This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung
SEO
Why does my website need a twitter:card meta tag?
If you share a link on X (formerly Twitter), in the best case you will see a map with image, title and description. Whether it appears, decides a single meta tag in the head of the page: twitter:card. It calls the card type, for example, a large picture card. Title, description and image X then reads from the open graph tags, which many websites have long since – but the card type only from their own tag. If it is missing, the post remains a naked link. The SEO test area reports this as its own finding.
Open Graph covers almost everything, but not the card type
Most platforms — WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, Signal — build their preview from the open graph tags: og:title, og:description, og:image. X is different: it accepts these values as a substitute for twitter:title and relatives, but explicitly requires the tag twitter:card to draw a card at all. The value summary generates a small card with image on the left, summary large image a large picture card over the full width. Without the tag, X only shows the address — the page looks inconspicuous in the feed, and whoever shared it gets fewer clicks. The test area reads the tag from the head of the measured page; it counts 3 out of 100 points in the seo-v2 rulebook.
One day, not a project
The correction is a line in the head of the page: a meta tag named twitter:card and one of the allowed values. Most editorial systems put it via their SEO module, often it is only a check mark there. Importantly, the image from og:image is in a format that takes X — at least 300 times 157 pixels, better 1200 times 630, less than five megabytes, reachable via https. An own twitter:image is only necessary if the X image is to deviate from the open-graph image. The test does not say whether the picture looks good; She says if X can build a map at all.
- In the header of each page, put a meta tag twitter:card with the value summary large image if there is a landscape image, otherwise summary.
- Check that og:image is accessible via https and has at least 1200 times 630 pixels — X reads this picture.
- Test a page with the card validator of X or by inserting the link in a private post: If no card appears, the tag is usually missing.
- Have the tag set in the page template, not each side by hand - otherwise it is missing on each new page again.
