What is Meta Description

The meta description is the short paragraph or the summary of the content on your page. The meta description appears under your page’s URL in the search results which is also known as a snippet.

As Google states the meta description is NOT a ranking signal. But, again, the quality of the description will influence click-through rate, which influences your ranking. The more descriptive, attractive and relevant your meta description is, the more likely it is that a searcher will click on it.

Meta Description checklist

• Keywords: Make sure your target keywords for the webpage show up in the meta description, preferably let it be the first word. Most often, search engines will highlight in bold where it finds the searchers query in your snippet.
• No keyword stuffing: Keyword stuffing your meta description is bad and it doesn’t help the searcher as they’ll assume your result leads to a spammy website. Make sure you write legible and readable content.
• Treat it as an advert for the page: Write your meta description to be compelling and as relevant as possible. The description MUST match the content on the page, but you should also make it as appealing as possible.
• Length: Your meta description should be between 100 – 320 characters long

Keep them unique: Meta descriptions must be written differently for every page to avoid being penalised by Google for duplicate meta description.