How to implement Meta Tags Open Graph for Facebook?

Running a company without its presence on Facebook is a huge difficulty for an entrepreneur. Experience shows that many users seek information about the company from social networking sites. Therefore, having a Facebook profile is extremely important for building your online visibility and creating the image of an expert in a given industry. What’s more, a Facebook account allows you to contact your customers, interact, get feedback and opinions on products or services offered. Thanks to this action, you can get valuable information relevant to running and necessary to grow your business without much effort.

If you already have your company profile on Facebook, it’s worth taking a look at the Open Graph issue. It is a protocol that allows integration of other websites with Facebook. It guarantees control over the presentation of your content on a social network, ensuring better interaction with users. See how to use Open Graph tags.

What does the Open Graph do?

As we have already mentioned, thanks to the Open Graph protocol you get control over how your profile users see the content you share. Both from the social media profile itself and from your website. The protocol was created in order to facilitate the integration of all websites with Facebook to easily share the content posted on the pages, and not only those inserted directly in the form of Facebook posts.

What does the Open Graph look like? This is a set of special tags that should be placed in the head section of the website. Their task is to accurately describe what is on the page and make the content visible on social media. Thanks to them, if a user goes to your company’s website and wants to share the content on it, e.g. a blog entry, all they have to do is click on the Facebook stamp “I like it” or “share” and the content will appear on his Facebook board .

The protocol was created to share different types of content from their websites. These include blog entries, but also articles, videos, photos, places, people and games. This allows you to increase the reach of content and reach a group of different users. Other social media also use the Open Graph solution. First of all, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and Twitter, which also has its own meta tags – Twitter Cards.

Why is it worth using the Open Graph meta tags?

It is known that social media largely generates traffic across the entire network. It is thanks to them that companies gain new customers, engaging in their content, boasting of their achievements and presenting their company’s operation from the inside out, showing the human face of business.

The presentation of various types of content on Facebook is therefore a very important component of running a business. Proper content planning is also of great importance. This should not be done randomly. It is better to prepare the right strategy and schedule. The plan should also take into account the display of brand materials on user boards. It increases the frequency of clicks on the external link that will take the recipient to the landing page. So it is worth creating content so that it encourages a potential customer to share it on Facebook. Thanks to this, there is a good chance that other users (friends) will also be interested in the shared content and will visit our website. And after all, it is very important for every entrepreneur.

Which Open Graph tags are the most important?

The first extremely important OG tag is title. As the name suggests, it is the title, which is the largest header on the Facebook board. It is often the main thing that catches the user’s attention the most. So let’s create it in such a way that it is catchy and arouses interest. There are a number of strategies that work well for creating such headlines. Among other things, you can apply the so-called information gap. Provide only part of the information and thus prompt the user to visit the site to learn more. Remember that the password you create must carry a promise that will be fulfilled when you move it to your landing page. So make sure the headline is relevant to the content presented.

Structure og: title: <meta property = “og: title” content = “Your interesting title” />

Another important Open Graph tag is og: url. It is a tag that contains a link to the website where the content is to be available to the user. Thanks to this tag, after clicking, the recipient will be taken to the landing page.

Structure og: url <meta property = “og: url” content = “http://www.twojastrona.pl” />

The tag that specifies the type of content is OG type. Thanks to it, it is known whether it is an article, a blog entry, a specific website, a video, or an image or other type of content. There are different types that you can use on your site. Just remember to assign them accordingly.

OG description is a very important tag that resembles description in HTML. Is a description of the content of the page. However, in this case it does not refer to the internet search engine, but to the link placed as an object on Facebook. Unlike HTML descriptions, it doesn’t affect SEO. Remember, however, that it is a kind of advertisement of the content of your site, so it should be interesting and exhausted, but also be short and easy to read.

Structure og: description: <meta property = “og: description” content = “Here we have a short description of the page, which will be displayed together with the title, link and picture on Facebook” />

OG image is the most important and the most interesting tag in the Open Graph protocol. Thanks to it you can significantly increase the conversion on your website. By setting og: image select the image to be displayed together with the link to the page. The photo should of course be clear and eye catching.

What if you don’t set an image in Open Graph?

If you skip this step, Facebook has two options. Either it will display only the content itself or it will show the user a randomly selected picture among all those on the page. Most often this is the first of them.

Remember that if you do not use any CMS, where you can use the ready plug-in to manage the presentation of posts from the administration panel, you need to set the most important image on the subpage. For this purpose, you can use a completely new photo that is not on the given subpage. Thanks to this, if you choose them properly, you will interest your recipient in social media.

What pictures should I use? The best are those with a resolution of 1.91 / 1, e.g. 1200 x 627 px, with a size limit of up to 5 MB. If you choose photos smaller than 400 x 209 px, the thumbnail in the displayed object will be small. This will make it not look aesthetically pleasing and will not attract the user’s eyesight. Also remember that if you want to include a slogan in the picture, it is worth placing it in the center. This is important because Facebook often trims images equally on each page. So if your inscription is on the side, it may not display completely.

Sruktura og: image: <meta property = “og: image” content = “http://www.twojastrona.pl/nazwa-obrazka.jpg”>

What does the order of the Open Graph tags look like when displayed?

At the top, the user sees the photo, i.e. og: image. Under the photo there is a heading (title) written in a larger font than the rest of the content. To og: title. Just below it is smaller-size content representing the content of the page. This is og: descriptions. And at the very end you can see the address of the destination link, i.e. og: url.

If you want more options for post presentation, use the advanced Open Graph tags. They will allow you to define the language, add additional media on the page and connect your site with the Facebook application.

Among them you will find:

1. og: locale – responsible for defining the language of the website (American English by default),

2. og: audio and og: video – allows you to add additional media to the site,

3. fb: app_id – a tag that connects a website to a Facebook application.

How do you check if Open Graph tags work properly?

You’ve already set up your selected tags, but you want to make sure everything works as it should? To enable you to do this, Facebook has provided users with the Open Graph Object Debugger tool. Thanks to it you can preview already set tags. They are presented as a ready Facebook object. If you do not have this tool when you change, e.g. an image for a given page, the old image is displayed. However, when you use Debugger, a new object for your link will be created on the social networking site.

The tool also has many tips on how to set tags. Indicates, based on what is already set, what it should look like, and what needs to be improved. What’s more, the Open Graph Object Debugger cleans Facebook cache.

An appropriate strategy for planning activities on Facebook in combination with the Open Graph protocol has a positive impact on conversion. The number and frequency of clicks on social media users on links increases. In addition, high conversion has a good effect on the value of your Edge Rank (ER) profile, i.e. the algorithm that determines your company’s visibility in social media rankings. So let’s pay attention to refining OG tags. The invested time will definitely pay back in the form of new users of your profile.