What is Open Graph Tags?

Open Graph tags are meta tags (og:title, og:description, og:image and others) that control how a page looks when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack and many other apps.

Open Graph Tags — SEO Library

The essential tags#

<meta property="og:title" content="WordPress Redirects: 301 With Plugins &amp; .htaccess">
<meta property="og:description" content="How to create redirects in WordPress…">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/share.png">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/wordpress-redirects/">
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

X (Twitter) reads its own twitter: tags first and falls back to Open Graph.

Do they affect SEO?#

Not directly — Google doesn’t use Open Graph for rankings. But attractive previews earn more clicks and shares, which brings traffic, links and brand awareness.

Best practices#

Use a 1200 × 630 px image (1.91:1), under ~5 MB, with important text centred.
Write a share title that can be punchier than your SEO title.
Set a sitewide default image for pages without one (this theme does, and uses featured images automatically).
After changing an image, refresh caches with Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn’s Post Inspector.