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What is Open Graph and why does it matter for social sharing?

Learn what Open Graph tags are, why they matter when your content is shared to social media, and which tags to include on your pages to control how your posts appear on Facebook and other platforms."

When dlvr.it shares a link to Facebook or other social platforms, those platforms don't just post a bare URL — they try to pull in a title, image, and description to make the post richer and more engaging. Open Graph tags are how you tell them exactly what to use.

Without Open Graph tags, platforms will guess — often pulling in the wrong image, a generic title, or no preview at all. Adding the right tags to your pages puts you in control of how your content looks every time it's shared.


In this article

  1. What Open Graph tags are

  2. Why they matter for your social posts

  3. Which tags to include

  4. Example markup


1. What Open Graph tags are

Open Graph is a metadata standard — originally developed by Facebook — that lets website owners define how their pages appear when shared on social media. The tags live in your page's <head> HTML and tell platforms like Facebook what title, image, description, and URL to display when someone shares a link to that page.


2. Why they matter for your social posts

When dlvr.it publishes a link to Facebook, Facebook scrapes the destination page to build a link preview. If your page has Open Graph tags, Facebook uses them. If it doesn't, Facebook makes its best guess — which can mean:

  • The wrong image is pulled in (or no image at all)

  • The page title is used instead of a more compelling headline

  • The description is missing or pulled from unrelated page content

Well-configured Open Graph tags mean your posts look polished and intentional every time they're shared — improving click-through rates and making your content stand out in the feed.

Open Graph tags benefit any page that gets shared to social media, not just pages you share through dlvr.it. If you publish content regularly, it's worth making sure every page has them set correctly.


3. Which tags to include

At a minimum, every page should include these four tags:

Tag

What it controls

og:title

The headline shown in the link preview

og:image

The image displayed alongside the post

og:type

The type of content (e.g. article, website, video.movie)

og:url

The canonical URL of the page

You can also add og:description to include a short summary beneath the title — useful for giving readers more context before they click.


4. Example markup

Here's what a basic set of Open Graph tags looks like in your page's HTML:

<html prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head>   <title>Your Page Title</title>   <meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" />   <meta property="og:type" content="article" />   <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.yoursite.com/your-page/" />   <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.yoursite.com/images/your-image.jpg" />   <meta property="og:description" content="A short summary of your page content." /> </head>

📸 [Screenshot: Example of a Facebook post showing a well-formatted link preview with title, image, and description pulled from Open Graph tags]

For a full list of available Open Graph tag options, see the official reference at ogp.me.


Have questions about how dlvr.it uses Open Graph data when sharing your content? Reach out to our support team at [email protected] — we're happy to help.

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