Write title and meta description tags that show up well in Google

Think about the last time you looked for a business on your phone: a tailor near you, a caterer for a party, a phone repair shop. You typed a few words, got a list of results, and decided in about two seconds which one to tap.

You didn't visit those sites to decide. You judged them by three lines each. Those three lines are mostly written by the website's owner — or they're left to chance, which is what most small business sites do.

This lesson is about writing them on purpose.

Words in this lesson

What a search result is made of

A typical Google result shows:

• A title link — the clickable headline
• The site's address
• A snippet — a line or two describing the page
• A small icon, the favicon, which you'll add next lesson

The first and third are the ones you influence with HTML: the <title> element and the <meta name="description"> element, both in the <head>. You've had both since Module 1. Now you write them properly.

The title: Google's first choice, not its only one

Google's documentation lists the sources it draws on to build a title link, and the <title> element is at the top of the list. Below it come the main visible title on the page, heading elements such as <h1>, and further down things like prominent text and the words other sites use when they link to you.

Two things follow from that.

Every page needs its own title. Google's guidance starts there: make sure every page on your site has a title in the <title> element.

Google may rewrite it. If Google detects a problem — the title is inaccurate, contains an out-of-date date, doesn't match the page's main heading, or is in a different language from the page — it may generate its own title link instead. A title that honestly describes the page is the best way to keep yours.

That's also why your <h1> and <title> should agree. They don't need to be identical, but they must describe the same page.

Writing a good title

Google's guidance, applied to a tailor's site:

Descriptive and concise. Say what the page is.

<title>Bespoke Suits and Alterations in Aba - Ndidi Tailoring</title>

Not vague. Home, Welcome and Untitled tell a searcher nothing, and they're what you get when nobody writes a title on purpose.

No keyword stuffing. Google gives its own example of what to avoid — text like "Foobar, foo bar, foobars, foo bars". The tailoring equivalent:

<!-- Don't do this -->
<title>tailor aba, tailor in aba, best tailor aba, aba tailor, suits aba</title>

It reads as spam to a person, and Google calls it unhelpful.

Unique on every page. Boilerplate titles make your pages indistinguishable in results. Google's example of what to avoid is every commerce page titled "Cheap products for sale". For a three-page site:

<!-- index.html -->
<title>Bespoke Suits and Alterations in Aba - Ndidi Tailoring</title>

<!-- about.html -->
<title>About Ndidi, Tailor in Aba Since 2014 - Ndidi Tailoring</title>

<!-- services.html -->
<title>Prices for Suits, Alterations and Aso-ebi - Ndidi Tailoring</title>

Your brand at the start or the end, separated with a delimiter. Google names a hyphen, a colon or a pipe as examples. That's the "Name — What You Do in Where" shape this course has used since Module 1, turned around so the page-specific part comes first.

What about length?

You'll find confident advice online that titles must be under 60 characters, or some other exact number. That isn't what Google says. Its guidance is that there's no technical limit, but titles are truncated in results as needed, typically to fit the device's width.

So the practical rule is: put the important words first. On a narrow phone screen the end gets cut off, so the service and the place should come before the brand name.

The meta description: write something better than Google would pick

<meta name="description" content="Bespoke suits cut to your measurements from ₦85,000, plus alterations and aso-ebi for groups. Shop on Ngwa Road, Aba. Open Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm.">

Here's the part most tutorials get wrong. Google states that it primarily uses the content on the page to decide the snippet. It may use your meta description when that describes the page better than other parts of the content.

So the meta description isn't an instruction Google obeys. It's a candidate. Your job is to write a description so clear and specific that it's the best summary of the page available.

Writing a good description

Google's guidance again:

Unique on every page. Identical or near-identical descriptions across a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in results.

Not a list of keywords. Google's own bad example is almost suspiciously relevant:

Sewing supplies, yarn, colored pencils, sewing machines, threads, bobbins, needles

And its better version:

Get everything you need to sew your next garment. Open Monday-Friday 8-5pm, located in the Fashion District.

The difference: the second one is a sentence a person would find useful, with real details — what you get, when it's open, where it is. Google specifically suggests including relevant details such as prices.

No length limit, but it gets truncated to fit the device, just like the title. Lead with what matters most.

For a Nigerian small business, the details searchers actually want are usually:

• what you do
• where you are, down to the area
• a starting price, if you're willing to show one
• when you're open, or how fast you respond

You can't check this in Google yet

Your site isn't published, so it isn't in Google, and nothing in this lesson will show up in search today. That comes in Module 7, and even after publishing, Google has to discover and crawl a site before it appears, which takes time.

That doesn't make this lesson theoretical. You can study what works right now, on real businesses.

Study real results

This is the most valuable fifteen minutes in the lesson:

1. On your phone, search Google for a service in your city — "tailor in [your city]", "event caterer in [your city]", "phone repair in [your area]".
2. Screenshot the first page of results.
3. For each result, ask: does the title tell me what they do and where? Does the snippet give me a reason to tap — a price, an area, opening hours? Or is it vague, cut off, or stuffed with keywords?
4. Open two of those sites on a laptop. Inspect the page in DevTools and find the <title> and <meta name="description"> in the head.
5. Compare them with what Google actually showed. Where they differ, Google has used page content or rewritten the title — and now you've seen it happen with your own eyes.

Most small local businesses do this badly. That's the opportunity: when you're building sites for clients, this is a small piece of work that visibly beats their competitors.

Common mistakes

The short version

• Somebody searching for a tailor or a caterer decides in seconds, from a title and two lines of text.
• Write the <title> as what it is — where, front-loaded, because the end can get cut off.
• The meta description doesn't affect ranking; it affects whether anyone clicks. Write it, or the engine picks a fragment for you.
• Every page needs its own title and description. Copying them across pages wastes both.
• You can't check this in a search engine yet — your page isn't published. Study real results in the meantime.

Try it yourself

1. Do the real-results study above for your own city and subject. Keep the screenshots.
2. Rewrite the <title> on each of your three pages: descriptive, unique, important words first, brand at the end after a hyphen, colon or pipe.
3. Check each page's title and <h1> describe the same page.
4. Write a unique meta description for each page, as full sentences, with at least two concrete details from the list above.
5. Read your three titles aloud one after another. If any two sound interchangeable, rewrite one.
6. Imagine the end of each title cut off on a narrow phone. Is the most useful information still there?
7. In a comment at the top of each page, write the search phrase you think a real customer would type to find that page — and check your title and description would make sense to that person.

You'll know you've got it when you can write a title and description that would make you click your own result over the five around it.