How to Use Open Graph Checker to Improve Social Media Previews

Let's talk about a moment of pure, digital heartbreak that I am sure every single content creator has experienced. You have just written a brilliant and an insightful blog post. You have poured hours of your time and your energy into it. You are so excited and so proud to be able to share it with the world. So, you go to your Facebook or your LinkedIn page, you copy and you paste the link into the "create post" box, you wait for that little, preview window to load, and then… your heart just sinks. It’s a complete and a total disaster.

The wrong image is showing up, or maybe there is no image at all. The title of your article is weirdly cut off. And the description is just a random and a completely out-of-context sentence that has been pulled from the middle of your article. It looks unprofessional, it looks broken, and it is completely and totally un-clickable.

In the incredibly fast-moving and the visually-driven world of a social media feed, that little link preview is absolutely everything. A beautiful, a compelling, and a well-crafted preview is the thing that is going to get the click. An ugly and a broken one is going to be completely ignored. So how do you take control of this? How do you tell Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other platforms exactly what image, what title, and what description you want them to use? You do it with a "secret" set of instructions called Open Graph tags. And there is a simple tool that you can use to be able to check if you have gotten them exactly right.

The "Social Media Business Card": What is Open Graph?

Before we get into the easy solution, let's just pull back the curtain and demystify what this "Open Graph" thing actually is. In the simplest terms, the Open Graph protocol is a set of special, meta tags that you can add to the <head> section of your website's HTML code. This protocol was originally created by the smart people at Facebook, but it has now become the universal and the accepted standard that is used by almost all of the major social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and many others.

The absolute best way to think about your Open Graph tags is to imagine that they are your webpage's official "social media business card." When you share a link to your page on a platform like Facebook, the Facebook robot will first "visit" your page and it will look for this special business card to know exactly how it should display the preview. If your page doesn't have an Open Graph business card, then the robot just has to make its best guess. And, as we have all seen, it often guesses very, very wrong. It is important to remember that these tags are not for your human visitors to see; they are a direct and a specific message that you are sending to the social media robots.

The Core Ingredients of a Perfect Link Preview

So, what are the actual, key pieces of information that make up this "social media business card"? It all comes down to a few, core, and very important Open Graph tags.

The first, and maybe the most obvious one, is the og:title tag. This is the headline that is going to appear in your link preview. The really cool thing about this is that it can actually be different from your main, SEO page title. This allows you to be able to craft a shorter, a punchier, and a much more social-media-friendly headline for your preview. Next, you have the og:description tag. This is the short, the compelling, and the one or two-sentence description that is going to appear under your title. Again, you can customize this to be much more engaging and much more conversational for a social media audience.

But the big one, the one that has the most visual impact of all, is the og:image tag. This is where you can specify the exact URL of the beautiful, the compelling, and the perfectly-sized image that you want the platform to use in the preview. This is how you take complete control of your visual branding. And finally, you have the og:url tag, which tells the platforms the "canonical" or the official URL of your page, which helps to ensure that all of the shares and the likes are all attributed to the same, single source.

The Frustration of the "Cache": Why Previews Don't Update

Now, let's talk about one of the most frustrating and the most confusing problems that content creators face, and it's a problem that a good checker tool can help you to solve.

Imagine this scenario. You have just shared a link to your brand-new blog post, and you see that the preview is all wrong. So, you go back to your website, you fix all of your Open Graph tags, and you make them perfect. You then come back to Facebook, you paste the link in again, feeling confident. And… the old, the wrong, and the broken preview is still showing up.

The reason for this is something called caching. The very first time that a link is shared on a platform like Facebook, the platform will "scrape" the page, it will grab the Open Graph information, and it will then save that information in its own, temporary memory, which is called a cache. It does this to be able to save time and to be able to load the preview more quickly the next time that someone shares that same link. The problem is that it doesn't automatically go back and check your page for any new changes.

The Old Way: The Official Debugger Shuffle

For many, many years, the only way to be able to check your tags and to be able to solve this frustrating caching problem was to go to each and every platform's own, official, and separate "sharing debugger" tool.

You would have to go to the Facebook Sharing Debugger, you would have to paste your URL in there, and you would have to see what it sees. Then, you would have to click a special "Scrape Again" button, which would force the platform to be able to clear its old cache and to go and to look at your page again for the new and the updated information. Then, you would have to go and do the exact same, slow process all over again on the LinkedIn Post Inspector, and on the Twitter Card Validator. As you can imagine, this is a very slow, a very clunky, and a very repetitive, multi-tool process.

The All-in-One Solution: The Online Open Graph Checker

This pressing need for a single, for a fast, and for a comprehensive way to be able to see exactly how your link is going to look, everywhere, all at once, is exactly why a dedicated, online Open Graph Checker is such an absolutely essential and an invaluable tool.

This type of tool is a powerful utility that is able to simulate how all of the major, different social media platforms are going to "see" and are going to interpret your link. The workflow is an absolute dream of simplicity. You just go to the website. You paste the URL of your blog post or your webpage into a single, simple input box. You click the "Check" button. The tool will then go and it will fetch your page, it will read all of your important Open Graph tags, and it will then show you a beautiful and an accurate, visual preview of exactly how your link is going to look on all of the most important platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It is, for all intents and purposes, a "preview of your preview." And the fantastic thing is, with the kind of powerful and user-friendly tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can diagnose and you can perfect your entire, social media presence in just a few seconds.

What to Look For in a Great OG Tag Checking Tool

As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most useful ones are designed to be your all-in-one, command center for your social sharing. They are built to give you the information you need, in the clearest and the most actionable way possible. A really top-notch online tool for checking your Open Graph tags should have a few key features. It should include:

The ability for the tool to be able to show you a clear and an accurate, visual preview of your link for a variety of different, major platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
A detailed and a helpful "debugger" section that will list all of the different Open Graph tags that it was able to find on your page, and all of their corresponding values.
A set of clear and simple error messages or warnings that will tell you if a critical and an important tag, like the og:image tag, is missing or if it is incorrectly formatted.
A fantastic and a very time-saving "force refresh" or a "recrawl" button that can help you to be able to clear the cache on all of the major, social media platforms at once.
A tool that is fast, that is easy to use, and that presents all of this complex and valuable information in a very clear and an actionable way.

A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any modern, content creator.

The Human Strategist: Crafting the Perfect Preview

Now for the golden rule, the part of the process that turns a simple, technical check into a real and a powerful, marketing strategy. The online checker is the tool that can tell you if all of your tags are working correctly. But your job is to make sure that the actual content of those tags is incredibly and irresistibly compelling.

Take a look at your og:title. Is it short? Is it punchy? Does it ask a question or does it create a sense of curiosity? Now, look at your og:description. Does it do a good job of summarizing the value of your article and does it give the reader a powerful reason to click? And the most important one of all, the og:image. Is your image bright? Is it colorful? Is it high-contrast and is it eye-catching? Does it include a little bit of bold text to be able to grab a person's attention? Your image should be specifically and intentionally designed to be able to stop the scroll. The tool is the thing that ensures that your preview is technically correct; you are the one who ensures that it is strategically brilliant.

From a Broken Link to a Click-Worthy Card

Let’s be honest, your link preview is your very first, and in many cases, your only, chance to be able to earn a valuable click from a user on social media. You simply cannot afford to get it wrong.

Open Graph tags are the powerful tool that gives you complete and total control over that crucial, first impression. And a good, online checker is the essential, final step in your publishing workflow that ensures that your preview is going to look absolutely perfect, every single time that you share it. So, it’s time to stop leaving your social media presence to chance. It’s time to stop sharing those ugly, those broken, and those completely un-clickable links. By taking just a few, extra seconds to be able to check and to perfect your Open Graph tags, you can take complete and total control of your brand's story. It’s time to create a preview that is every bit as compelling as your content, and to turn all of your social media shares from a hopeful guess into a high-performing and a repeatable strategy.