What Are Meta Descriptions?

A meta description serves as a brief description of a web page, which search engines utilise and display beneath the title tag in search engine results pages.
 

While it's important to note that meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor for Google and do not directly influence search engine rankings, they can play a significant role in influencing the click-through rate to a page.

Similar to title tags, meta descriptions are an opportunity to capture users' attention while succinctly summarising the content of the page.

It's widely recommended to keep these descriptive snippets within the range of 150 to 160 characters for optimal visibility and user engagement.

Ideally, each page on a website should feature a unique meta description that effectively describes the page's content. While there is no penalty for using the same meta description across multiple pages, doing so may not fully leverage the potential of meta descriptions and could inadvertently lead to competition among your own pages in SERPs.

In recent years, Google's algorithms have also begun rewriting some meta descriptions. This is typically done to clarify the connection between a page and a specific search query, and it relies on the content found on the page.