Check your Open Graph tags for social sharing

SiteCurl checks for four social sharing tags on every page: og:title, og:description, og:image, and twitter:card. These meta tags control what people see when your link is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Slack, iMessage, and other platforms that generate link previews.

Without these tags, shared links show a blank preview or pull random text from your page. With them, every shared link shows the title, description, and image you chose. SiteCurl reports which tags are present and which are missing on each page.

The check also flags og:image URLs that use relative paths instead of absolute URLs, since most platforms cannot resolve relative image paths.

Every time someone pastes a link into Slack, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, iMessage, or WhatsApp, the platform fetches your page and looks for Open Graph tags. If it finds them, it builds a preview card with your chosen title, description, and image. If it does not find them, it guesses. The guess is usually wrong.

The guess typically pulls the first text it finds on the page, which might be your navigation menu ('Home About Services Contact') or a cookie consent notice. For the image, it might grab your logo, a tiny icon, or nothing at all. The result is a preview that looks broken, unprofessional, or empty.

This matters more than most people realize. Every link shared on social media is a referral. Each one is someone saying 'look at this' to their network. If the preview looks broken, the referral loses trust. Nobody clicks a link that looks like spam.

The impact is especially large for B2B SaaS and agencies. When a link is shared in a Slack channel, it is often shared in a business context: a team member recommending a tool, a manager sharing a resource, an agency pitching to a client. A broken preview undermines the recommendation. A clean preview reinforces it.

Open Graph tags are also used by link preview services, bookmarking tools, and some email clients. The tags you set propagate far beyond social media into any tool that generates a preview from a URL.

Links shared on social media are free advertising. But a link with no image and a garbled title gets ignored. A link with a clear title, description, and eye-catching image gets clicked. Open Graph tags are the difference between the two.

This matters even more for B2B. When someone shares your link in a Slack channel or LinkedIn post, the preview is your first impression. A broken preview signals a site that is not well maintained. A clean preview signals competence.

There is also a network effect. Every time someone shares your link and the preview looks good, the people who see it are more likely to click and share it further. Good Open Graph tags increase the chance that shares turn into chains of shares.

SaaS companies depend on word-of-mouth sharing. When a user recommends your tool in a Slack community or LinkedIn group, the preview card is your sales pitch. If it is a gray box with no image and truncated text, you lose the click.

Content sites and blogs drive a large share of traffic from social sharing. A blog post shared on X or LinkedIn without an og:image gets buried under posts that have one. The visual weight of the image preview is what makes people stop scrolling and click.

E-commerce sites lose referral traffic when product links show broken previews. A customer who shares a product they love wants the preview to show the product image and name, not a blank card or the site logo.

Agencies sharing client work need the preview to look polished. If an agency shares a case study link and the preview is broken, it undermines the very competence they are trying to demonstrate.

Step 1: Add the four core tags to every page. In your HTML head section, add meta tags for og:title, og:description, og:image, and twitter:card. Most CMS platforms have fields for these in SEO or social sharing settings.

Step 2: Set og:image correctly. Use an image at least 1200x630 pixels. This size works well on all platforms. The image URL must be absolute (starts with https://), not relative. A relative URL will work on your site but break in every preview card.

Step 3: Set twitter:card type. Use summary_large_image for pages with a strong visual (blog posts, product pages). Use summary for text-heavy pages where the description matters more than the image.

Step 4: Make tags page-specific. Do not use the same og:title and og:description on every page. Each page should have tags that describe its specific content. Reusing the home page description on every page defeats the purpose.

Step 5: Test and clear caches. After adding tags, test with the Facebook Sharing Debugger (paste your URL and click 'Scrape Again') and the X Card Validator. Both tools show what the preview will look like and let you force a cache refresh.

Platform-specific setup: In WordPress, Yoast and Rank Math auto-generate Open Graph tags with fields to customize per page. In Shopify, product pages include them by default; add tags to custom pages in the theme.liquid. For static sites, add the meta tags directly to each page's HTML head.

Using a relative URL for og:image. /images/hero.jpg works on your site but breaks in every preview card. Platforms need the full URL: https://yoursite.com/images/hero.jpg. This is the most common og:image issue.

Using an image that is too small. Images under 600px wide may not display on some platforms. Facebook and LinkedIn both prefer 1200x630. An image that is 300x200 will either be stretched, cropped badly, or not shown at all.

Not clearing the platform cache after updating tags. Facebook, LinkedIn, and X all cache Open Graph data. After you update your tags, the old preview will still show until you clear the cache. Use the Facebook Sharing Debugger to force a refresh.

Setting og:title to the exact same text as the title tag. It can be the same, but it does not have to be. The title tag is optimized for search. The og:title is optimized for social. A slightly different phrasing that is more conversational may get more clicks on social.

After adding tags, use the Facebook Sharing Debugger to check any page. Paste the URL and click 'Scrape Again.' It shows the og:title, og:description, and og:image that Facebook will use. If the image is missing, check that the URL is absolute and the image file exists.

For X (Twitter), use the X Card Validator. It shows the preview card that will appear when your link is tweeted.

Run another SiteCurl scan to confirm all pages have the required tags. The scan checks every page in one pass, so you can see site-wide coverage at a glance.

For a quick manual check, right-click any page, view source, and search for og:. You should see four meta tags: og:title, og:description, og:image, and og:url.