Dress your content up for the Share

When web pages are shared on social media platforms a preview of the link is generated. Before you publish your next blog post take the time to visualize how your post will appear in the link preview on social media platforms. Presentation is key because the preview is an opportunity to capitalize on the fact that someone is sharing your page.

Below is an example of the link preview in Facebook.

1. Headline

First, you want to make sure that you are crafting great headlines. Avoid keyword stuffing; attempting to fool search engines will ensure that nobody will want to read your post.

The headline is usually taken from the

The page title is also one of the most important on page SEO ranking factors so it is vital to craft unique titles to rank well and attract clicks.

2. Description

The description is going to be pulling information from the meta description tag. Much like the title, the description is being generated based on the meta description you have provided for the page. This needs to draw the user in and make them want to click for more.

Learn more about meta description

3. URLs

URLs should be clean and relatively short. Again, keyword stuffing looks spammy and will not inspire people to click on your post, but having your primary keyword in the URL is a good practice. Just make sure your entire site has a clean URL structure. That’s it!

4. Images

Facebook will attempt to resize your images to generate thumbnails. You might find that Facebook is not giving you any options for thumbnails or that your images are blurry. Follow these tips to make sure your images in the preview are great:

• Images that are close to a 1:1 height and width ratio will work the best to resize. 4:3 and 5:4 are common ratios that would work great.
• Really wide images will not work. These can not be resized to fit the preview.
• Facebook will resize tall images but these can appear blurry.
• Try putting your most important image at the top so that this is the first thumbnail generated by Facebook’s preview.

You can use your best judgement or put your image size into this aspect ratio calculator.