SiteAud!tLint Support

Opportunity On-Page SEO

Meta description under 70 characters

Severity
Opportunity
Impact
Low
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
desc_short

Why it matters

Short descriptions waste snippet space that could sell the page.

How to fix it

Expand the description with a clear summary and a reason to click.

What this means

The meta description is shorter than 70 characters. The evidence shows its length.

Why it matters

A very short description uses little of the space Google offers under the title, and usually says too little to help someone choose your result. Google is also more likely to replace it with a passage from the page.

Short is not always wrong: a crisp, specific sentence can work. This is an opportunity, not an error.

Common causes

  • Placeholder text such as Products page or Coming soon.
  • The page title repeated as the description.
  • Descriptions built from a single short field, such as a product name.

How to fix it

  1. Expand it into one or two full sentences of roughly 70 to 160 characters.
  2. Say what the page offers and who it is for, and add a concrete detail: a price range, the number of items, a key feature, a location.
  3. For templated pages, combine several fields into a natural sentence, for example {product}: {key feature}, in {count} colours. Free returns within 30 days.

Verify the fix

Recrawl and check the new length in the evidence. See also Meta description over 160 characters.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the On-Page SEO score 0.5 points, plus up to 4 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. A smaller improvement with a modest effect on its own.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Meta description under 70 characters. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (low) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code desc_short. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.