A strong presence on Facebook is essential for driving people to your website. Engagement is the backbone of a strong Facebook presence. You want to share content from your website that will generate likes, comments and reposts.

What Is Open Graph?

When you post a link from your website to your Facebook page, the Facebook Crawler will generate a preview for your followers on Facebook. But if you’ve ever shared a link accompanied by a tiny thumbnail image or perhaps no image at all, you know this not always the most eye-catching way to share your content.

• Facebook Open Graph allows a greater level of control over how content from your website appears when shared in a Facebook post. See the diffence in the example below?

Image source: Pam Neely, getresponse.com 

How Does It Work?

This is accomplished through the use of meta tags inserted into the Head elements of your webpage’s HTML. If you are using Wordpress, good news, there is a handy plug in that will add the meta tags for you. Otherwise, tags will have to be entered on each page individually. You can consult your web developer for that.

How Will It Work For You?

Instead of focusing on the technical aspects of Open Graph, I am going to discuss why its implementation is vital in order to drive clicks to your website.

• Facebook is responsible for a staggering amount of web traffic, and in the 2^nd quarter of 2014 Facebook was responsible driving 23.9% of overall traffic to websites.
• Without the implementation of Open Graph meta tags, you are not putting your best foot forward. Simply, you are not sharing the kind of content that is going to generate likes, comments and ultimately website visits.

Quick Sprout founder, Neil Patel attests that after implementing Open Graph his Facebook traffic increased by 174%. He credits this simply having an image next to the links he shared from his website.

By taking advantage of Open Graph meta tags you affect the performance of the links you post on Facebook by making them more visually appealing. Meta tags do not influence your on-page SEO, the benefit is strictly from bolstering your social media presence. 

You should be sold on the impact Open Graph can have on your social media presence. In the future I will discuss which meta tags are most vital in generate clicks on your content. 

For more about Open Graph check out Facebook's overview. And for everything else social media we are here to help.