The meta title and meta description are your free ad on Google: the only thing the search engine shows about your page before the click. Ranking fifth with a great snippet can bring in more visits than ranking third with one that’s truncated or generic. And yet, in most PrestaShop catalogs, these fields sit empty, duplicated, or cut off mid-sentence.
What they are (and aren’t)
The meta title is the blue headline in the search result; the meta description is the two lines of gray text beneath it. They’re not a magic ranking factor — they’re your sales pitch on the results page. Their only job is to win the click against the other nine results.
The limits that actually matter
Google doesn’t cut off at an exact character count — it cuts by pixel width — but the practical benchmarks hold steady: roughly 50-60 characters for the title and 150-160 for the description. Going over doesn’t get you penalized — Google simply truncates with an ellipsis, and your pitch gets cut off right where you were about to land it. That’s why writing without a character counter in front of you is writing blind.
The mistakes that repeat across catalogs
- Empty metas — Google improvises a snippet from whatever it finds on the page; sometimes it nails it, sometimes it shows the navigation menu.
- Mass duplicates — the import generated “Product X – My Store” two hundred times over; no single result stands out from the rest.
- Truncated — 80-character titles cut off mid-word, with the brand or the benefit pushed off-screen.
- No reason to click — they describe the product but give no reason to choose it: no benefit, no differentiator, no call to action.
How to write metas that earn the click
The keyword up front in the title, a concrete benefit or differentiator right after, and the brand at the end if there’s room. In the description, answer the question behind the search and close with a reason to click through — shipping, warranty, selection, price, whatever happens to be true of your store. Specific beats generic: “Badger-hair shaving brushes from €12 — 24-hour shipping” outperforms “Discover our wide range of shaving brushes.”
Generic meta
“Buy a shaving brush online | My Store.” It says nothing the other nine results don’t already say. Someone else gets the click.
Meta with an argument
“Badger-Hair Shaving Brush: Guide and Prices 2026 | My Store.” Keyword up front, a concrete promise, length under control. That snippet competes.
The problem isn’t knowing how — it’s applying it to 200 product pages
Everything above can be learned in an afternoon. What stalls people is applying it page by page across the whole catalog. That’s where Zeyvro SEO Bulk Editor comes in: the metas for products, categories, and CMS pages in a single table, with a real-time character counter as you type, one-click auto-generation as a starting point, and saving row by row or in bulk — all over AJAX, no reloads. You see at a glance what’s empty, what’s duplicated, and what runs too long, and you fix it right there.
💡 The third field on the SEO tab — the URL — matters more than it looks: changing it carelessly can cost you the page’s ranking. We cover that in how to change a product URL in PrestaShop without losing your SEO.
Frequently asked questions
How many characters should a meta title have?
As a practical benchmark, between 50 and 60 characters. Google cuts off by pixel width, so the exact number varies — which is why it helps to write with a real-time counter in front of you.
Does the meta description affect rankings?
Not directly — but it affects CTR, and more clicks at the same position means more visits. It’s your ad on the results page, not a technical tag.
What happens if I leave the metas empty?
Google generates the snippet on its own from fragments of the page. Sometimes it turns out fine; often it doesn’t. Leaving it empty means handing your ad over to an algorithm.
Can I fix the metas for the whole catalog at once?
With Zeyvro SEO Bulk Editor, yes: products, categories, and CMS pages in a single table, with a real-time counter, auto-generation, and saving row by row or in bulk.
Write metas that compete — and roll them out across your whole catalog in an afternoon, not a week.
See Zeyvro SEO Bulk Editor →Zeyvro builds modules for PrestaShop 8, developed from a real store in production. Unobfuscated code.