A page’s meta description (description meta tag) gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about.
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages.
Adding meta descriptions to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.
The meta description should go within the tag.
Whereas a page’s title may be a few words or a phrase, a page’s meta description might be a sentence or two or even a short paragraph.
Optimal length for a meta description is around 145-160 characters. Search engine will typically trim meta descriptions over 160 characters.
Accurately summarise the page’s content. Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your meta description as a snippet in a search result.
When writing a meta description avoid:
– writing a meta description that has no relation to the content on the page
– using generic descriptions like “This is a web page” or “Page about baseball cards”
– filling the description with only keywords
– copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
– using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages
Use unique meta descriptions for each page. Having a different meta description for each page helps both users and Google. Especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain
Words in the snippet are bolded when they appear in the user’s query. Similar to the title tag, this gives the user clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is looking for.