Tips for writing effective meta descriptions to help improve your site’s ranking.

Meta descriptions, also known as search descriptions, are short pieces of text that describe your site's content. Search engines show meta descriptions below the page title in search results if they can't find site content that's more relevant to a visitor's search terms.

For control over how your meta descriptions appear in search results, you can edit these fields:

• SEO site description - Represents your homepage.
• SEO description - Represents individual pages or collection items, like products and blog posts
• Page description (version 7.0 only) - Appears on your site in some templates.

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Before you begin

• What appears in search results is mostly determined by Google's technology. There's no way to ensure that descriptions will be the same for every search. While there are no guarantees, filling in these descriptions will influence how your site appears in search engines.
• You can request a re-index using Google Search Console if the wrong information is displaying in search results.
• Search engines cut off descriptions around 160 characters.
• For sites on Squarespace version 7.0, page descriptions may appear in search results if there's no SEO description.

Best practices

Search engine users read meta descriptions to decide which search result to click. Make your site inviting by keeping your descriptions short, relevant, and readable.

To improve your SEO descriptions for search engines:

• Keep the text between 50-300 characters. SEO descriptions have a 400-character limit.
• Optimize your descriptions with keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing.
• Think about what your visitors are searching for, and how you can encourage them to click through to your site. For example, how does your site, page, or product solve a problem they have?

Tip: Updated description text won't appear in search results right away. Search engines take some time to re-index your site for new content. To request a re-index, use Google Search Console.

Add an SEO site description

The SEO site description represents your homepage. Search engines show this description in search results for your homepage if they don’t find content more relevant to a visitor's search terms.

To add an SEO site description:

1. Open the SEO appearance panel.
2. In the Search appearance area, click the Home tab.
3. Edit the SEO site description field, then click Save. 

Using Squarespace AI to generate SEO site descriptions

To use Squarespace AI to generate an SEO site description:

1. Ensure you've created a Brand Identity.
2. Follow the steps above to open the SEO site description field.
3. Click the lightning bolt icon to create an AI-generated SEO site description.

If you haven’t created a Brand Identity and you write your own SEO site description, we’ll automatically update your Brand Identity to match the SEO site description.

Add SEO descriptions to pages

You can use SEO descriptions to represent individual pages on your site. Search engines show this description in search results for that page if they don’t find content more relevant to a visitor's search terms. We recommend adding SEO descriptions to every page on your site.

To add an SEO description for a page:

1. Open the Pages panel.
2. Hover over the page title, then click to open page settings.
3. Click the SEO tab, then enter your description in the SEO Description field.
4. Click Save.

Repeat this process for every page on your site, keeping in mind our best practices.

Add SEO descriptions to collection items

You can use SEO descriptions to represent individual collection items on your site, like blog posts or products. Search engines show this description in search results for that item's page if they don’t find content more relevant to a visitor's search terms. SEO descriptions are available for blog posts, products, and events. In version 7.1, they're available for portfolio sub-pages.

To add an SEO description for a collection item:

1. Open the Pages panel.
2. Click a blog page, store page, events page, or portfolio page.
3. For blog posts and events, hover over the item and click Edit. If your site is on version 7.1, click in the top-right corner after clicking Edit.
4. For products, double-click the product.
5. For portfolio sub-pages, click ..., then click Settings.
6. Click the SEO tab, then enter your description in the SEO Description field. 
7. Click Save.

Repeat this process for every item where you want to add an SEO description.

Keep in mind:

• It's not possible to add SEO descriptions to gallery images, project items, or album tracks.
• If you don't add SEO descriptions, search engines use excerpts for blog posts and events, and product descriptions for products.
• Always follow our SEO description best practices.

Add page descriptions (version 7.0 only)

Page descriptions only appear on your site in some templates. Search engines may display page descriptions if you don't have SEO descriptions, or if the text in the page description is more relevant to the visitor's search terms.

To add a page description:

1. Open the Pages panel.
2. Hover over the page title, then click to open page settings.
3. In the Page description field of the General tab, enter your description, keeping in mind how the text works with your page's overall design and content.
4. Click Save.
5. Repeat this process for every page on your site.

Tip: To display different text in search results, add SEO descriptions too.

More help

SEO strategy falls outside of the scope of Squarespace Customer Support because search engine technology frequently changes and everyone's marketing needs are unique. Because of this, we can't guarantee results like ranking changes or listing appearance in a search engine.

While we're unable to provide specific SEO advice through email and live chat, there are other ways you can get more SEO help:

• Attend an expert-led SEO with your Squarespace site webinar.
• Get advice from the community in the Squarespace Forum.
• For hands-on help, hire a vetted SEO expert to build your site with SEO in mind.