Writing a Good Excerpt and Meta Description

Writing a Good Excerpt and Meta Description

The short summary that appears under a headline in search results, or under a post title in a listing page, doesn’t happen by accident — it’s worth writing deliberately rather than leaving it to chance.

The Excerpt Field

1. Open the post in the editor.
2. In the right-hand sidebar, find the Excerpt panel and click to expand it. (If you don’t see it, check the three-dot menu at the top right → Preferences → Panels, and make sure Excerpt is switched on.)
3. Write one or two sentences summarising the post in plain language — don’t just copy the opening paragraph.

Why not just copy the opening paragraph?

• The opening line of a post is often written to draw a reader in (a scene-setter, a quote, a question) rather than to explain what the post is actually about. Out of context, on a listing page, that can look vague or confusing.
• A good excerpt answers “what is this about, and why would I click it?” in plain terms — think of it like a caption, not the first line of the story.
• If left blank, WordPress will auto-generate an excerpt by truncating the content at a set character count, often cutting off mid-sentence — which rarely reads well.

Meta Description (If You Have an SEO Plugin)

If the site uses an SEO plugin (such as Yoast or RankMath), scroll down below the main content editor to find its panel. Inside, there’s usually a separate Meta description field, sometimes under an “SEO” or “Snippet Preview” tab.

How this differs from the Excerpt:

• The Excerpt is used within the site — on listing pages, archive pages, and sometimes RSS feeds.
• The Meta description is specifically what search engines like Google tend to display underneath the page title in search results (though Google doesn’t always use it verbatim — it can sometimes pull a different snippet if it thinks another part of the page answers the search query better).
• They can say the same thing, but it’s worth writing them separately since they’re read in different contexts — the Excerpt is read by someone already browsing the site, the Meta description is read by someone deciding whether to click through from a search results page at all.

Writing tips for a good meta description:

• Aim for roughly 120–155 characters — long enough to be useful, short enough not to get cut off with a trailing “…” in search results.
• Include the key term or phrase someone might actually search for, ideally near the start.
• Write it like a pitch, not a summary — its job is to earn the click, not just describe the content.
• Avoid duplicating the same meta description across multiple pages — search engines can flag this, and it makes pages harder to tell apart in results.

A Quick Check

Before publishing, read the Excerpt and Meta description on their own, without the rest of the post. Would they make sense — and sound appealing — to someone who’s never seen the full page? If not, it’s worth a rewrite.