How to write a good page title and meta description

This is a writing job, not a technical one. For a typical five to ten page small business website it is an evening's work, and it is one of the few jobs where you can see the result with your own eyes: search for your business next week and the words are different.

What follows is what Google's own documentation actually says, checked on 15 September 2026, rather than the folklore that has built up around it. Two of those facts are the ones most articles on this subject get wrong, so they come first.

What is a page title and what is a meta description?

The page title is the blue headline in a search result; the meta description is the couple of grey lines underneath it. Both live in your page's settings rather than on the page itself, so a visitor on your website never sees either — the title shows in the browser tab, and that is it.

In the HTML they look like this, and every page on your site has its own pair:

Google has its own names for what it shows: the headline is a title link and the grey text is a snippet. That distinction matters, because a title link is not the same thing as your title, and a snippet is not the same thing as your description. Google builds both, and your text is only one input.

Does Google actually use my meta description?

Sometimes, and only when it decides your description beats the page. Google's snippet documentation, checked 15 September 2026, puts it plainly: “Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself. However, Google sometimes uses the meta description HTML element if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page.”

Read that carefully. The default source is your page. The description is the alternative. That is also why the snippet can change from one search to the next: Google is picking the text that best matches what that particular person typed.

So a meta description is a suggestion, not an instruction. Writing one is still worth doing — it is often taken, especially on homepages and service pages where the on-page text is a headline and a photo — but if you find yourself rewriting the same description for the fourth time, stop. The page underneath it is the thing Google is reading.

Are page titles and meta descriptions a ranking factor?

The description is not, and the title is, but only barely. These are two different answers and they get mashed together constantly.

On the description, Google has been consistent for seventeen years. Matt Cutts, then of Google's search quality team, wrote in September 2009: “Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.” Nothing since has contradicted it, and the current documentation describes the description only in terms of snippets.

On the title, John Mueller of Google said in January 2016: “Titles are important! They are important for SEO. They are used as a ranking factor. Of course, they are definitely used as a ranking factor but it is not something where I'd say the time you spend on tweaking the title is really the best use of your time.” That is the honest position: it counts, it is small, and there are diminishing returns after the first decent draft.

So why bother? Because the description decides clicks and the title does both. A result that appears 400 times a month and gets clicked 12 times instead of 8 has gained half as many enquiries again, without moving a single position.

Why is Google showing a different title to the one I wrote?

Because Google generates the title link, and it uses your title element around 87% of the time. That figure is Google's own. Danny Sullivan published it on the Search Central blog on 17 September 2021: “Based on your feedback, we made changes to our system which means that title elements are now used around 87% of the time, rather than around 80% before.”

When it does not use yours, it draws on the main visual title on the page, heading elements such as the H1, og:title, large and prominent styled text, anchor text, text in links pointing at the page, and WebSite structured data.

That same September 2021 post named the four patterns that trigger a rewrite, and they are worth learning because they are all self-inflicted:

• Half-empty titles. A template that produced “| Site Name” because the first half went missing.
• Obsolete titles. A page headed “2026 admissions criteria” whose title still says 2025. Google takes the date from the heading.
• Inaccurate titles. A title listing products that are not reliably on the page.
• Micro-boilerplate titles. The same title repeated across a group of pages, so nobody can tell them apart.

Google's advice at the end of that post was: “Making changes may help ensure your title element is again used. That's really our preference, as well.” A rewrite is not a punishment. It is Google compensating for something it thinks is broken, and the fix is to un-break it.

Why do other articles say Google rewrites 60% of titles?

Because a widely cited independent study measured a different thing. Cyrus Shepard of Zyppy examined 80,959 title tags across 2,370 sites and found Google rewrote 61.6% of them; the study was published in July 2022 and last updated in May 2026. Titles over 70 characters were changed 99.9% of the time, and 32.9% of bracketed sections were removed entirely.

Both figures are true. Google is counting how often your title element was the source of the title link. Zyppy counted how often the displayed text differed from the title in any way at all, including trimming a long title, dropping a bracketed phrase or swapping a pipe for a dash. Google using 87% of your titles and altering most of them in some small way are not in conflict.

What both agree on: write a title that is accurate, distinctive and not too long, and the words that appear will be close to the words you chose.

How long should a page title and meta description be?

Google publishes no limit for either. Its title link documentation says: “While there's no limit on how long a <title> element can be, the title link is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width.” The snippet documentation says the same about descriptions. Both checked 15 September 2026.

“To fit the device width” is the important phrase. Truncation is measured in pixels, not characters, and a wide phone is not a narrow one. Thirty capital W's take far more room than thirty lower-case i's, which is why two 60-character titles can cut in different places.

So where do the famous numbers come from? From the tools. Screaming Frog, the crawler most UK agencies run, flags page titles over 60 characters or over 561 pixels and meta descriptions over 155 characters or over 985 pixels. Its own documentation is candid about it: “Google snippet length is actually based upon pixels limits, rather than a character length,” and the tool “tries to match the latest pixel truncation points in the SERPs, but it is an approximation”. Yoast and similar plugins use their own thresholds and colour a bar accordingly. None of these are Google's rules.

They are also not stable over time. In December 2017 Google lengthened snippets to roughly 300 characters; in May 2018 it pulled them back, with Danny Sullivan saying “Our search snippets are now shorter on average than in recent weeks” and only “slightly longer than before a change we made last December”. Anyone who rewrote every description in the meantime did the work twice.

The practical rule that survives all of this: front-load. Put the words that must be seen at the start, treat everything after them as a bonus, and stop worrying about the exact cut-off. If the first 50 characters say what you do and where, truncation costs you nothing.

How do I write a page title? Before and after

The recipe for a local service business is: what the page is about, the area, then the business name. Nearly every page writes itself once you accept that. Below are the weak titles we see most often on small business sites and what we would write instead. They are composites, not lifted from any one customer's website, but every “before” is a pattern we have seen repeatedly.

Four rules do all the work in that table. Say the service in the customer's words, not the trade's. Name the place. Keep your business name but put it last, after a pipe or a dash. Give every page a different title — Google's documentation warns that titling every page the same “makes it impossible for users to distinguish between two pages”.

If your services are all crowded onto one page, the titles will fight each other whatever you write. That is a page structure problem, and how to write a service page that gets found is the job to do first.

What should my homepage title say?

What you do, where you do it, and your business name — and it is the highest-value single line on most small business websites. Not because Google weights it more heavily, but because the homepage is usually the page with the most links pointing at it, the page that ranks for your business name, and the page an AI assistant reads first when someone asks it who does this work locally.

It is also the page most likely to say “Home”. Google's documentation singles that out: “Avoid vague descriptors like 'Home' for your home page.”

The order can go either way. If people search for you by name, lead with the name: “The Mucky Pup | Dog Grooming in Stroud”. If almost nobody knows your name yet, lead with the work: “Dog Grooming in Stroud | The Mucky Pup”. Most new businesses want the second.

How do I write a meta description people actually click?

One or two sentences you would click yourself: what the page covers, where you work, and one concrete reason to choose you. Google's own guidance calls a good description “a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about” and likens it to “a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they're looking for”.

Its documented example of a bad one is a list of keywords: Sewing supplies, yarn, colored pencils, sewing machines, threads, bobbins, needles. Its better version explains what the shop sells and adds the opening hours and location. That is the whole lesson in one pair.

Notice what the “after” versions never say: professional, dedicated, high-quality, passionate. Every competitor claims those, so they carry no information. A scanning eye stops on specifics — a town, a brand name, a number, a guarantee.

The same habit helps you on the page itself, which is where snippets mostly come from. If you have not written the pages that way yet, writing about your services in customers' words is the companion job to this one.

How do I check what my titles and descriptions are now?

Two ways, both free and neither needing a tool. Do this before you write anything, because you need the before picture.

Search for your site. Type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google, with no space after the colon. You get a list of your pages with the title link and snippet Google is currently showing for each. That is what customers see. Write down anything that says Home, Untitled, Welcome, or the same thing twice.

Look at the source. On a desktop browser press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the page's HTML, then Ctrl+F for <title and for name="description". That shows what you have actually set, which is often different from what Google displays — and comparing the two tells you instantly whether Google is rewriting you.

If site: returns nothing at all, titles are not your problem: you are not indexed. Start with why your website isn't showing on Google instead.

Where do I edit the title and description on my platform?

Every mainstream platform has the two fields; only the menu changes. Paths below were checked against each platform's own help documentation on 15 September 2026.

WordPress

WordPress has no built-in meta description field, which surprises people. The fields come from an SEO plugin — Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO — and most sites built in the last few years already have one. Edit a page and look for the plugin's snippet editor, usually below the content or in the sidebar, with SEO title and Meta description boxes and a preview of the Google result. Ignore the traffic-light scores; write the title from the recipe above. Without a plugin your title is whatever the theme assembles from the page name and site name, and there is no description at all. Google's own meta tag documentation tells CMS users to use the platform's settings rather than editing HTML, so install a free plugin rather than hand-editing your theme.

Wix

In the Wix editor, click Pages & Menu, click the More Actions icon beside the page, then SEO basics. The two fields are labelled Title tag (title in search results) and Meta description (description in search results), with a live preview. Then publish the site — Wix's documentation is explicit that changes do not go live until you do.

Squarespace

Open the Pages panel, hover over the page, click the gear icon for page settings, then the SEO tab. Fill in SEO title and SEO description. Leave them blank and Squarespace falls back to other content: excerpts for blog posts and events, product descriptions for products, and the page description otherwise.

Shopify

From the admin, go to Online Store > Pages (or the product, collection or blog post), find the Search engine listing preview section and click Edit website SEO. Fill in Page title and Description, then save. Shopify allows up to 70 characters in the title but its own help advises keeping it to 60, and recommends about 160 characters for the description.

Anything else

GoDaddy, Weebly, Hostinger, one.com and the rest all have them, filed under SEO, Search appearance, Search engine listing or Page settings, usually behind a gear or three-dot icon next to the page name. If you cannot find them, search your platform's help for “meta description”. If someone else built your site, this is a five-minute ask.

What actually happens after you change them?

Rarely a dramatic jump, and anyone promising one is selling something. This is the honest part, and it is why this guide sits where it does in the order of jobs.

First, nothing happens for a while. Google's title link documentation says it “has to recrawl and reprocess the page to notice updates to these sources, which may take a few days to a few weeks”. Pages update at different speeds. A homepage may change in days, a rarely visited page in a month.

Then three things do happen, in rough order of how much they are worth:

• More of the people who already see you click. This is the main prize. Watch it in Google Search Console: clicks rising faster than impressions on the pages you changed.
• The right page starts answering the right search. When each page finally has a distinct, accurate title, Google can tell them apart and stops sending boiler enquiries to your bathroom page.
• A small ranking effect, sometimes. Mueller's 2016 wording is the ceiling to expect: used as a ranking factor, not the best use of your time.

What titles cannot do is make a thin page worth visiting. A good title on an empty page is a well-labelled empty box: the label wins the click and the page loses the customer. If your enquiries are the problem rather than your visibility, why your website isn't getting enquiries is the better place to spend the evening.

Common questions

How long should a meta description be?

Google's snippet documentation, checked 15 September 2026, says there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, and that the snippet is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width. So there is no official number. A practical working range is 120 to 155 characters: long enough to make a case, short enough to survive on a phone. Screaming Frog flags anything over 155 characters or 985 pixels, which is where the common rule comes from.

Does Google use the meta description for ranking?

No. Matt Cutts wrote on Google's own blog in September 2009 that even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking, and Google has never reversed that. The description affects whether someone clicks your result, not where the result sits. That still matters: winning more of the people who already see you is usually easier than climbing a position.

Why is Google changing my title?

Because Google generates the title link itself, from your title element plus headings, prominent on-page text, anchor text and structured data. Danny Sullivan listed the four patterns that trigger a rewrite in September 2021: half-empty titles, obsolete titles such as an out-of-date year, inaccurate titles, and micro-boilerplate titles repeated across a group of pages. Fix the pattern and your own title usually comes back.

What is the difference between the page title and the H1?

The page title lives in the page's settings and appears in search results and the browser tab. The H1 is the big heading on the page itself. They are set in different places and do not have to match word for word. Google's title link documentation, checked 15 September 2026, does say to make it clear which text is the main title, so keeping them close in meaning helps Google keep yours.

Does changing page titles affect SEO?

Changing a vague title to an accurate one is usually a small improvement or neutral. John Mueller said in January 2016 that titles are used as a ranking factor, but not something where the time you spend tweaking the title is the best use of your time. The bigger effect is on clicks. What does cause trouble is changing titles every few weeks, because Google has to recrawl each time and you never get clean data.

How do I add a meta description in WordPress without a plugin?

You mostly cannot. WordPress has no built-in meta description field, so the options are an SEO plugin such as Yoast, Rank Math or All in One SEO, a theme that adds its own field, or editing the theme's header template by hand. Google's own meta tag documentation, checked 15 September 2026, tells CMS users to look for the platform's search engine settings page rather than editing HTML. A free plugin is the sane route.

Why is my meta description not updating in Google?

Two reasons. First, Google has to recrawl and reprocess the page before it notices; its title link documentation, checked 15 September 2026, says that takes a few days to a few weeks. Second, it may have noticed and chosen not to use your description, because snippets are built primarily from page content and the description is used only when Google thinks it describes the page better.

Should every page have a different title?

Yes. Google's title link documentation, checked 15 September 2026, says to avoid repeated or boilerplate text and that titling every page the same makes it impossible for users to distinguish between two pages. Repeated titles are also one of the patterns that make Google write its own. Your bathroom page, your boiler page and your contact page are about different things, so their titles should say so.

Sources, all checked 15 September 2026. Google Search Central, “Influencing your title links in search results” (no length limit, truncation to device width, the sources used, recrawl taking a few days to a few weeks, avoid vague descriptors and boilerplate). Google Search Central, “Control your snippets in search results” (snippets primarily from page content, description used when more accurate, no length limit, unique descriptions per page, the sewing-supplies bad and better examples). Google Search Central, “Meta tags and HTML attributes that Google supports” (CMS users should use the platform's settings). Google Search Central SEO Starter Guide (influencing title links and snippets). Danny Sullivan, Google Search Central blog, “More information on how Google generates titles for web page results”, 17 September 2021 (87% figure, the four rewrite patterns) and “An update to how we generate web page titles”, 24 August 2021 (the earlier 80% figure, keyword stuffing and boilerplate). Matt Cutts, Google Webmaster Central blog, 21 September 2009 (description not used in ranking). John Mueller, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, 27 January 2016 (titles used as a ranking factor, not the best use of your time). Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy, “Google Rewrites 61% of Page Title Tags”, published July 2022, updated May 2026 (80,959 titles across 2,370 sites, 61.6% rewritten, 99.9% of titles over 70 characters). Search Engine Land, “Google confirms it shortened search results snippets”, May 2018 (the December 2017 expansion and the rollback, quoting Danny Sullivan). Screaming Frog SEO Spider user guide and issue pages for page titles over 60 characters / 561 pixels and meta descriptions over 155 characters / 985 pixels, including its note that snippet length is pixel-based and its thresholds are an approximation. Platform steps from Wix, Squarespace and Shopify help documentation. Question phrasings validated against Google UK autocomplete on 15 September 2026. The before-and-after titles and descriptions are composites written for this guide, not copied from any customer's website; we have not tried to measure how many UK small business sites carry a default title, and we have found no published figure for it.