How to write a good meta description by hand, and a prompt that argues with it
The craft of writing a meta description by hand, plus a prompt that refuses to write one for you and instead interrogates the line you already wrote.
- Works in
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini
- You need
- The description you have already written · The title tag that will sit above it · The one query the page is for · The part of the page that backs the promise up
- Written for
- how to write a good meta description
Scored by our own engine
This page, run through the audit we sell. Measured 4 August 2026.
A meta description is one sentence, written by a person, in about a minute. The craft is not in the wording, it is in deciding what you are promising and putting that promise where a cut cannot remove it. Everything below is done by hand; the prompt on this page is a critic, not a generator, and it is forbidden from writing a line for you.
Write the promise, then cut from the back
Type the sentence you would say to somebody who asked what is on the page. It will be too long. Then delete from the end, not from the middle, because the end is elaboration and the middle is usually the specific.
Trimming to a character count does the opposite. It removes whichever clause happens to be last, which is frequently the number or the format that made the line worth reading. Cut for meaning and check the fit afterwards.
The phrases that spend the front and buy nothing
“Welcome to”, “Discover”, “Learn everything about”, “In this article”, “We are a leading”, “Looking for”. Each one occupies the front of the line without saying anything, and the front is the part most likely to survive.
Where a result gets cut varies by device, by query and by how the result is rendered, so nobody can tell you the exact point. The response to that uncertainty is not a character target, it is putting the promise early enough that it does not matter.
The test you can run with your thumb
Cover roughly the back half of your description and read what is left as if it were the whole snippet. If it no longer gives anybody a reason to click, the sentence is in the wrong order.
Then read the title tag and the description together as one block, because that is how they appear. Any content word in both is a word you paid for twice, and the title and description pair prompt exists because that overlap is the most common fault on live pages.
Doing this by hand stops paying at scale. Two hundred product pages need a pattern and the meta description prompt, which writes to the same constraints in batches, and lines you want judged rather than replaced go through the scored examples instead. A finished description on a page nobody clicks through to is no longer a snippet problem, and that is where optimising the page itself starts. Whatever you publish, read it back off the live page with the meta description checker, because the field you typed into and the line a searcher sees are different things often enough to be worth the ten seconds.
You are a hostile editor. I have written one meta description. Your job is to
interrogate it until I can see what is wrong with it myself. You are not
writing anything.
Rules you must follow:
1. Do not write a replacement description. Not a rewrite, not a suggested
line, not an example, not "you could try". If you find yourself drafting
one, delete it and ask the question that would make me write it.
2. Ask at most five questions, and no leading questions. "Have you thought
about adding a number?" is a rewrite with a question mark on the end. Ask
what the reader would still not know, not what I should have said.
3. In the read back, use only my words. If you cannot state what I am
promising from my sentence alone, say so plainly, because that is the
finding and everything else is secondary to it.
4. Every claim in my description must appear in the page text I pasted. If
one does not, do not assume it is false and do not delete it: quote it and
ask me where on the page it is supported.
5. Do not judge the length as right or wrong and do not tell me a character
limit. Snippets are cut on rendered width, which varies by device, by
query and by how the result is displayed. Comment on where my promise sits
in the line instead.
6. Do not quote a click through rate, a statistic, a benchmark or a
percentage, and do not tell me what my competitors' descriptions say. You
have not seen them and you have no data. Say "I cannot know that" rather
than producing a plausible figure.
7. Do not compliment the writing. If it is finished, say it is finished and
stop.
Output exactly these seven headed lines and nothing else:
Read back: what you understand I am promising, in one sentence, using only
words that appear in my description.
Missing: up to three things a searcher would still not know after reading
it, each in one line.
Questions: three to five questions, each answerable by me in one line.
The surviving half: quote roughly the front half of my description, then
say in one line what it promises on its own with the rest removed.
Dead words: any word or phrase doing no work, quoted, with what it cost me.
Overlap: every content word appearing in both my title tag and my
description, excluding the query itself.
Verdict: finished | one edit away | start again
My description: [THE DESCRIPTION I WROTE]
The title tag above it: [THE TITLE TAG THAT WILL SIT ABOVE IT]
The one query this page is for: [THE ONE QUERY THIS PAGE IS FOR]
What the page says that backs this up: [PASTE THE PART OF THE PAGE THAT BACKS THE PROMISE UP]What to change
Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. Nothing else needs editing.
[THE DESCRIPTION I WROTE]- Your line, written before you open the prompt. The whole method depends on that order: a description you produced yourself has an intention behind it that can be interrogated, and one a model produced has nothing behind it but the model.
[THE TITLE TAG THAT WILL SIT ABOVE IT]- The Overlap line is scored against this. Copy it from the page source rather than your CMS field. If the title and the description share four content words, the result makes one point twice in the only two lines a searcher reads before deciding.
[THE ONE QUERY THIS PAGE IS FOR]- One query, not the cluster. The Missing line is answered from the position of somebody who typed exactly this, so a vague or plural entry produces vague questions. If two queries genuinely need two different descriptions, they need two pages.
[PASTE THE PART OF THE PAGE THAT BACKS THE PROMISE UP]- The paragraph, list or price table your description is making a claim about. This is what rule 4 checks against, and pasting it is what turns "is that true?" into a specific question about a specific sentence. If you cannot find the passage, that is the answer to whether the promise is real.
How to run it
- 01Write the line before you open anything
Say out loud what somebody gets from this page and type that sentence. It will be too long and slightly clumsy. That is the correct starting state: an honest overlong sentence can be cut down, and a polished generic one has nothing in it to cut down to.
- 02Move the promise to the front, then cut from the back
Read your sentence and find the clause that gives a reason to click. Put it first. Then delete from the end until the line feels right, rather than trimming to a target number, because trimming to a count almost always removes the specific detail that was doing the work.
- 03Cover the back half and read what is left
Hide roughly the second half of the line with your thumb and read the rest as though it were the whole snippet. On a phone it frequently is. If what remains no longer promises anything, the sentence is in the wrong order and no amount of editing the tail will fix it.
- 04Check it against the title, not against a guideline
Put the title tag directly above the description and read the two as one block. Every content word appearing in both is a word spent twice. Strike them out of the description and use the space for the detail the title had no room for.
- 05Run the prompt and answer the questions in writing
Paste your line into the prompt with the title, the query and the supporting passage. Then answer the questions in a text file rather than in your head. The answers are usually the sentence you should have written, in your own words, which is the point of a critic that refuses to draft.
- 06Publish it and read what the live page returns
Push the description, then check the rendered page. Plugins, category templates and caching layers overwrite this field silently, so the only proof that your line shipped is reading it back off the live HTML rather than looking at the field you typed it into.
Questions people ask
How do you write a good meta description?
Say what somebody gets from the page in one honest sentence, move the reason to click to the front, then cut from the back until it fits. The two decisions that matter are what you promise and where the promise sits. Everything else, including tone, matters far less than most guidance suggests.
How long should a meta description be?
Roughly 120 to 155 characters is a sound working range, treated as a guide rather than a rule. Search results are cut on rendered width, which changes with the device, the query and how the result is displayed, so the same count survives in one place and not another. Front load the promise and the exact number stops mattering.
Should the meta description repeat the title tag?
No. They appear together, so a description restating the title makes one point twice in a space where you could have made two. Let the title claim the topic and give the description the specific the title had no room for: a number, a format, an exclusion, a named thing.
Is it better to write meta descriptions myself or use AI?
Write the first version yourself, then use a model to attack it. A description you wrote has an intention behind it, and interrogation surfaces whether that intention survived into the sentence. A description a model wrote from a keyword has nothing behind it, so there is nothing to interrogate and the review is theatre.
Does it matter if Google rewrites the description anyway?
It still matters. Your line is what shows on brand and navigational queries, it is the baseline any rewrite works from, and many platforms fall back to it when a link is shared without Open Graph tags. An empty field guarantees a rewrite and hands the source material to whatever text sits near the top of the page.
Unsubscribe in one click. We never pass your address on.