What is Facebook Open Graph Metadata and How to Add it to WordPress

Whether you’re a fan or not, there’s no denying that Facebook is one of the best channels you can use for content distribution. Few other places can boast a third of all living people as a user base, offering potential access to both organically posted and paid promotional content.

Thanks to its appeal, today there are many ways to intertwine Facebook with WordPress websites. For example, we can use Facebook to empower comments. We can also set up automatic posting to Facebook. And thanks to the Facebook Open Graph, we can control how our content appears on the network.

To help you understand how to use Facebook Open Graph with WordPress, we will show you:

What is Open Graph?

this Open Chart It’s a protocol that gives you some control over how your content is displayed when you share it via social networks. Without Open Graph and tags, sharing your post as a URL on Facebook has unpredictable results — You may receive a post without a description or an image you want to appear.

When you try to share to Facebook without setting any Open Graph tags, a post might look like this:

However, with Open Graph tags, you can set which specific elements you want displayed on your page or article. You can link to a specific title, an image that fits your content, provide a link to your content, and specify the type of content you’re sharing..

And these are just the things you can do with basic tags.. If you have the time and need, you can continue by entering a custom description, a link to the URL of an audio or video file you shared, and the locale where you marked the tags.

Why Should You Use It?

Having more control over how Facebook displays the pages on your website when shared on the social network is great for several reasons. The most obvious is that you can make your shared pages and posts look well put together.. Increasing visual appeal can increase the chances that people will click on your posts and end up where you can sell something to your website or get them to subscribe to your newsletter or whatever the purpose behind your site is.

Using Open Graph can increase your content’s visibility through Facebook search by letting Facebook know what your content is about rather than having it guessing.. There is also an additional advantage of using Open Graph – it is also supported by other social networks. For example, you can use it for LinkedIn and even Twitter when Twitter Cards are not available..

How to Add Open Graph Tags

If you’re comfortable creating child themes and editing your theme’s function.php files, you can add all the tags on your own. Open Graph tags are meta tags that fall into the following. whatFunction of a web page using the following syntax:

<meta property=” [TAG] “ content=” [VALUE] ” />

For example, if you used the op:title tag, the value would be the title of your post or page as you want it to appear on Facebook. The value for the og:image tag will be the link to the image you want. The og:url value is usually the canonical URL of your page or post.

The easiest way to start using Open Graph metadata on your WordPress website is to add them with a plugin. One of the best things about Open Graph tags is that many of the plugins for SEO you may already be using have them integrated into their optimization options.

For example, when installing Yoast, you may be unknowingly setting Open Graph Tags. After installing Yoast SEO, navigate to: SEO > Social in the control panel and select the “Facebook” tab. Enable Open Graph metadata, enter your Facebook App ID if you want to use Insights and add an image that will be used by default when no other images are available.

You will be able to add custom captions, descriptions and images that will only be used when sharing posts and pages on Facebook. Go to a page or post and click on the “Social” tab in the Yoast SEO menu below the post..

Select “Facebook” and you will see three fields where you can set a custom title, description and image.

You can find similar options in plugins like Rank Math or All in One SEO. If you have options to fine-tune the appearance of your posts when shared on Facebook, and the settings actually work, chances are you’re using Open Graph metadata.

How to Gain More Control Over Open Graph Tags

Yoast and similar plugins are easy to use, but they don’t give you the option to inspect the Open Graph tags on your website. To do this without adding tags manually, you can use one of the plugins that deals specifically with Open Graph tags.. For example, you can use: Open the Graphics and Twitter Card Tags plugin.

After downloading and activating the plugin, you can find it under. Settings > Turn on Graphics and Twitter Card Tags. Under the “General” tab, you’ll be able to set things like the maximum length of the description, the homepage, and the default description.

You’ll also be able to set the default image, image sources for posts and pages, a logo placement, and a few more options.

This tab also includes URL and author settings, as well as a toggle for keeping data during removal.

Under the “Open Graph” tab is where you can enable, disable and set the value of many Open Graph tags. From basics adding the page and post title and site name to adding authors, publishing dates and locale, this tab gives you hands-on control over the data you want to post to Facebook.

Finally, if you are using the plugin with compatible plugins like Yoast SEO or WooCommerce, you will find plugin specific settings in the “3rd Party” tab. For Yoast SEO, for example, you can choose whether to use the title, URL, and description it generates..

The Open Graph and Twitter Card Tags plugin will most likely fulfill your need for control over Open Graph tags. If not, your next step would probably be to start adding the code manually to your website..

Solution

If you’re already using Facebook to spread your content and reach new audiences, there’s no excuse not to give it a fair chance. You won’t get all the traffic goodness you can get without learning the Open Graph protocol.

But the good news is that you can add Open Graph metadata to WordPress websites without any hassle. Commonly used SEO plugins allow you to do this quickly. But if those aren’t enough for you, you can always turn to certain plugins and start manually adjusting the tags if they don’t work.