What it is for
Think of it as the one-line pitch for the page in the search results. The title gets the click started; the description confirms this is the right page. 'Kitchen renovations in Burlington from design to install. Fixed quotes, 4-6 week timelines, 90+ five-star Google reviews. Book a free in-home consultation.' tells a searcher exactly what they will find. 'Welcome to our website. We offer a wide range of services.' tells them nothing, and Google will usually replace it with a snippet from the page.
How to write one
- One or two sentences, around 150 to 160 characters. Longer gets cut off; there is no exact limit, Google measures width in pixels.
- Specific to the page. Every page should have its own. Duplicate descriptions across pages are a common audit finding and a wasted opportunity.
- Include the main term the page targets, naturally, because Google bolds matching words.
- Say what the visitor gets and, where it fits, a reason to click: a price, a timeline, a proof point, a location.
- Write it for a person. It is a sales line, not a keyword list.
Where it lives and who sets it
It is a meta tag in the page's head. On WordPress, SEO plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math add a field for it under each page; Shopify has it under 'Search engine listing'; custom sites set it in code. Social networks use a separate set of tags (Open Graph) for the preview when a link is shared, which a developer sets alongside. Meta descriptions, titles and headings are part of what a website audit checks, and the guide on what SEO is and how it works puts them in context.