy your meta description here. 
• Keep it brief and to the point. Facebook suggests 2-4 sentences, but this frequently truncates.

OG:locale

Defines the content language.

Best practices

• Only use it for content that is not written in American English (en_US). Facebook assumes that content that does not have this tag is written in this language.