Home

›

›

Write meta descriptions with a call to action

Write meta descriptions with a call to action

VerdictMarginal

CategoryOn-Page

Last reviewedNovember 7, 2026

The problem

The snippet under a result does not persuade people to click.

Steps

  1. Write a description that summarizes what the page offers and why it is worth visiting.
  2. Keep it under about 160 characters.
  3. Check how Google actually displays it for the main queries.

Evidence

Google often replaces meta descriptions with text from the page that better matches the query, so many carefully written descriptions are never shown.

Verdict

Marginal. Worth doing for key pages, but rarely a lever on its own.

Other plays in this category

Dan Keller Avatar
Dan Keller
Dan Keller writes repoSEO and its sister site AEOplays, which reviews AEO plays the same way. Before that he edited King Digest, a newsletter on search, marketing and AI, until he got tired of passing on tactics nobody had checked. He reviews each SEO play against what Google documents and what holds up in practice, and says so when the evidence isn’t there yet.