How to Write Meta Titles and Descriptions

A standard Google result is built from a handful of parts, and you write two of them yourself:

• Site name and favicon: the name of the site and its small icon, at the top of the result.
• Visible URL: the domain and, on desktop, a breadcrumb trail that shows where the page sits on the site (since January 2025, mobile results show the domain only).
• Title link: the clickable headline. Google builds it mainly from your meta title, although it may change it.
• Snippet: the text below the headline. Google often uses your meta description here, and takes text from the page instead when it thinks that describes the page better.

Some results also carry a date, review stars or a price. The title and the description are the parts you control directly, and they are what a searcher reads before deciding whether to click.

A meta title is the headline that tells searchers what a page is about, and usually the first thing they see of your business in the search results. It sits in the <head> section of the page’s code, where visitors never see it, and looks like this: <title>Your headline here</title>. It is one of the strongest on-page signals you have: a well-written title helps the page rank for the right searches and earns more clicks once it does.

Also known as: page title, SEO title, title tag.

A meta description is a short summary of the page that can appear below the headline in the search results. It also sits in the <head>, as one of the page’s meta tags, and looks like this: <meta name="description" content="Your description">. Google doesn’t always use it, and will take text from the page when that matches the search better. The description isn’t a direct ranking factor, but when it is shown, it does a lot to decide whether someone clicks or scrolls on.

Strictly speaking, the title tag isn’t a meta tag, but the two are written together and discussed together, which is why this guide covers both.

Also known as: description, SEO description.

These are the points we check whenever we write or review a meta title and meta description.

The keyword in the meta title is still one of the clearest relevance signals on the page. Use it as close to exact match as you can, as long as that doesn’t change the intent or make the title read awkwardly.

Keywords in your meta description don’t affect rankings directly, but where you place them still matters. We keep the primary keyword and the main point within the first 110–120 characters, the part most likely to show on mobile and the part people read first.

Google sets no fixed limit and truncates titles and snippets to fit the screen. These are the lengths we work to, as rules of thumb rather than limits:

• Meta title: 51–55 characters (or at most 580–600 pixels)
• Meta description, standard pages: 120–158 characters (or up to about 920 pixels)
• Meta description, blog posts and news: 120–140 characters

Treat 60 characters as a ceiling for the title, not a target. In Zyppy’s 2022 study of almost 81,000 title tags, any title over 60 characters had a greater than 76 per cent chance of being rewritten, while titles of 51–60 characters were rewritten least often. We aim for 51–55, which leaves room for wide letters and keeps the title inside that range.

On blog posts and news, we cut the description to 120–140 characters. Google often puts the publication date at the start of the snippet, and the date takes up space, especially on mobile.

What really counts is the width of the text, not the number of characters: “iii” takes up far less room than “mmm”.

Aim for the right clicks rather than the most clicks. A title and description that describe the page accurately draw the people it was written for, and those are the visitors you want.

Once the expectations are right, give searchers a reason to choose your result, such as a clear call to action or a concrete benefit:

• Start with a free audit.
• Quotes within 24 hours.
• Sole UK distributor.
• Free delivery.

Google only picks up a new description when it next crawls the page, so a short-term offer is rarely worth adding. Choose something that will still be true in six months.

Your brand name in the title adds visibility, but where you put it matters. Google already shows your site name and favicon above the result, yet many people read only the headline, so the brand still earns its place there. Put it last rather than first. In John McAlpin’s 2025 study of title rewrites, removing the brand name was the most common change Google made, accounting for 63 per cent of modified titles, and when the search isn’t about the brand, the name is often the first thing to go. With the brand at the end, you keep the visibility without pushing the keyword back.

This applies mainly to the meta title. If several pages carry the same keyword in their titles, Google has to choose between them, and they end up competing for the same searches. That is keyword cannibalisation, and the fix is to give each page a keyword of its own.

The meta title sums up the page the searcher will land on, so it has to match the intent behind the search. Two titles can contain the same keyword and still perform very differently if one promises a product page and the other a guide.

How much the exact keyword matters depends on whether the search is commercial or informational:

Whatever the intent, we build titles from the same three parts:

Keyword – USP | Company name

Google’s documentation names a hyphen, a colon or a pipe as separators without preferring any of them, so use whichever reads best; on this site we put a pipe before the brand. Google sometimes swaps the separator itself (in Zyppy’s study it removed or replaced pipes 41 per cent of the time and dashes 19.7 per cent), but that changes the punctuation, not your wording. If the title runs too long, drop the company name.

Sometimes the best meta description is none at all. On sites with thousands of pages, such as large online shops or networks of branch pages, an empty field often does better than a generic description repeated on page after page.

With the field empty, Google picks a passage from the page that matches what the person searched for. Someone looking for a local branch might see its opening hours, address and parking straight in the results, which a templated description would never cover. In tests reported by Mark Williams-Cook, groups of pages without meta descriptions saw a small traffic uplift, about 3 per cent on average, which he described as statistically significant. Google’s guidance on snippets agrees that identical or similar descriptions on every page aren’t helpful, and for large, database-driven sites it suggests generating descriptions from each page’s own content.

Your most important pages, the ones that sell, should always have a description written by hand. Leaving the field empty is a tactic for pages at scale, not for your key commercial pages.

Search Console shows the click-through rate (CTR) for every query and page, and surprisingly few site owners look at it. The figures are aggregated and less precise than those in Google Ads, but they are enough to spot weak titles.

1. Open Google Search Console and go to Performance, then Search results.
2. Click the Average CTR box above the chart to add CTR to the chart and the table.
3. Below the chart, choose the Queries tab (search terms) or the Pages tab (pages that rank).
4. Click the CTR column heading to sort the table, or use the filter icon above it to show only rows above or below a CTR you set.

When you read the figures, bear in mind:

• On the Pages tab, each page’s CTR combines every query it appears for, so look at the queries behind it before you judge the title.
• The figures are averaged over the date range you choose, and your positions may have moved during it.
• CTR depends heavily on position, so compare pages that rank in similar places.

Click-through rates by position have shifted since AI Overviews spread. In a 2025 study by GrowthSRC Media of more than 200,000 keywords, CTR for position 1 fell from 28 to 19 per cent, a drop of 32 per cent, while positions 6 to 10 saw a 30.63 per cent increase on the previous year.

If you rank lower down the first page, give the people reading your result substance: concrete figures, brackets and, where the page really is kept up to date, a year in the title (for example “(Updated 2026)”), rather than empty sales language such as “Welcome to our website”. In that study positions 6 to 10 had a higher click-through rate than a year earlier, so the snippet there deserves the same care as on your top-ranking pages.

Clicks do play a part. Google says it uses “aggregated and anonymized interaction data” to assess whether search results are relevant to queries, although it doesn’t say how much weight clicks carry. We go into this in our article on user signals as a ranking factor.

A higher CTR can help your SEO, and every click you win is one a competitor doesn’t get. But clicks only count if they come from people who might buy, so write with two aims in mind:

• Write for your ideal customer.
• Get as many of those ideal customers as possible to click.

Both aims depend on Google showing the title you wrote, and that happens less often than most people expect.

Google is under no obligation to show the meta title and description you enter. It can use text from the page when that suits the search better, and it often does: in John McAlpin’s 2025 study, Google changed 76 per cent of title tags. Your pages also appear for far more searches than the keywords you track, including many long-tail searches, and Google readily adapts the headline for those.

Rewrites now come from two directions:

• The algorithmic system works from what is already on and around your page. If the title is too long, too short or about something other than the page, Google replaces it with text it finds there, usually the H1, another heading or a passage of body copy. Google’s documentation also lists anchor text and og:title tags among its sources.
• Generative AI writes headlines you never wrote. In March 2026, Google confirmed a “small and narrow” test of AI-generated headlines in standard search results. The AI can change the tone, drop industry context or change what the page promises. The rewritten headline carries no label, and Google hasn’t outlined a way to opt out.

The main risk with AI rewriting is to meaning. In the reported examples, Google changed what a headline said, not just its format. A long or complicated headline can be cut down until the point disappears, and a critical review could end up reading like a recommendation. Keep your meta titles and H1s direct, factual and consistent with each other.

If you want Google to keep your title, make it mirror the page’s H1. When the title and the H1 say different things, Google is more likely to treat the title as inaccurate and replace it, typically with the H1 or part of the body copy. Say the same thing in both, worded to fit the space, and you send a consistent signal and give Google less reason to step in.

If Google rewrites a lot of your titles, check:

• That each title is the right length
• That you aren’t stuffing in keywords
• That you are writing for the search intent

Titles over 60 characters are rewritten more often than not, so they are the first to find and fix.

If you don’t have an all-in-one SEO tool, or an SEO agency that checks this for you, Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider does the job. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs.

Once you have downloaded and opened it:

• Paste in your site’s address and click “Start”
• Open the “Page Titles” tab and choose the “Over 60 Characters” or “Over X Pixels” filter
• Do the same in the “Meta Description” tab, with “Over 155 Characters” and “Over X Pixels”

Sort the results by length or pixel width and shorten the longest first. On WordPress, you make the changes in the title and description fields that an SEO plugin such as Rank Math or Yoast adds to every page, category and product. Both show a preview of the snippet and warn you when the text is too long. We use Rank Math, which also shows the character and pixel count. For the rest of the set-up, see our guide to WordPress SEO.

Google sets no fixed length. We work to 120–158 characters for standard pages and 120–140 for blog posts and news articles, where Google often adds the publication date at the start of the snippet and the date takes up space on mobile. We also keep the most important part within the first 110–120 characters.

A good meta description sets the right expectations, includes the keyword early and has a clear call to action. Use active verbs such as “Read”, “Find”, “Compare” or “Order”, and make sure the text matches what the page actually delivers, so that the people who click are the ones the page is for.

Use the template keyword, USP, company name, with a hyphen, colon or pipe between the parts, and aim for 51–55 characters, which is the range we work to. Put the keyword first and the brand last, and keep the title in line with the page’s H1. That gives your own title the best chance of surviving Google’s rewrites.

The meta title is the clickable headline in the search results and an important ranking signal. The meta description is the short text beneath it. It isn’t a direct ranking factor, but it affects how many people click. Both are set in the page’s <head> section.

The meta description isn’t a direct ranking factor, but it affects click-through rate, and Google says it uses interaction data when assessing whether results are relevant. A description that gets more of the right people to click can therefore help you indirectly.

If you would like help with your meta titles and descriptions, our SEO service covers them as part of the work, or you can start with a free search audit.