How to Write Meta Descriptions That Get Clicks

The meta description is the two lines of grey text under your title in Google's results. It doesn't move your ranking, but it decides whether a searcher who sees you actually clicks. Two pages in the same position can get very different numbers of visits, and the snippet is often the reason.

One thing to know before you spend an afternoon on them: Google doesn't always use yours. It writes its own snippet from the page when it thinks that matches the search better, which happens most on long, specific searches. A good description still gets used much of the time, and it's the only part of the snippet you control.

What Site Audit flags

• No description (warning). Google fills the gap with whatever text it picks from the page. On small sites that's often a menu, a cookie notice or half a sentence from the footer.
• The same description on several pages (warning). Usually a theme or plugin default. None of those pages says what makes it different, so a searcher can't tell them apart.
• Too long (notice). Over 160 characters, and Google cuts it off. Like titles, the real limit is a width on screen, so treat 155 to 160 as the ceiling. Site Audit shows the description with the part that would be hidden highlighted.

Rewriting one, step by step

Take a bakery's delivery page. Here's how a description usually starts out, and how it gets better.

First draft: "Welcome to our website. We are a family bakery offering a wide range of high quality bread and cakes for all occasions."

Nothing in it is wrong, and nothing in it helps. "Welcome to our website" wastes the opening words, and every bakery could say the rest.

Second draft: "Sourdough, rye and seeded loaves baked daily in Leeds and delivered to your door."

Better: it says what you get and where. But it gives the searcher no reason to choose this result over the next one.

Final: "Sourdough, rye and seeded loaves baked daily in Leeds. Order by 2pm for next-day delivery across LS postcodes."

The detail does the work. Someone in Leeds searching for bread delivery now knows the cut-off time and that their postcode is covered, before they click. At 110 characters it's well inside the limit.

The same approach works for any page:

1. Say what the page offers in plain words, with the main search phrase used once and naturally. Google shows the words that match the search in bold.
2. Add one specific detail: a price, an area, opening hours, what's included, how long it takes.
3. If there's room, end with what to do next ("See this week's menu"), without shouting.

How we handle ours

Two habits from this site that work on any size of site.

First, the build that makes our pages refuses to publish a blog post or guide whose description is over 155 characters. You don't need a build script to copy the idea: pick a limit, and check new pages against it before they go live, not after an audit finds them.

Second, where a description mentions something that changes, it reads it from the same place the page does. The description of our agency page ends "Scale plan, 10 sites, £59 a month plus VAT". Those figures come from the same data as the pricing page, so a price change can't leave an old price sitting in Google. Shop platforms offer the same idea as description templates for products, built from the product's name, price or category.

Where to change it

• WordPress with Yoast or Rank Math: the "Meta description" field in the plugin's box under the editor.
• Shopify: "Edit website SEO" at the bottom of a product, collection or page. The home page's is under Online Store, then Preferences.
• Wix: the page's SEO settings, under "Meta description".
• Squarespace: the page settings, then the SEO tab.

Fixing hundreds at once

Start with the pages that show up most in Google. In Search Console, open the Pages tab of the Performance report and sort by impressions: the top twenty or so are where a better description makes the biggest difference. For a large shop, set a template for products so nothing is left blank, then write your best sellers by hand.

After you've changed them

View the page's source and search for "description" to check the new text is there. Google needs to visit the page again before results change, which can take a few days. In Site Audit, tick the page and choose Verify my fixes to re-check a missing or overlong description straight away. Copied descriptions depend on other pages, so the next monthly audit confirms those.