How to Format Text for SEO

Write titles, headings and meta descriptions that rank — a practical guide to SEO-friendly text formatting.

Format text for SEO the right way: title and meta description lengths, heading hierarchy, readable paragraphs and on-page structure search engines reward.

Key points from this guide

  • Title tags are truncated around 60 characters and meta descriptions around 155-160 in most desktop results; front-load the distinctive words.
  • One H1 per page that matches the page's subject, then H2 and H3 in order — skipping levels makes the outline harder to parse for assistive technology.
  • URLs should be lowercase with hyphens between words; underscores are read as joiners rather than separators.
  • Descriptive link text beats "click here": the anchor text tells both readers and crawlers what the destination is about.
  • Styled Unicode characters in headings are not matched against the plain letters in search, so keep decorative text out of titles and headings.

Frequently asked questions

Does the meta description affect rankings?

Not directly, but it is often shown in the result and influences whether people click. Google frequently rewrites it from page content when it fits the query better.

How long should a page title be?

Under about 60 characters so it is not truncated, with the most specific words first — the brand name at the end if you include it at all.