SERP Preview for Bloggers

You are a blogger. You write good content. You want it to actually get found. The biggest free CTR boost you can give your blog is writing snippets that earn the click on Google — and the easiest way to do that is to preview them before publishing. This guide covers the workflow for the four most common blogging platforms.

The free SERP preview tool works for any platform. Paste, preview, ship.

Substack: Limited SEO, Workarounds

Substack does not give you direct control over title tags or meta descriptions on individual posts. The platform auto-generates them from your post title and the first part of your content. This is fine for most posts but suboptimal for SEO-targeted ones.

Workaround: write your post title to double as a strong title tag. Front-load the keyword, keep it under 60 characters, and treat it as your snippet. Preview the result in the free SERP preview tool to make sure it does not truncate.

For the meta description, write the first sentence of your post to be a strong 155-character summary that doubles as the meta description Substack will auto-generate from.

Medium: Title and Subtitle Both Matter

Medium gives you a title and a subtitle. The title is your title tag, the subtitle becomes part of the meta description. Both show up in Google search results.

Optimize the title for search: keyword first, value second. Optimize the subtitle for click: a specific promise that earns the click. Together they should make a complete snippet that previews well in the free SERP preview tool.

Ghost: Full SEO Control

Ghost has dedicated meta title and meta description fields in the post settings (under "Meta data"). You can also set OG title, OG description, Twitter title, and Twitter description independently. This is the same level of control as WordPress + Yoast, built into core.

Workflow: write your meta title and description in the post settings, paste them into the free SERP preview tool for preview, adjust if needed, save and publish.

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Self-Hosted (WordPress, Hugo, Astro, Eleventy)

If you run a self-hosted blog, you have full control. Set the title and meta description per post. Use the free SERP preview tool to preview, the schema markup generator to add Article schema, and the meta tag generator to generate Open Graph tags for social sharing. The combination of these three free tools matches what a paid plugin or service would give you.

Blog Title Patterns That Work on Google

• How-to: "How to [Action] in [Specific Time/Steps]"
• Listicle: "[Number] [Things] That [Specific Outcome]"
• Comparison: "[A] vs [B]: Which Is [Better/Right] for [Audience]?"
• Question: "Why [Common Belief]? Here's What [Authority] Says"
• Story: "I Tried [Thing] for [Time]. Here's What Happened."

Each of these has a different SERP behavior. Test which one fits your post best in the free SERP preview tool.

Re-Checking Your Snippet After Publish

Once your post is indexed, search for your target keyword and look at how Google actually displays your snippet. Sometimes Google rewrites your description; sometimes the title is truncated differently than expected. Note the differences and adjust on your next post.

For high-traffic posts, check Search Console after 30 days for actual CTR data. If a post is ranking but not getting clicks, the snippet is the problem — rewrite it.