Writing Tips for Your Page Summary and Description
Want people to read your web page? Use your page description to get people to your page. It's then your summary's job to get them reading.
Summary
Your page summary should hook your readers, giving them a good sense of what the page offers and why they should read on.
A good summary can make your page more shareable. Keep your audience in mind as you write it and make the summary speak to them.
Here are some approaches you could take:
- Summarise what the page offers
- Pose a question that your page sets out to answer
- State an interesting discovery or some surprising facts
Where will the summary appear?
At the top of your page, immediately below the page title. The first paragraph of your page is displayed in a large font so it'll stand out to readers.
Description text
The description won't appear on your page but that doesn't make it less important.
Together with your page title, your description is going to convince people to click the link to your page. You've got just 150 characters (including spaces) in which to summarise the content of you page and lure people to it.
Do:
- Include the words you expect your audience to enter in the search
Don't
- Write a description that's hard to follow. You're competing for attention. If you don't grab it you'll lose your reader
Where will the description appear?
On our website's:
- Navigation tiles on landing pages
- Also of interest tiles
Elsewhere:
- Search results on Google and other search engines
- Social media shares - use Twitter's card validator to check how your title and description would look when shared
Description text examples
The examples below show how the description text from Historic England's 'What Remains' exhibition page appears in the places listed above. Click to enlarge the images.
Also of interest
