Open Graph & Twitter Cards: What to Set and Why

When someone pastes your link into Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack or X, the platform doesn’t show your page — it shows a small card built from a handful of meta tags. This guide explains which tags matter and how to use the generator to get the card you actually want.

Use the Open Graph Tag Generator →

The Four Tags That Matter Most

The Open Graph protocol defines four required properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. In practice you also want og:description and og:site_name, plus og:image:alt for accessibility. The generator outputs all of these from one form, and flags any of the required ones you leave blank.

How to Use the Generator

Start with the canonical URL of the page — the full https:// address you want treated as its permanent identity. Add a headline, a one-or-two-sentence description and the full URL of your share image. Pick website for tools and landing pages, or article for blog posts; choosing article reveals optional fields for publish date, author and section. Copy the result into the <head> of that single page. Every page needs its own set — reusing one block sitewide is the quickest way to get identical, useless previews.

Image Size: What the Platforms Actually Say

Meta’s documentation on images in link shares recommends 1200 × 630 pixels for the best display on high-resolution devices, treats 600 × 315 as the threshold for a large-image link post, and sets a minimum of 200 × 200 and a maximum file size of 8 MB. Aim for roughly a 1.91:1 ratio so the image isn’t cropped. Fill in the optional width and height fields; the checklist will warn you if the numbers fall below that threshold or the ratio is off.

X (Twitter) Cards

X uses its own twitter:card tag to choose a layout. summary_large_image gives a wide image above the title and suits most articles; summary shows a small square thumbnail beside the text. According to Patrick Stox’s guide to Twitter card tags, twitter:card has no Open Graph fallback, while the title, description and image fall back to their og: equivalents. That is why the generator always includes twitter:card, and repeats the other values only if you tick the box. Note that twitter: tags use name=, not property=.

Why Your Preview Won’t Update

Platforms cache the first version of a card they see. As Kinsta explains for LinkedIn, the cached version is reused until it is manually refreshed, which you do with LinkedIn’s Post Inspector. Facebook and other networks have equivalent debugging tools. The sequence is: fix the tags, publish, then re-scrape the live URL in each platform’s debugger. Pasting generated tags into a draft page that no one can reach will never produce a preview — scrapers must be able to fetch both the page and the image.

Does This Help SEO?

Not directly. Open Graph and Twitter card tags aren’t a Google ranking factor; their job is to make shared links look credible and earn more clicks from social and messaging traffic. Keep writing a good <title> and meta description for search, and treat the generator as the social half of your on-page metadata.

Use the Open Graph Tag Generator →