Unless you've been in a coma for the last few years, you're quite aware of Facebook and Google+ social networks, and the millions of users on these sites. Both have the ability to drive tons of traffic to your site, that is unless you're shooting yourself in the foot and don't know it!

If you haven't taken the time to optimize your content for Facebook and Google+ don't wait any longer because it's too easy to skip past this month. All you need to do is add Open Graph Tags to your Web pages and the potential benefits are huge and will only increase :) In this article we'll give a bit of an explanation and then move quickly onto the real code examples. If you get lost or need some support, use the comments section below to get our experts to chime in! Now, let's get to it...

The Open Graph protocol (ogp.me) is supported by both Facebook and Google+, although Google does say that they prefer Schema.org Microdata. However, since Facebook does not yet support Microdata at all, in order to cover both of these sites - you'll need to use Open Graph tags. In a perfect world you'd use both Microdata and Open Graph tags on the same page in order to optimize your content for both Search & Social.

If you aren't yet familiar with Microdata or need a refresher then you can add this feature article as the next thing on your 'to read' list:

• Understanding and Leveraging Rich Snippets to Dominate Your Industry

Why Open Graph Tags Are Important