How to Change Facebook Link Preview Images

The image and text that shows up when sharing a link on Facebook can make or break whether someone actually clicks through. Default previews are often boring, generic, and won't entice engagement.

In this guide, learn how to create eye-catching custom link previews with relevant images, headlines, and descriptions that will boost your Facebook engagement.

We'll cover:

How Facebook generates default link previews
Using Open Graph meta tags to control preview content
Optimizing preview images for best quality
Updating tags to change cached previews
Plugins for WordPress sites
Overriding old link previews
Best practices for compelling previews

With the right preview images and text, you can capture more attention and increase click-through rates when sharing links on Facebook.

Follow this guide to create previews optimized for engagement and traffic:

How Does Facebook Generate Link Previews?

create facebook post: facebook link preview

When you share a link on Facebook, whether through a post, comment, messenger, or anywhere else, Facebook's crawler will scan the destination web page to pull content for the preview. This content includes the page title, a description excerpt, and an image.

Facebook looks for special Open Graph metadata tags in the page code to determine what to display in the preview. The open graph tags used are:

og:title - Defines the title
og:description - Provides the description text
og:image - Specifies the image to show

If these Open Graph tags are not present in your HTML, Facebook will fallback to pull from other sources in your HTML document:

Title: From the <title> tag
Description: From the <meta name="description" content="...">
Image: From the images on the page

However, it's best to explicitly define the preview content with Open Graph tags so you can have more control over how your link previews are displayed.

Once Facebook scrapes this data from a page, it caches the information to show the same preview in the future. It doesn't re-scrape the page every time the URL is shared to conserve resources. This means that if you update the metadata tags, the preview won't change until Facebook reindexes that page.

Changing Link Previews

When you share links from your own website on Facebook, you can have full control over the preview content. Here's how to edit your website to create your own custom link previews:

Add Open Graph Meta Tags

Include Open Graph meta tags in the <head> of your pages to specify exactly what you want shown in the previews:

You can use the Facebook Sharing Debugger to test how your pages will look when shared.

Make sure to define OG meta tags on every page you want to have a custom preview.

OG:Image Best Practices

When you specify og:image, also include og:image:width and og:image:height so Facebook can render the image immediately without having to asynchronously download and process it.

Use images that are at least 1200 x 630 pixels for optimal display on high resolution devices, but 600 x 314 pixels is the minimum size. Larger images will be scaled down.

JPEGs and GIFs work best. Facebook compresses and converts images to JPEGs so sticking with that format avoids double compression or weird artifacts.

Force Facebook to Fetch Updates

When you update the Open Graph meta tags on your pages, Facebook will eventually pick up those changes and update the cached preview data.

However, it usually takes a while for Facebook to re-scrape and reindex pages. You can force Facebook to re-scrape immediately using the Sharing Debugger by clicking "Fetch new scrape information".

So when you change preview images or metadata, go to the debugger, enter the URL, and fetch new data. You'll then see updated previews.

Use WordPress Plugins

If you use WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO make it easy to set up Open Graph metadata for all your site pages automatically.

The Yoast plugin has settings for defining a default preview image, customizing titles and descriptions, and outputting the proper OG meta tags in your site.

Modifying Previews for Existing Facebook Posts

For links that have already been shared on Facebook, you won't be able to update the previews by changing metadata since those posts are already cached. However, there are a couple ways to override the existing previews:

Verify Domain Ownership

Facebook allows you to claim ownership of your website domain in Facebook Business Manager. Once verified, you can access options for editing link preview information from previously shared posts.

To verify:

Go to Business Settings
Choose "Add Property"
Select "Website" and enter your domain name.

After following the verification steps, you'll be able to edit cached link data and see the changes reflected in old posts.

Share New Post with Image

Whenever you share a link on Facebook yourself, you can choose the image that will show up in the preview.

Upload or select a new image when creating your post, and that will override the default preview pulled from the page metadata or content. Other users will now see your custom image when they view the post.

This only affects that specific post - all other shares of the URL will still show the default preview unless you edit it through domain verification or change the actual metadata.

Best Practices for Optimized Link Previews

Here are some top tips to ensure your link previews look great every time:

Put important text, headlines, and keywords near the top of your content since descriptions may be truncated.
Write titles and descriptions that grab attention and summarize the essence of the content.
Use consistent OG metadata across your domain to avoid unexpected previews. Follow Facebook's Open Graph guidelines.
When possible, provide images at least 1200 x 630 pixels for optimal quality.
Test all your pages with the Sharing Debugger and validate they pass Facebook's scraper.
For WordPress sites, use a well-configured SEO plugin to auto-generate preview metadata.
Periodically fetch new scrapes on important pages so previews update after changes.
Stick with JPEGs and GIFs since Facebook compresses to JPEG format anyway.
If previews look wrong, upload your own image when sharing the link or verify domain ownership.

With the right preparation, you can ensure your Facebook link previews make that vital first impression count, capture attention, and drive clicks to your site. Follow this guide and you'll be leveraging the power of compelling Open Graph images in no time!

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