ONPAGE · SEO GLOSSARY
Open Graph
A set of `<meta>` tags in the `<head>` that control how a page appears when shared on social media and in chat apps — title, description, image, and URL.
Definition
Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook (2010) that uses `<meta property="og:…">` tags to define how a webpage is represented when shared as a link. The core four tags: `og:title` (the shared link title), `og:description` (the summary text), `og:image` (the preview image — 1200×630px recommended), and `og:url` (the canonical URL of the page). Twitter/X has its own parallel system (`<meta name="twitter:card">`) but falls back to og: tags when Twitter-specific tags are absent. LinkedIn, Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp, and most modern chat and social platforms respect og: tags for link previews.
Why it matters for SEO
Open Graph tags directly affect click-through rates when content is shared: a page with a correctly sized og:image, a concise og:title, and a compelling og:description gets significantly more clicks from social shares than one that shows a broken preview or falls back to a tiny logo. For SEO, Open Graph has no direct ranking effect — but indirect effects are real: better social previews mean more sharing, more traffic, more backlinks. For AI visibility, og:image is used by some AI answer engines when selecting visual content to accompany citations. Missing og:image is a common issue — many CMS templates don't set a default, so pages with no og:image produce bare link previews with no image.
How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this
The audit checks every crawled page for the four core og: tags. Missing og:title or og:description are flagged as warnings (Google uses these as fallbacks for SERP snippets in some contexts). A missing og:image is flagged — particularly on blog posts and landing pages where social sharing is a traffic driver. og:image dimensions are checked: images smaller than 600×315px may not display correctly. og:url is checked for canonical consistency: it should match the `<link rel="canonical">` URL exactly.
Useful tools and resources
GLOSSARY
Related terms
onpage
Meta Description
An HTML tag that describes a page's content; used by search engines to generate SERP snippets when relevant to the query.
Read definition →technical
Canonical URL
The preferred URL for a page, declared via <link rel="canonical"> to prevent duplicate content from splitting ranking signals.
Read definition →structured data
Structured Data
Machine-readable annotations added to HTML — usually JSON-LD — that explicitly describe what a page is about to search engines and AI systems.
Read definition →See how your site scores on Open Graph.
The free DeepSEOAnalysis audit checks open graph and 100+ other signals. Full report, no signup.
Run a free audit →