By Neil Patel

Marketers create a lot of content. Yes, content is king, but that king is powerless without followers.

So, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you want to reach a broader audience with your awesome new blog post?

Sharing on social media, of course. The massive audiences of sites like Facebook and Twitter make them some of the best sharing, but do you know how to optimize that outreach potential?

Open graph meta tags were designed to do just that. But what are they, why do they matter, and — most importantly — how do you use them?

What Is Open Graph and Why Was It Created?

Facebook introduced Open Graph in 2010 to promote integration between Facebook and other websites by allowing posts to become rich objects with the same functionality as other Facebook objects.

Put simply, it helps optimize Facebook posts by providing more control over how information travels from a third-party website to Facebook when a page is shared (or liked, etc.).

To make this possible, information is sent via Open Graph meta tags in the part of the website’s code.

Now, other social media sites also are taking advantage of social meta tags.

Several other major platforms, including Twitter and LinkedIn, recognize Open Graph tags. Twitter actually has its own meta tags for Twitter Cards, but if Twitter robots cannot find any, Twitter uses Open Graph tags instead.

Why Marketers Should Care About Open Graph

Social media sites are the major drivers of most of the web’s traffic. Consequently, the ability to harness the power of social meta tags is a vital skill for today’s marketers.

Most importantly: open graph meta tags can have a massive impact on conversions and click-through rates.

Have you ever shared a link on Facebook only to find that the thumbnail was missing, or there was a totally different picture than you expected?

Knowing just a little about Open Graph tags can help you tackle these problems and improve your social media marketing.

Adding Open Graph tags to your website won’t directly affect your on-page SEO, but it will influence the performance of your links on social media, so that means it’s worth looking into. Let’s take a look at the most important meta tags for Facebook and how to optimize them for better sharing.

Understanding Facebook Open Graph Meta Tags

Facebook has several open graph meta tag types. Let’s cover the different types, then I’ll cover how to use them.

og:title

As you might guess, this is how you define your content’s title. It serves a similar purpose as the traditional meta title tag in your code. In fact, if Facebook doesn’t find the og:title tag on your page, it uses the meta title instead.

Keep in mind that the …read more

Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog

Author: Aaron