How to write titles and meta descriptions
The two lines shown in search results decide whether anyone clicks. If you rank well but get no clicks, those two lines are usually the reason.
You're third on Google and nobody clicks. It happens more often than you'd think, and the cause usually isn't technical. Your title just doesn't promise the reader anything.
Writing the title
The blue, clickable line in the search result. It can differ from the page's own h1 heading, and it often should.
Length
Around 60 characters. Any longer and Google cuts it off with three dots, and whatever was in the cut-off part is lost. Put the important word first.
Patterns that work
A concrete number, such as "7 reasons your site is slow" instead of "About website speed"
A price, such as "Personal Website | $300". People click when they see a figure
A year, when you want to show the content is current
A city. If you work locally, naming it in the title gets you noticeably more clicks
What doesn't work
Leading with your brand name, stacking keywords like "Name | Web Design | Corporate Sites | SEO | City", or promising nothing between the pipes.
Put the brand name at the end. It already shows up under the address.
Writing the meta description
The two grey lines under the title. They don't affect ranking directly. They affect click-through rate, and click-through rate feeds into ranking over time.
Length
Around 155 characters. Google cuts this one off too.
What to write
Tell people what they'll find on the page and give them a reason to click. Instead of "we offer web design services", write something like "See which package fits you, how long it takes and what it costs, all on one page."
Work in the words people actually search for, naturally. Google bolds matching words, and that's where the eye goes.
Google may not use what you wrote
That's normal. If Google finds text on your page that fits the search better, it uses that as the description instead. What you write is a suggestion, and there's no guarantee Google will use it.
If yours keeps getting replaced, it usually doesn't describe the page well enough. Google thinks it found something better, and it's probably right.
Where to check
Open the Performance report in Search Console, switch to the "Pages" tab and sort by CTR. Pages with lots of impressions and a CTR below 2% are the ones to work on first.
After changing a title, give it two or three weeks before you judge the result. Google has to recrawl the page and enough data has to build up.