Control how your page appears when sharing to Facebook with Open Graph data

When you share a link on Facebook some of the information is automatically fetched as a preview. In tech speak, this is called open graph (OG) metadata. By adding this to your page you can control how the content you share you Facebook looks.

The Facebook link preview contains three elements, all of which you can control.

• Image
• Title
• Description

Default Open Graph Data

If you do nothing there is default data for the open graph tags in place. These are sensible defaults. For many pages you might not need to optimize them at all. But for some pages a customized version might make a difference in getting people to click. Especially marketing pages.

If no custom Open Graph data is set, defaults are loaded in two steps:

• The same title and description as used for Google.
• The default title and description auto-generated by your page title and the first content on your page.

For both of these the featured image of the page will be used. If none is set, the default open graph image from the SEO settings will be used instead. If no default is set, Facebook will often display the first image it comes across on the page. Only if there still is none at all to be found will no image be shown.

Customizing Open Graph Data

Most public pieces of content on your website, such as pages and posts, have options to control the Open Graph data.

When you are in the edit mode, look for the Yoast SEO icon in the top right part of the page. Clicking it will open the SEO panel.

From the SEO panel, click on the “Facebook preview” section. A modal window will appear showing you fields to select an image, write the title and customize the excerpt.

Don’t forget to save the page when you are done so that your edits take effect.