Open Graph and social sharing tags
When someone shares a link to your page on social media, the platform reads Open Graph meta tags to build the preview card — the image, title, and description that appear in the feed. Without these tags, social platforms guess at the content and often get it wrong.
What is Open Graph?
Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook that standardized the way web pages describe themselves to social platforms. Today it is used by Twitter/X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, iMessage, and most other platforms that display link previews.
The core Open Graph tags
| Tag | Purpose |
|---|---|
og:title | Title shown in the preview card (can differ from the page <title>) |
og:description | One or two sentences shown below the title in the preview |
og:image | The preview image URL — the most impactful tag visually |
og:url | The canonical URL of the page |
og:type | Content type. Use website for most pages; article for blog posts |
Twitter/X Card tags
Twitter (now X) originally used its own tag format. These tags still work alongside Open Graph tags and allow Twitter-specific customization:
| Tag | Purpose |
|---|---|
twitter:card | Card type: summary, summary_large_image, app, or player |
twitter:title | Title (falls back to og:title if omitted) |
twitter:description | Description (falls back to og:description) |
twitter:image | Image URL (falls back to og:image) |
Use summary_large_image for the best visual impact — it shows the image at full width above the title and description.
Setting Open Graph tags in Site Designer
- Open Page Properties (right-click the page in the Page Manager → Properties).
- Click the Social tab.
- Fill in the OG Title, OG Description, and OG Image fields.
- If you want Twitter-specific overrides, expand the Twitter Card section and fill in those fields.
- Click OK. Site Designer writes the
<meta>tags into the page’s<head>on export.
OG image best practices
The OG image is the first thing people see when your link is shared. Treat it like a small advertisement for the page.
- Dimensions: 1200 × 630 px (the standard ratio used by most platforms).
- Format: JPEG or PNG. JPEG is smaller in file size; PNG supports transparency.
- Content: Include the page title, your brand name or logo, and a visual that represents the page’s subject.
- File size: Keep it under 8 MB (most platforms have this as a hard limit). Aim for under 1 MB for fast loading.
- Unique per page: Avoid using the same generic image on every page — unique images improve click-through rates.
Testing your tags
After publishing, test your Open Graph tags with these tools:
- Facebook Sharing Debugger — developers.facebook.com/tools/debug — fetches and validates your OG tags, and lets you force a cache refresh.
- Twitter Card Validator — validates Twitter-specific cards before you share.
- LinkedIn Post Inspector — linkedin.com/post-inspector — shows how your link will look in a LinkedIn post.
