WooCommerce product SEO: the title and description in Google, with templates for three store types

What Google shows about a product

In a search result the customer sees the title (meta title), the address and the description (meta description). The title usually fits around 60 characters, the description around 150 to 160, and longer ones get cut. Google treats both as suggestions: it may build its own title or pick a description from the page content. The rules are described in the guide to title links in search results and a separate one on snippets.

This post is only about what shows in Google. We have gathered the general rules for writing descriptions in results, for posts and pages too, in the guide on the meta description in WordPress. What the customer reads on the product page is covered separately in the guide on WooCommerce product descriptions.

There are three common problems in WooCommerce stores. The title is just the wholesaler's name, for example “LMP-SOL-K20-WH Solar lamp”. There is no description, so Google takes a random fragment of the page, sometimes a sentence about delivery costs. Or every product has the same template description, differing only in the name.

Template or by hand

Yoast SEO and Rank Math let you set a title and description template for all products at once, with variables the plugin replaces with the product's data. In Rank Math this is done in the titles and meta settings for products, and the list of variables, including SKU and brand, is in the Rank Math knowledge base. In Yoast you change templates in the content type settings, as described in Yoast's help on templates.

A sensible split: a template for everything, handwritten texts for the products that sell best or get the most traffic.

Patterns for three store types

The patterns are examples. Adapt them to your store, and leave the store name out of the title if the SEO plugin adds it by itself.

Home and garden (retail). The customer is looking for a solution, not a product code.

• Title: the product name, the most important feature, sometimes the size. “Kula solar lantern 20 cm, white, no cables”.
• Description: the customer's situation and the benefit, then a fact. “A sphere that lights up by itself at dusk. Set it on a flower bed or patio, it charges from the sun and shines for up to 8 hours.”

Workwear and business supplies (B2B). The customer knows the specs and wants specifics.

• Title: product type, standard or material, size, pack. “Nitrile work gloves, size 9, 12 pairs”.
• Description: use, specs, and the purchase terms you really offer. “Nitrile gloves for assembly and warehouse work. Pack of 12 pairs, VAT invoice, dispatched from our own warehouse.”

Furniture and pricier products. The customer compares and needs a reason to click on you in particular.

• Title: the model name, type, key feature. “Lena sofa, 3-seater, sofa bed, velvet fabric”.
• Description: dimensions, choice, service. “3-seater sofa bed with storage. 12 velvet colours, 218 × 92 cm, delivery to the room of your choice.”

A few rules shared by all of them:

1. The most important word at the start of the title, because the end sometimes gets cut.
2. One description per product. Google is less likely to show repetitive descriptions.
3. No hard-coded prices or promotion dates.
4. No promises you can't keep, for example “24 h dispatch” if that isn't always the case.
5. No product codes in the title, unless customers really search for them, as in B2B.

Before and after: what a batch fix looks like

For batch work there is a ready task, “Product descriptions and SEO in batches”, in the TellMyShop plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. Your chat (Claude or ChatGPT) looks for products without a meta description and starts with those that sold best in the last 90 days. It shows 2 or 3 samples, and once you accept the style it works in batches of up to 50 products. The save goes into the active SEO plugin: Yoast SEO or Rank Math. If you have neither, TellMyShop saves the texts in its own fields and displays them on the page itself.