Bulk Edit Meta Descriptions in WooCommerce: Templates or AI?

Use all three tools, each where it fits. A template in your SEO plugin fills the gap on every product at once. Hand-written text goes on the products that matter most. A bulk editor or an AI assistant covers the products in between. Do not expect a promise about rankings from any of them: Google says it only sometimes uses the meta description and mostly builds the snippet from the page itself (Google Search Central: snippets).

What a meta description does and does not do

The meta description is the short text a search engine may show under your link. It is a summary for shoppers, not a ranking switch. Google sets no length limit, but search results cut snippets to fit the screen, so put the useful part first. Google also advises against near-identical descriptions on many pages, and says that if you cannot write one for every page you should start with the most important ones (same page). That one sentence is the plan for this post.

Step 1: set a template

A template gives every product a default title and description built from its own data. It is quick and it is never perfect.

Yoast SEO

Go to Yoast SEO > Settings > Content types, choose Products, and under Search appearance edit the SEO title and meta description templates. Use Insert variable, then Save changes (Yoast: change the templates). For the product category use %%ct_product_cat%%, not %%category%%, which Yoast lists for posts. Other variables are %%title%%, %%sitename%% and %%sep%%. %%wc_sku%%, %%wc_price%% and %%wc_shortdesc%% need Yoast WooCommerce SEO 6.2 or later (Yoast: variables).

Rank Math

Go to Rank Math SEO > Titles & Meta > Products, fill in Single Product Description and click Save Changes. Mind the order. Rank Math uses the SEO description of the product first, then the product short description, then this template, then the product description (Rank Math: product meta description). A product that already has a short description will not use your template unless you add Rank Math’s filter.

SEOPress

Go to SEO > Titles & Metas and open the Post Types tab. WooCommerce variables include %%wc_single_price%%, %%wc_sku%% and %%wc_single_cat%%. A text entered on a single product, in the Titles tab of the SEO box, bypasses the template (SEOPress: titles and metas).

The SEO Framework

It writes a description for you from the excerpt, or from the content if there is no excerpt, and does not store it. It also suggests that writing your own is worth the time (The SEO Framework: description generator).

In every plugin, check the exact menu names in your version.

Step 2: decide which products get real text

Pick the products that earn the most or get the most visits and write those yourself, or have an assistant draft them and read every word. A template can cover the long tail.

Step 3: bulk editing

WooCommerce’s own CSV importer lists no columns for SEO fields (product CSV schema), and the bulk edit screen does not include them (WooCommerce: bulk editing). So you need a plugin. Yangtics is one: its listing says it bulk edits SEO title, meta description, noindex and slug for Yoast SEO or Rank Math, and keeps a change log with before and after values that you can export (wordpress.org listing). Whichever you choose, check that it keeps a record.

Step 4: drafting with an AI assistant

Assistants are good at short, varied summaries if you feed them facts. Tell it the shop’s tone, give each product’s name, category and key facts, and ask for different openings. Give it a length. One plugin listing aims at 140 to 160 characters (example), which is a reasonable starting point, not a rule. Read a sample for repeated sentences and made-up claims. Writing the descriptions themselves is covered in this post on product descriptions.

Step 5: check and keep a record

Open a few products and look at the snippet preview in your SEO plugin. Then view the live page’s source and search for name="description". Keep an export or a change log, so you can see what you replaced.

The StoreEdit AI way

StoreEdit AI connects Claude or ChatGPT to your shop through MCP, the standard way an AI assistant connects to another system. You ask in plain words, for example “Write a meta description for every product in Candles, under 155 characters, mention the scent.” The assistant writes one text per product and StoreEdit AI writes it into the fields of Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress or The SEO Framework. First you see every row in WordPress admin: the field now, the field it would become, a tick box. Untick rows, press Apply selected, and use Undo these changes to put the old values back. One request can cover up to 1,000 products. The SEO title holds one line of plain text up to 200 characters and the meta description up to 320.

The limits: All in One SEO is not supported yet, and a shop with none of the four plugins cannot use it. There is no focus keyword field, and SEO fields of variations are not written. The slug post covers the third field people ask about.

Questions

Does a meta description help me rank?

Google does not promise that. It uses the meta description only sometimes, so treat it as a summary for shoppers.

Which Yoast variable gives the product category?

%%ct_product_cat%%.

Why does my Rank Math template not show?

Another source with a higher priority, such as the product short description, is probably being used. See Step 1.

Can I use a CSV for this?

Not with WooCommerce’s own importer, since it has no SEO columns. Some plugins add them.