meta description

A 150–160 character summary of the page that may appear as the snippet under the title in search results.

The meta description is not a direct ranking signal but directly influences click-through rate. When Google uses your description as the search snippet (roughly 30–40% of the time), a compelling description with a clear value proposition and call-to-action increases clicks without changing rankings.

Google often ignores meta descriptions and generates its own snippet from page content when a specific user query is better matched by a passage. Despite this, writing quality meta descriptions is worthwhile: when Google does use yours, it can significantly lift CTR. Also affects social sharing on platforms like LinkedIn that fall back to meta description for preview text.

Best practices: 140–160 characters, include the primary keyword naturally (Google bolds matching terms), write one sentence that answers "why should I click this?", and give every page a unique description.