Meta tags that earn
the click.

What meta tags actually do

Your meta title is the clickable headline in search results. Your meta description is the grey text under it. Neither is a direct ranking factor any more, but both decide something just as valuable: whether the person scanning ten results picks yours.

That makes the snippet the highest-leverage copy on the page. It's the only part most searchers ever read, and improving it lifts traffic without moving your ranking an inch.

Writing a title that survives the cut

Google shows roughly 50–60 characters before it truncates with an ellipsis. Anything past that is invisible, so the useful words have to come first.

1. 1Keep it under 60 characters so nothing gets cut off
2. 2Put your target keyword near the beginning
3. 3Use a separator (: or |) to keep it scannable
4. 4Add a specific hook: a number, a year, an outcome
5. 5Make it unique to the page, never templated across the site

Writing a description that earns the click

Aim for 140–155 characters. Shorter and you waste the space; longer and Google trims it mid-sentence. Treat it like ad copy: say what the reader gets, be concrete, and give them a reason to choose you over the result above.

1. 1Aim for 140–155 characters
2. 2Open with an action verb, not your company name
3. 3Work the keyword into the first 100 characters
4. 4Be specific: numbers, prices, timeframes beat adjectives
5. 5Close with a clear reason to click

One honest caveat

Google rewrites meta descriptions often, sometimes most of the time, pulling a passage from your page when it thinks that matches the query better. That isn't a reason to skip writing one. A strong description is what gets shown for your core queries, and it sets the tone Google imitates when it does rewrite. Titles are rewritten far less, so they're worth the most care.