Open Graph Description

The Open Graph Description tag is one of the 3 most important tags to use on your site because it's used directly by Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn for representing your content in their social networks.

  • Social Networks Supported: Facebook Google+ LinkedIn
  • Importance: Required
  • Can use multiple times on same page: No
  • Tag Placement: Head section
  • Example: <meta property="og:description" content="Enter the Open Graph Description for the page here" />

The Open Graph Description tag is one of the 3 most important tags to use on your site because it's used directly by Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn for representing your content in their social networks.

To set the Open Graph Description tag on your page, you should add the following tag within the <head> section of your page

Without the Open Graph Description set, the social networks will choose a description automatically based on:

  • Your meta description for the page
  • Automatically try to determine a good description by scanning the content of the page

Allowing the social networks to use either of the above options is problematic because neither choice may be correct for your content. The meta description on your page should be completely targeted toward search engines, which means it should be between 150-160 characters and there should be no duplicate descriptions across your site.

Letting the social network determine the best 'snippet' to use to describe your page can be even worse as it may choose a menu or sidebar content to represent your page, even though that content is not directly related to the current page.

By setting the Open Graph Description on your own, you are in complete control of how your page is represented when shared in each of the supported social networks.

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