If there’s one thing us SEOs hate doing, it’s writing meta descriptions. At a guess, I’ve probably manually written around 5,000 in my time in SEO.
It’s a boring task.
It’s been known for a long time metas don’t impact rankings.
And yet SEO tools and ‘audits’ like SEMRush or Ahrefs always spit out missing meta descriptions. It does this without giving any context or pointing out this won’t impact rankings.
Now, imagine you’re a website owner. You run one of these tools, or maybe someone does it for you and says “here’s an audit.” You, understandably, want to fix these ‘issues’. Which provides some SEOs an easy way to justify tick box tasks to improve the ‘scores’ of ‘audits’.
Well, we know metas don’t do anything for rankings. And worst of all, they get re-written a lot (e.g. by 70%).
So each time we’re manually writing (sorry, crafting) a beautiful meta, most of the time our users aren’t going to see them.
Even if they don’t get re-written, the user’s only going to see the meta if the page ranks.
I’ve moved away from caring about metas with one exception:
If you’re ranking very well for a high-value keyword.
In this case, and especially for highly competitive niches like finance, where you might be up against giants like Nerdwallet who you can’t beat – anything you can do to help CTR is worth your time.
My approach with these cases (assuming the meta isn’t being respected) is:
- Look at which metas on page one are being respected
- For those that Google is re-writing, what patterns can you see?
- Re-write your meta, trying to match what you think Google is wanting to see
- Rinse and repeat until your meta shows
If this seems like a ballache, it is. But if the keyword is super high value, this can pay off – especially if you’re the only page in the SERP with a ‘proper’ meta showing.
Considerations
- In my experience, Google prefers quite short, concise metas
- For comparison type terms (e.g. best CFD brokers), you’ll often see Google pulling through numbered lists. In this case I try and create one in the meta description, using pseudo-bullet points like ✅ or ✔️.
- This often takes a few tries to get right (i.e. publish the new one, await indexing, check it on SERPs, rinse/repeat)
- You can also consider including words or phrases that Google is bolding (as this indicates Google sees it as relevant)
Example SERP
Let’s take this for Google UK and ‘best stockbrokers’:
Notice how the snippet for Securities.io has that bulleted format? It’s basically a consolidation of their top ranked brokers. What’s interesting with this case is their actual meta is
Top 8 UK Stock Brokers (April 2025) · 1. eToro · 2. Interactive Investor · 3. IG · 4. Saxobank · 5. Interactive Brokers…
IMO they may have been using this to attempt to get Google to show their meta.
Meanwhile, Stockbrokers.com’s snippet shows ‘Our share dealer reviews assess those brokers that support various investment types including stock trading, options trading, and more.’ This isn’t their actual meta, but is taken directly from their header.
It’s concise, accurate and reads well.
Their actual meta is
Our extensive share dealer broker reviews include in-depth assessments on trading platforms, commissions and fees, user account features, mobile trading apps, dealer rankings, and more.
Which is quite long.
I see these patterns a lot – Google wants to show you something concise, and also highlight what companies/products might be in your list.
I get it – trying over and over to get a meta to properly show may seem like a pain in the ass. And it can be. But if you’re working with a client where even small CTR increases can impact their bottom line, it’s well worth it.
You can get creative with metas – I try and avoid ‘proper’ emojis as they look quite spammy IMO (ditto with title tags). They stand out, sure – but they look like trash. Special characters though or more subtle emojis like the checkmarks work really well.
What about other metas?
Honestly, 99% of the time I think it’s a waste of your time to write them by hand.
Not only is there no value in doing so (other than a checkbox exercise) but we can do this so easily with AI now.
One solution I like is Screaming Frog with OpenAI API – Chris Long does a good explainer of it. (It’s also great for image alts).
As SEOs we’ve got a responsibility to be using our time to give our clients value – and automating minimal-value tasks like this is a no-brainer.