Meta Description Generator | How To & Tips

Meta descriptions are an important element in your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). They’re also important for human readers, as meta descriptions are what show up beneath your webpage title in search engine results—and could therefore influence whether a reader clicks on your page or not.

While you can certainly write meta descriptions on your own, QuillBot’s free AI meta description generator can write click-worthy ones in seconds.

What is a meta description?

A meta description is a webpage attribute that provides a brief summary of the page’s content. It appears in thetag of the webpage’s HTML. A meta description informs human users and search engines what the page is about.

How to write a meta description

There are a few steps and some best practices you should follow when writing a meta description.

1. Summarize the page

Summarize the content of your webpage clearly and concisely. A good meta description gives the reader an immediate idea of what they can expect to find if they click on the page. By doing this, the description also lets search engines “understand” the content of the page.

Follow these best practices when summarizing your page:

• Describe what the page is about in 1–2 short sentences.
• Avoid vague language; be specific and relevant to the page content.
• Aim for 130–160 characters (including spaces).
• Write a unique description for each page.
• Don’t include any formatting (e.g., bold, italics, underline), as it’s ignored in meta descriptions.

2. Include your target keyword

Keywords help readers (and search engines) find content related to specific topics. For example, if you search for “how to make pizza,” you would expect to find recipes for pizza. Before writing your meta description, you should have a target keyword in mind.

When writing a meta description, include the keyword naturally. “Keyword stuffing” is the practice of using keywords excessively to manipulate search results; both human readers and search engines can detect this practice. Some search engines will penalize keyword stuffing by not featuring the page high up in the results.

Some search engines, like Google, will bold keyword matches in your meta descriptions. These can be exact, partial, or synonym matches, as seen in the examples below.

3. Write for human readers

Meta descriptions may be used for SEO, but they should be written primarily with human readers in mind. When writing your meta description, think about what would make a human want to click on your webpage.

A few more tips for writing for humans are:

• Include a benefit, solution, or unique value.
• If relevant, include a call-to-action (e.g., “find out more”).
• Treat your meta description like ad copy; what will draw the reader in?

Using an AI meta description generator

QuillBot’s AI meta description generator can help you generate meta descriptions in seconds. When prompting the tool, include:

• The type of content (e.g., blog post, recipe, e-commerce page)
• The focus of the content (e.g., pizza recipe, reusable water bottles, adjectives)
• The keyword you want to include (e.g., “how to make pizza”)

A sample prompt that you can adapt for your specific situation is:

• Write a meta description for a [content type] about [content focus]. Include the keyword [keyword] (or a variation of it) as naturally as possible.

Once the AI meta description generator replies, you can continue chatting with it to refine your description further or generate other ideas. Try telling it:

• Generate five more ideas like this one.
• Make this description longer/shorter.
• Include a call-to-action.

Frequently asked questions about Meta description generator

How long should a meta description be?

A meta description should be 130–160 characters, including spaces. If it is too short, it won’t provide enough context. If it’s too long, it might get truncated by search engines.

A meta description generator, like QuillBot’s AI meta description generator, can help you create meta descriptions of the right length in seconds.

Which part of HTML contains metadata?

The part of HTML that contains metadata is the “head” section. A webpage’s metadata goes between the “<head>” and “</head>” tags.

Some types of metadata that you’ll usually find in this part of HTML are the meta title and the meta description. Meta titles are often the same as the title of your webpage, and meta descriptions are succinct summaries of the page’s content.

You can easily generate meta descriptions using QuillBot’s free AI meta description generator.