Short meta descriptions
Each page can carry a short written summary of itself, which search engines show beneath its link in their results. Silktide reports summaries so brief they waste most of that space.
A is set with an invisible tag in the page's header:
<!-- Too short to say anything useful -->
<meta name="description" content="Products page.">
<!-- Uses the available space to make a case -->
<meta name="description" content="Browse our full range of ergonomic office chairs, with free delivery and a 10-year warranty on every model.">
Why this matters
Search results give a description roughly 155 to 160 characters of space. A description of only a few words says almost nothing about the page, so search engines often discard it and improvise a snippet from page text instead - usually less persuasive than what you would write yourself.
The description is your pitch in search results; a very short one is a wasted opportunity on exactly the pages competing for clicks.
How to fix it
- Expand the description to at least 60 characters - one or two full sentences covering what the page offers and why it is worth clicking.
- Be specific: name the product, service, or answer the page provides rather than restating the page title.
- Not every page needs this attention. Prioritize landing pages and pages that rank in search; for unimportant pages you can the finding.
How Silktide tests this
- Read each
<meta name="description">tag on the page. - Count the characters of its content.
- Flag the description when it is shorter than 60 characters.
Pages with no description at all are reported separately by Meta descriptions.