Section 03 of 06
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.
Every other section is listed guide by guide in the complete list of guides.
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.7 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.7 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.6 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.6 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.
Where to start, by situation
Your pages have no preview tags, or you are not sure. View the source of a post and look for og:title in the head; if it is missing or appears twice, adding Open Graph tags in WordPress shows how to output them from one place. Facebook or LinkedIn shows the wrong picture or an old headline. Follow Facebook showing the wrong image or share text for the cache and size checks, and choosing an Open Graph image size if the image is cropped or blurred. Shares on X show a plain link. X needs its own card tags in addition to Open Graph; Twitter cards on X: tags and testing lists the two that matter and the validator to use.
How this section connects to provenance
The preview card is where labels and credentials live or die. When a network fetches your page it keeps four things from the head: title, description, image address and canonical address. It then downloads the image, re-encodes it and resizes it for the card, and that step typically removes the embedded metadata, including any signed provenance record and any label stored inside the file, as the image guides in the provenance section document. What survives is the pixels, the title and the description. A disclosure that lives only in the image file, or only in the post body, does not reach the reader who sees the card. The provenance section works through the consequences: labelling AI images in link previews shows where a label has to sit to be seen, content credentials on shared images shows what a signed record can and cannot survive, and keeping a share preview honest lists the checks to run before you publish.
Reading order
Four guides, and the order matters. Open Graph output in WordPress comes first because the other three assume the tags are written from one place; two plugins writing them is the single most common cause of the problems the other guides fix. Open Graph image size: 1200 by 630 and the safe zone comes second, because the image is the part of the card that networks crop, compress and cache most aggressively, and a wrong size shows up on every share. The wrong-image guide comes third; it is a fix list, and every entry assumes the first two guides have been followed. Twitter card tags comes last because X reads Open Graph tags as a fallback, so a site with the first three in order usually needs only two extra lines. Each guide ends with the debugger to use and the scrape-again step, since a preview cached before a fix keeps showing the old card until the network is asked to fetch again.
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.
How do I test a link preview before sharing?
Paste the address into each network's debugger or post inspector, read the tags it reports, and ask it to scrape again after any change. Test logged out, because caches often serve admins a different page.
Hannah Voss, Editor. Checks every guide against a working WordPress install and the networks' current documentation. Last reviewed September 2026.