Social tags

What are social tags and how to use them

Updated over a week ago

Open Graph and X (Twitter) Cards data in Oncrawl

Content is a key SEO ranking factor, but in order to expand your content to a wider audience, you need to improve its potential reach. This is where social tags can help. Social tags refer to Open Graph and X (f.k.a. Twitter) Cards.

The Open Graph was introduced in 2010 by Facebook to ease integration between its platform and other websites by allowing them to become rich “graph” objects with the same functionality as other Facebook objects. In fact, the meta tag determines how an URL will be displayed on a third-party website.

Open Graph is supported by other social media platforms like LinkedIn and X (Twitter)(if Twitter Cards are absent). The Open Graph can be useful for your overall SEO strategy as it can help increase your click-through rate and consequently your conversions.

Additionally, X (Twitter) Cards also help to improve your X (Twitter) shares. This protocol allows tweets containing links to display in a richer format, with more visible content integrated in the tweet.

X (Twitter) provides several types of cards: Summary Cards, Player Card, Summary Cards with Large Image and App Card.

The cards make your tweet expandable and your content is also visible online within X (Twitter).

As with Open Graph, X (Twitter) Cards are a great way to grow engagement and click-through rate.

At Oncrawl, we have integrated this data in our social media report. You can easily check if your Open Graph and X (Twitter) Cards are set up correctly if you have connected your Google Analytics to Oncrawl.

The report lets you visualize your Open Graph performance and distribution. Furthermore, you can also access the specific URLs for detailed information.

In the graph below, you can see which pages have complete or incomplete Open Graph information and if your og:url matches its canonical or not.

In the chart below, you can see how your Open Graph metrics are distributed across og:type. The website we analyzed deals with cinema news and shares movie teasers. The graph therefore shows the og:type related to movies or videos that can help better index its content.

You can also verify if you have filled in the main metadata. As with any graphs in your Oncrawl app, you can see which specific URLs are concerned if you click on a specific segment.

There is optional metadata you can fill out to add extra information about your content and increase the potential that your content will be shared.

The chart below shows your X (Twitter) Cards distribution, or in other words, which types of X (Twitter) Cards you are working with.

Finally, your X (Twitter) Cards properties chart analyzes all your X (Twitter) Card elements by type of property and number of pages.

 

Notes and tips when using Open Graph

  • Supported platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Pinterest, Google+

  • Fill out Open Graph main tags: og:title, og:image, og:type, og:url

  • Additional tags: og:audio, og:description, og:determiner, og:locale, og:locale:alternate, og:site_name, og:video

  • Facebook OG images

    • Recommended size: 1200 x 630 pixels

    • Minimum size: 600 x 315 pixels

  • X (Twitter) card image size:

    • Minimum image size: 120 x 120 pixels

    • Maximum file size: 1MB

  • Use SEO by Yoast to set up your Open Graphs

Notes and tips when using X (Twitter) Cards

  • Supported types of X (Twitter) Cards: Summary Card, Summary Card with large image, Player Card, App Card, Lead Generation Card.

  • Use plugins like Jetpack, JM Twitter Cards, SEO by Yoast to easily set up your X (Twitter) Cards

  • Summary Card:

    • Title: 70 characters

    • Description: 200 characters

    • Image: at least 120 × 120 pixels and no more than 1MB

  • Summary Card with Large Image:

    • Title: 70 characters

    • Description: 200 characters

    • Image: at least 289 x 150 pixels and no more than 1MB

  • App Card

    • Title: sorted from app ID

    • Description: 200 characters

    • Image: app logo sorted from app ID—image should be at least 800 x 320 pixels and can be JPG, JPEG, PNG or GIF format. Image under 1MB are preferred, max 3MB accepted

  • Player Card

    • Description: 200 characters

    • Image: displayed in place of the player on platforms that don’t support iframes or inline players. Same dimensions as your player; no more than MB

    • Video: H.264, baseline profile, level 3.0, with a 4:2:0 color space, dimension of 640 x 480 pixels at 30FPS.

    • Audio: AAC, Low Complexity Profile

  • Lead Generation Card

    • Title: 50 characters

    • Call to action: 20 characters

    • Post-submit message (optional): 100 charactersImage: at least 800 x 200 pixels with a 4:1 aspect ratio and no more than 3MB

  • Check if your X (Twitter) Cards are behaving right with Twitter Card Validator

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