How to Write Meta Descriptions That Actually Get Clicked

A meta description is the two-line snippet under your page title in Google’s results. It’s not a ranking factor — Google has said so directly — but it’s the single biggest lever you control over whether someone clicks your listing instead of a competitor’s sitting right above or below it. A page that ranks well with a weak meta description still loses clicks it should be getting.

What actually makes people click

A specific, honest answer to the exact question behind the search beats vague marketing language every time. “Learn about our services” earns almost nothing. “Local SEO packages from R2,500/month, no lock-in contract” earns a click because it answers the unspoken question — cost, commitment — before the searcher has to dig for it.

The practical rules

Keep it under 155–160 characters or Google truncates it with an ellipsis mid-sentence, which looks unfinished and untrustworthy. Include the primary keyword naturally — Google sometimes bolds matching terms, which draws the eye. Write a different description for every page; duplicated ones across a site look lazy to both Google and searchers scanning multiple results from the same domain.

What to avoid

Don’t just repeat the page title in different words — that wastes the two lines you’ve been given to say something the title couldn’t. Don’t stuff keywords unnaturally; it reads as spam and doesn’t help rankings anyway since this field isn’t weighted for ranking. And don’t leave it blank — Google will auto-generate one from your page content, and it’s rarely the sentence you’d have chosen.

A quick test

Search your own business name and read your current meta description as a stranger would. If it doesn’t make you want to click, it isn’t doing its job — rewrite it this week.

Getting the small on-page details right across an entire site is exactly the kind of unglamorous work our SEO team handles as standard, not as an upsell.