Meta Tag and SERP Preview Tool

What a search result is made of

A typical result shows your site name and address, a title link and a snippet of text. You suggest the title with the page’s <title> element and the snippet with its meta description, but Google decides what to show. Its documentation says title links come from several places, including the <title> element, the page’s main heading, og:title and links pointing to the page. Snippets come mainly from the page’s content and change with each search; your meta description is used when it describes the page better.

So the aim is not to “fill” a character limit. It is to write a title and description that are accurate, specific and readable, so that Google is happy to use them and searchers are happy to click.

Why width matters more than characters

Google says there is no length limit on titles or meta descriptions, but both are shortened “to fit the device width”. A title of capital Ws is far wider than one of lower-case i’s with the same number of characters, so this tool measures the pixel width of your text in a common sans-serif font, as SEO tools do. It compares the result with the limits the Screaming Frog SEO Spider uses (about 561 px for titles and 985 px for descriptions) and also shows the character count. Treat both as guides: real results vary by device, language and the words people search for.

Writing a better title

• Describe the page. Google advises against vague titles such as “Home” and long titles that differ by one word from page to page.
• Lead with what matters. If the title is shortened, the start is what people see. “Web design in Accra | Example Studio” survives a cut better than “Welcome to Example Studio, where we offer web design in Accra”.
• Don’t repeat yourself. Repeating the same keyword (“Shoes, cheap shoes, best shoes”) can look spammy, and Google says so.
• Brand it briefly. Google suggests adding your site name at the start or end, separated by a hyphen, colon or pipe.
• Keep it accurate and current. Inaccurate titles and out-of-date ones (for example, with last year’s date) are among the cases Google lists for rewriting.

A study by Zyppy of more than 80,000 titles found that very short titles and titles over about 70 characters were the most likely to be rewritten, while titles of 51–55 characters were rewritten least often.

Writing a better meta description

Write one or two sentences for a person, not a list of keywords. Say what the page offers and why it is useful: a service and its area, a product and its price, an article and what it answers. Give every important page its own description; identical descriptions across a site don’t help searchers choose.

Tags for sharing

When someone shares your link, platforms that support the Open Graph protocol (it was created at Facebook) read its tags (og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, og:type) and, on X, card tags (twitter:card and friends). This tool writes both sets from the same title and description. Use a full https:// address for the share image, and describe the image in the alt field.

Next steps

Once the tags are live, run the SEO checker on the published page and the website speed test to see how it performs. If you share the page in campaigns, tag the links with the UTM link builder. For help with content and search, see our digital marketing and website design and development services.