Section 03 of 05
Open Graph tags: control your link previews
When someone shares your page, the network fetches it and reads a handful of meta tags to build the preview card: title, description, image and address. Those are Open Graph tags, and on X the closely related twitter card tags. Get them right once and every share looks the way you intended.
Most preview problems have the same three causes: two plugins writing conflicting tags, an image that is too small or unreachable, and a network that cached an older version. The guides below cover setup, sizing and fixing each of those.
The guides in this section
- Adding Open Graph tags in WordPressAdd Open Graph tags to WordPress with an SEO plugin or theme code: the four required tags, image tags, per-post overrides, and how to avoid duplicate tags.3 min read
- Facebook showing the wrong image or share textFix Facebook showing the wrong image or text when you share a WordPress post: duplicate tags, small images, cache, blocked crawlers, and the Sharing Debugger.3 min read
- Twitter cards on X: tags and testingSet up Twitter card tags so links to your WordPress posts show a large image on X: the summary_large_image card, fallbacks to Open Graph, sizes and testing.3 min read
- Open Graph image size: 1200 by 630 and the safe zoneThe right Open Graph image size is 1200 by 630 pixels at a 1.91:1 ratio. Minimums, file limits, formats, and a centre safe zone for square crops.3 min read
Open Graph in one paragraph
The protocol requires four tags: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. Add og:description and the image width and height as well. Output them from one source only, test in each network's debugger, and ask the network to scrape again after every change.
Questions
What are Open Graph tags?
Meta tags in a page's head that tell social networks which title, description and image to show when the page is shared.
Do Open Graph tags help SEO?
Not rankings directly, but good previews get more clicks from social feeds and chats.
Why does Facebook show an old image?
It cached the previous version. Fix the tags, purge your cache, then use Scrape Again in the Sharing Debugger.
Hannah Voss, Editor. Checks every guide against a working WordPress install and the networks' current documentation. Last reviewed September 2026.