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On Google, people don't see your site. They see two lines: a blue title and a short text. That's where it all happens, and many businesses leave them empty or badly filled.

Where do Google's two lines come from?

The blue title usually comes from a hidden field on your page called the title tag. The text below can come from another field, the meta description. Google does not always copy them. For the text, it mostly draws on the page itself, and uses your description when it sums up the page better. Written well, both fields stand every chance of being kept.

An example

Take an imaginary accounting firm in Chambéry, in the French Alps.

In the title: the trade, who it serves, where. In the text: what you do, what sets you apart, and what it costs to get started. Not a word too many.

The method

Those two lines areyour shop window on Google

Before and after, for a plumber

Here's what you often see on a service page.

Nobody clicks on that: you can't tell who it is or where. With the customer's own words, everything changes.

The right length

Google sets no length, but it cuts off whatever runs past the screen. Allow about 60 characters for the title and 155 for the text: a common rule of thumb, not a Google rule. So put the most important part first, your trade and your town, and keep the rest for the end.

On a phone, people read even less. If your first words are a company name nobody knows yet, you're wasting the best spot.

Common mistakes

The title “Home” on the home page. The same title on every page. Text cut off mid-sentence because it's too long. A list of keywords nobody wants to read.

Why Google sometimes rewrites your lines

Google sometimes shows something other than what you wrote. For the title, it does this mostly when yours is nearly empty, out of date, unrelated to the page, or the same across several pages. It then uses other text: the page's main heading, other prominent text, or the words in links pointing to it. For the text below, it draws on the page content, and the result isn't always a happy one.

You can't fully prevent it. You can lower the risk: write a title and text that say what the page actually says. The closer they stick to its content, the more likely Google keeps them.

Writing for each page

Your homepage talks about the business, your service pages talk about one service. Those are the ones answering the most precise searches, and so the most decided customers. Here's what a small site looks like when each page has its own lines.

Notice that each title echoes what a customer would type. Nothing complicated: a service, a town, and whatever sets you apart when there's room left.

The text below doesn't rank you, it gets you clicked

The description doesn't lift your page, as Google has confirmed. Its job is elsewhere: convincing someone to click on you rather than the neighbor. If you're third and your text answers better than the first two, you can get more visits than they do.

Look at your competitors: type your trade and your town, and read what they write. If they all say "trusted company since 1998," say something else. A price up front, a timeframe, your area, your reviews: anything that answers a worry is worth using.

Only promise what the page delivers

A title promising what the page doesn't give brings clicks that leave right away. If you write "same day," the page has to say so too, and you have to do it. Visitors judge you on the gap between those two lines and what they find when they arrive.

How to change your lines

On WordPress, an SEO plugin adds two fields under each page. On Webflow, they're in the page settings. On a custom site, ask your provider: it's a few minutes' work. After the change, Google takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to come back, so don't worry if nothing moves the next day.

To see what Google reads on your pages, run the free analysis. To go further, read what Google and AI read on your site.