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How do I specify an image for sharing on social media?

[Note: The title of this post has been edited by a moderator.]

How can I change website thumbnail? It is defaulting to a certain photo on my site but I want to select a more specific photo/logo that represents our brand and makes a better first impression when sending the link to potential clients. I googled how to do it and found some code that includes the url for the photo that I want to use and placing that in the page header but didn't work for me.

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Best Answer

WIth the classic Weebly drag and drop editor, you can specify a specific image by using a meta tag. Use this URL of an image file with the meta tag like this:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.google.com/someimage.jpg" />

Simply replace everything within the double quotes after content= with the URL of your own image, then add it the Header Code field in Settings > SEO in the website editor. You can also do this on a per-page basis by going to the Pages tab, clicking on a page, then adding it to the Header Code field found in SEO Settings. If you haven't already added the image to your site somewhere, you can also add it to a hidden page and then right-click on the image on the hidden page to copy the URL.

For sites built using the Square Online editor, you can do this for every page of your site within the website editor. Navigate to the page, then click on the gear icon on the left and choose Page settings. Go to the Social tab on the popup, then add an image to the Social image option. You can also set one for the whole site by going to Website > SEO & Social Media, click on Update social media, then adding an image on the Social tab of the popup.

Regardless of which editor you have, don't forget to publish afterward. You may also want to use the Facebook debugger to scrape your site again, since Facebook may use older cached images without doing that.

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Can you re-publish any site where you are seeing that and then scrape new info from Facebook with their debug tool?

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

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The facebook scrape is not the issue. My issue is that the wrong OG URL and in some cases OG image urls are appearing wrong in the header of my website. 

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imageSee this

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Can someone please respond to this thread????

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I think I replied to this earlier in the week, @SEOHero. Facebook should be following the http -> https redirect that we have, so having the http version of the site as the og:url shouldn't throw any errors with Facebook.

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Hi Adam, 

Apologies, 

I changed the title of this thread so it has nothing to do with Facebook. 

The issue is that my website (and everyone elses website on weebly that has SSL enabled) contains an opengraph meta property for the url of their site that is wrong.

I want this corrected. 

Kind regards

Zach

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Thanks for changing the title. I mentioned FB a lot because it's one example of something that would be using the open graph URL tag, though would follow the redirect to https so it wouldn't cause an actual issue. Is there another service which isn't following that redirect?

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Hi there all, 

Weebly SSL Issues - Website meta property="og:url" content=" is http://www but should be https://www

So this is the response I recieved via several email attempts after an unsatisfactory responses on this forum.

WHATS THE SSL ISSUE

So to be very crystal clear with what the issue was............ At some point in time....... Weebly was automatically inputting an Opengraph description and url for all weebly sites ( metatags for OG ) into the header secton of websites whitch superseeded the manual inputed metatags that can be inputted in the "HEADER CODE" i.e. <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.blahblah/co.uk/"> and <meta property="og:description" content="Blah Blah Blah">

THIS AFFECTED ALL WEBSITES UP UNTIL TWO WEEKS AGO

I noticed this issue very late on, a long time after the SSL certificates became available on weebly. I initially expected some increase in rankings because I know had an SSL certificae.

However the automatically inserted header code by weebly (open graph) was still refering to the sites URL without the SSL and was thus appearing as http rather than htps. Additionaly I had a opengraph URL that point to the correct URL but the auto one superseeded mine,

DOES THIS MATTER

Now what the ramifications of this is currently not known! The fact they have now rectified this can only be a good thing! And thank you. Eventually!

As we can now not blame this as an issue going forward with regards to SEO is a good thing.

But it was certainly not helpful..........as I have lost rankings but it is very hard to attribute this to Weebly, although Google webmaster flagged this up in a strange way which got me searching for answers.

WEEBLY RESPONES FROM THE LEGEND THAT IS BRI H (weebly)

Thanks for the screenshot. It appears this is related to a bug that was resolved. Republishing your site and fixing the theme should resolve the issue. The SSL version should generate proper og meta tags that reference the https version of the resources. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

SO PLEASE ALL REPUBLISH YOUR WEEBLY WEBSITES

 I did this and it has worked, but only if you go into each website abd publich your weebly site again.

GOING FORWARD WITH SEO

Now I am running tests on whether duplicate urls in OG titles (which you will all have if you have inputted your own descriptions and URLS) never mind the wrong url has been affecting rankings. Keep watching this post

So, if like me you use any of the following OG Titles in Weebly such as:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.JOEBLOGS.html" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_GB">
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:title" content="JOEBLOGS" />

<meta name="description" content="BlahJoeBlogsetc">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.yJOEBLOGS.jpg"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="JOEBLOGS">

You may perhaps in future NOT need to use the image meta tag unless you want to specify the image that is used when sharing.

Or you may NOT need to use the page description unless you want this to be different from the page. (i.e. for social media).

Additionally if you have no images specified with OG Metatags, what has also been rectifiecd is they will also added the SSL or the crucial S to the http so it now reads https so that your automatcially generated image OG's will also be correct.

I do believe me flagging this up and having it rectified will have helped hundreds if not millions of Weebly users, please let me know if others have flagged this issue up previously. Giving dates and when and if possible link to forums or pasting email responses.

Kind regards

Zach Mendelsohn

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Thanks for sharing your findings, Zach. I'm sure this will be super helpful and relevant for many users that stumble on this post. Smiley Happy

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Hi Adam,

I've just followed all the advice herein (add OG metatag to settings header code field) and managed to get my preferred image to display on facebook (woo hoo!) ... however, the reason I looked up the community messaging before sending a support request, was to achieve the same for LinkedIN ... I've cleared the cache in chrome and tried to create a post, but the old (really poor) image is still displaying with what appears to be a randomly selected description ...

So, 2 questions ...

1. Will the suggested OG meta tag solution work for all social media platforms including LinkedIn and if not, what do have to do differently

2. Can I add a different OG tag that forces the site to add my preferred description to any links I or others might share?

Thanks in advance.

David

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imageLinkedIn PostimageFacebook Post

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Great question, @Duxinaroe! LinkedIn caches preview information for 7 days, but fortunately they have their own post inspector you can use. It sounds like you can use that to update what LinkedIn uses.

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Thanks Adam,

The LinkedIn link (who knew! - great advice :-)), shows the same metadata and image I updated yesterday, however, when I post directly into LinkedIn, the same (very poor) image was pickedUp. I then closed the browser window, cleared the cache and reopened a new window - hey presto! It has updated 🙂 Thanks again for your support on this subject in this thread. 

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Thank you for voice frustration, and as I am not even as technologically knowledgable on all of this, for a newbee starting up a business it's very frustrating!

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Hi @Befuttled Sorry for the frustration. What part are you getting stuck on? Can you post a link to your site and is the image you wish to use already upload to one of your pages? 

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Try as I may, I cannot fathom any of the technical crap in this thread. But here I am, with a brand new Weebly sight and NO IMAGE AT ALL when I try to share my url on Facebook. No image regardless of which page's url I use. Since Facebook is THE ONLY social media I use to promote myself, my Weebly sight is useless to me if in "SCRAPING" my friggin' site, no image appears. I have paid in advance for 1 year and everything else about the service, the ease of website building, etc., has been lovely. But this is really unacceptable.

Help!!!!

Peggy

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Hi Peggy. What is the url you are sharing?

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I'm having the exact same issue. I started building my page yesterday and the ease of use is great. 

I decided to let my page followers preview my published site... and NO preview?
Eep. I might not be a Weebly user for long...

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Hi @Gingersnap2020 What is the url you tried to share? Facebook Debugger shows the following:

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I need help as well please< 
My logo is on my site that i want to use on the hidden page

www.illustriousfinancialsolutions.com

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Hi James. Was the code this:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/rock.jpg" />

Which website did you add it to? I can take a look. Also, did you receive an email from me? I don't have a reply in my inbox, but I'll check again. Smiley Happy Thanks! 

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