How to write Shopify title tags and meta descriptions

A good Shopify title tag names what the page offers in about 60 characters, with the key words first. A good meta description sums up the page in one or two sentences, about 160 characters. Each page needs its own. You edit both in the search engine listing section of your admin.

What is the difference between the two?

The title tag usually becomes the clickable link in search results. The meta description is text you suggest for the snippet below it. Google generates snippets mainly from the page’s content and uses your meta description when it describes the page better, so it may or may not appear.

Examples by page type

These use a fictional jewelry store called Lune.

How to write a title tag

Google’s title guidance comes down to a few rules:

• Describe this page. Avoid vague labels like “Home” or “Products”.
• Make it unique. Boilerplate shared across many pages makes results hard to tell apart.
• Do not stack keywords. Repeating words does not help readers and can look spammy.
• Match the page. The title and the main heading should say the same thing.

Shopify adds one useful habit: put your most important words near the beginning.

Watch out for your store name

Shopify says themes generate title tags that include your store name. Its sample theme code appends the name only when the title does not already contain it. Themes vary, so look at a live page before you type the name into every field.

How to write a meta description

Write a short summary a shopper would find useful. Google’s advice is to be specific to the page and to include concrete details, such as the maker or the price for a product. A long list of keywords does not tell people what the page is about and is less likely to be shown.

For a store with many products, you can build descriptions from product data, as long as they stay readable and different from one page to the next.

How long should they be?

Aim for about 60 and 160, and make sure the first words make sense alone in case the rest is cut.

Where do you edit them in Shopify?

• Homepage: go to Online Store, then Preferences, and use the title and meta description fields.
• Products: open the product and edit the search engine listing.
• Collections, pages and blog posts: open the item and use the same search engine listing section.

This section also holds the URL handle. Leave it alone unless you have a reason to change it, and read how Shopify URLs and redirects work first.

How to check the result

Open a page, view its source and look for the <title> and <meta name="description"> tags. To decide which pages to rewrite first, look in Google Search Console for pages shown often but rarely clicked. Google says title changes can take days to weeks to appear. For where titles fit in the rest of your work, see our Shopify SEO guide.

Writing these for every product takes time, and the work repeats each time you add one. Forgefont’s SEO-optimized site option covers all the copy on your site, following Google’s official documentation. You can add it when you configure your store.