Title & Meta Description (SERP Snippet) Standards — local playbook

Summary. How to write the title tags and meta descriptions cinccino grades and publishes — the length rules, what earns clicks, and the WordPress publishing process. Local fallback; a team can point cinccino at a live Outline wiki (OUTLINE + OUTLINE_API_URL, collection via CINCCINO_WIKI_COLLECTION).

Surfaced by. cinccino: the current-snippet grade (missing/over-length title, missing or truncated meta, keyword coverage) and the rewritten title/description it proposes.

Standards

• Title: aim 50–60 characters, hard cap 60. Over ~60 and Google truncates it in the SERP. Put the primary keyword near the front; lead with the benefit or the differentiator, not the brand (brand goes at the end after a | or –).
• Meta description: aim 140–155 characters, hard cap ~155. It’s ad copy, not a summary — give a concrete reason to click (offer, outcome, proof), include the keyword once, and end with a light call to action.
• One page, one promise. The snippet must match what the page delivers; mismatch = pogo-sticking and a CTR that decays.
• No duplication across pages. Every page’s title and description are unique (orbeetle flags dupes site-wide).

Publishing (WordPress)

1. cinccino auto-detects Yoast or Rank Math and writes to that plugin’s SEO title / meta fields; a site with no SEO plugin (core) can only have its post title changed.
2. Dry-run first — review the before→after, confirm the length badges are green, then re-run with --apply. Only changed fields are written, and the prior value is returned for a manual rollback.
3. After publishing, re-crawl the page (or wait for Google) and confirm the new snippet renders as intended.