What an OG image does for your links on LinkedIn
When you share a link on LinkedIn, WhatsApp or Facebook, the OG image largely determines whether people click it. Here's how it works.
You write a news post, share the link on LinkedIn, and see a grey rectangle appear where an image should be. Or worse: the wrong image, a 64-by-64-pixel logo, or just the first image LinkedIn happened to find on the page.
That has a direct impact on how many people click that link.
What the OG image is
OG stands for Open Graph, a protocol that tells platforms how to display a shared URL. LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Slack all read the OG tags of a page.
The most visible tag is og:image: the image that appears when you share a link. Next to the image, og:title and og:description are also important. Together they determine how your link looks in someone else’s feed.
Why it matters for clicks
Imagine two colleagues both posting an article. One post has an appealing image, a clear title and a one-sentence description. The other shows a grey box with the domain name. Which one do you click?
Posts with an image on LinkedIn get significantly more engagement than posts without. A large part of that difference comes from the OG image.
What the right image looks like
For the best display on all platforms:
- Dimensions: 1200 by 630 pixels
- File size: preferably under 1 MB
- Format: JPG or PNG
- Avoid text at the edges, they sometimes get cropped
How to check whether your site has one
Scan your website at sitescore.wooning.cz. The scan checks whether your og:image tag is present, whether the image has the right dimensions, and shows a preview of how your link looks on LinkedIn and Facebook. Free, no account required.