OPEN GRAPH CHECKER

When and who created Open Graph?

Open graph was the brainchild of Facebook and was launched in 2010. What it does is that it promotes integration between other websites and Facebook. It allows other websites to become rich “graph” objects having the same functionality as other Facebook objects. Website masters can control the information that the website passes to Facebook via OG Meta tags. These tags are inserted in the portion of code of the website.

After seeing the popularity of social media tags on Facebook, all the other major social media sites like, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, started to recognize meta OG tags. To harness the power of Facebook Graph Meta tags, learning this skill is vital for webmasters. Using these tags can have a huge impact on click through rates and conversion. Social media sites become the major driver of website’s traffic. Adding OG tags will not affect the on-page SEO, but it will influence the performance on social media.

Open Graph Facebook Tags

The three major meta tags that Facebook uses are:

• og:title
• og:description
• og:image

In og:title as you must know you define the title of your content. If og:title is not defined in the code of the website, Facebook will use the meta title tag. However, it should be between 60 and 90 characters and should be eye-catching and appealing.

The og:description tag is very similar to the meta description used in the HTML code of a website. This will show below the link title on Facebook. It should appeal to potential visitors and raise their interest in visiting the site.

The og:image is the most interesting OG tag. This image will be displayed as a thumbnail when the website’s page is shared. It can help in conversion rate and make sure you use it. if you don’t Facebook might display a banner scrapped from the page and this is something you don’t want.

Besides these three Open tags there are other tags that you can use in your website, like; og:url and og:type. There are advanced OG tags also. These are; og:locale, og:site_name, og:audio or og:video and fb:app_id.

Facebook graph checker

Facebook has added a useful tool for webmasters to check how their website links appear in Facebook. In case they see any issues they can then make changes and adjust the tags. Secondly, Facebook clears the cache so any changes that are made in a website’s meta og tags will appear in the Facebook link.

Other Social Media Sites Tags

If you want your website to appear on other popular social media websites, you will need to use LinkedIn share URL parameters, Twitter card meta tags. By using these tags your website will also be displayed as an object on these sites. You can use the LinkedIn open graph debugger and Twitter meta og tags debugger to ensure that your tags for these two sites have been setup correctly and the title, image and description are appearing correctly. If you face any problems you should read how to setup the meta og tags for these two sites.

Implementing Tags

You must implement the tags in the part of your page’s HTML. You can either write the code yourself or you can use plugins, and there are plenty of them available. If your website is in WordPress you can use WordPress SEO by Yoast. However there is an official Facebook plugin and others that can be used. The popular plugins are;

• Joomla
• Drupal
• Magento
• Zen Cart
• osCommerce

It’s surprising how many webmasters that want to get more traffic do not use meta og tags or think about using social media to drive more traffic to their websites.

Using an Open Graph Checker

If you have implemented OG tags in your website and you want to check them. You can go to smallseotools.com and use the OG checker tool. Once you navigate to the website; enter the URL of the website you want the meta og checker tool to check. It will run a check and if it finds the tags it will display them. In case it does not find any tags it will display a message.

You can use this tool before and after you implement OG tags in the HTML Header code of your website. You can also use this tool to check on your competitors websites and see the tags that they are using. If your competitor’s site is getting more traffic than your site and you find graph tags in it, you will know the advantage they have over your website.

Conclusion

If your website has been designed to bring business, you must optimize it to generate the maximum traffic to your website. You can only do this when you use meta og tags and use social media sites to drive traffic to your site.

Developing the tags must be planned and done carefully. This is what will showcase your website on social media sites. A good strong title, description and an eye-catching image will raise the interest in people to visit your site. You cannot achieve this traffic by just trying to achieve a top Google page ranking. Social media sites are the most visited and used sites in the world. To generate traffic from them to your sites you must make full use of graph tags and implement them in the code of your website. By doing this, your website will stand out and draw more clicks and views. The more traffic you get, the better will be the business your website will be generating.

When and who created Open Graph?

Open graph was the brainchild of Facebook and was launched in 2010. What it does is that it promotes integration between other websites and Facebook. It allows other websites to become rich “graph” objects having the same functionality as other Facebook objects. Website masters can control the information that the website passes to Facebook via OG Meta tags. These tags are inserted in the portion of code of the website.

After seeing the popularity of social media tags on Facebook, all the other major social media sites like, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, started to recognize meta OG tags. To harness the power of Facebook Graph Meta tags, learning this skill is vital for webmasters. Using these tags can have a huge impact on click through rates and conversion. Social media sites become the major driver of website’s traffic. Adding OG tags will not affect the on-page SEO, but it will influence the performance on social media.

Open Graph Facebook Tags

The three major meta tags that Facebook uses are:

• og:title
• og:description
• og:image

In og:title as you must know you define the title of your content. If og:title is not defined in the code of the website, Facebook will use the meta title tag. However, it should be between 60 and 90 characters and should be eye-catching and appealing.

The og:description tag is very similar to the meta description used in the HTML code of a website. This will show below the link title on Facebook. It should appeal to potential visitors and raise their interest in visiting the site.

The og:image is the most interesting OG tag. This image will be displayed as a thumbnail when the website’s page is shared. It can help in conversion rate and make sure you use it. if you don’t Facebook might display a banner scrapped from the page and this is something you don’t want.

Besides these three Open tags there are other tags that you can use in your website, like; og:url and og:type. There are advanced OG tags also. These are; og:locale, og:site_name, og:audio or og:video and fb:app_id.

Facebook graph checker

Facebook has added a useful tool for webmasters to check how their website links appear in Facebook. In case they see any issues they can then make changes and adjust the tags. Secondly, Facebook clears the cache so any changes that are made in a website’s meta og tags will appear in the Facebook link.

Other Social Media Sites Tags

If you want your website to appear on other popular social media websites, you will need to use LinkedIn share URL parameters, Twitter card meta tags. By using these tags your website will also be displayed as an object on these sites. You can use the LinkedIn open graph debugger and Twitter meta og tags debugger to ensure that your tags for these two sites have been setup correctly and the title, image and description are appearing correctly. If you face any problems you should read how to setup the meta og tags for these two sites.

Implementing Tags

You must implement the tags in the part of your page’s HTML. You can either write the code yourself or you can use plugins, and there are plenty of them available. If your website is in WordPress you can use WordPress SEO by Yoast. However there is an official Facebook plugin and others that can be used. The popular plugins are;

• Joomla
• Drupal
• Magento
• Zen Cart
• osCommerce

It’s surprising how many webmasters that want to get more traffic do not use meta og tags or think about using social media to drive more traffic to their websites.

Using an Open Graph Checker

If you have implemented OG tags in your website and you want to check them. You can go to smallseotools.com and use the OG checker tool. Once you navigate to the website; enter the URL of the website you want the meta og checker tool to check. It will run a check and if it finds the tags it will display them. In case it does not find any tags it will display a message.

You can use this tool before and after you implement OG tags in the HTML Header code of your website. You can also use this tool to check on your competitors websites and see the tags that they are using. If your competitor’s site is getting more traffic than your site and you find graph tags in it, you will know the advantage they have over your website.

Conclusion

If your website has been designed to bring business, you must optimize it to generate the maximum traffic to your website. You can only do this when you use meta og tags and use social media sites to drive traffic to your site.

Developing the tags must be planned and done carefully. This is what will showcase your website on social media sites. A good strong title, description and an eye-catching image will raise the interest in people to visit your site. You cannot achieve this traffic by just trying to achieve a top Google page ranking. Social media sites are the most visited and used sites in the world. To generate traffic from them to your sites you must make full use of graph tags and implement them in the code of your website. By doing this, your website will stand out and draw more clicks and views. The more traffic you get, the better will be the business your website will be generating.