A meta description is the snippet of text Google shows below your page title in search results. It doesn't directly affect rankings, but a well-written one increases click-through rate, which does matter. You have roughly 155–160 characters before Google truncates it on desktop, less on mobile. Here are real-world examples across different contexts: - Homepage: "Ottawa web design & SEO agency managing 500+ domains. Custom WordPress sites, local SEO, and technical audits. Serving Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal since 2014." - Service page: "Need a CRA-compliant accountant in Ottawa? We handle personal and corporate tax, bookkeeping, and year-end filings. Free 30-minute consultation." - Blog post: "Learn how Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) impact Google rankings in 2024. Includes benchmarks, free testing tools, and fixes that actually work." - E-commerce product: "Buy organic fair-trade coffee beans (1kg, whole or ground). Roasted weekly in Toronto. Free shipping over $50. Ships Canada-wide in 2–3 days." What makes these work: each one answers the searcher's intent in the first few words, includes a concrete benefit or differentiator, and uses natural language instead of keyword-stuffed nonsense. Notice none of them waste space saying "click here to learn more." Common mistakes we see: writing the same generic description across dozens of pages, forgetting to include a call-to-action or value prop, or letting WordPress auto-generate descriptions from the first 160 characters of body text (which often cuts mid-sentence). At Ottawa SEO, we write unique meta descriptions for every page we optimize, focusing on the pages that already get impressions but low CTR. If a page ranks position 8 and has a 2% CTR, a better description can double that without changing anything else. For massive sites in our portfolio, we prioritize the top 50–100 pages by traffic potential and use templated patterns for the long tail. Google rewrites about 60% of descriptions anyway, but that's no excuse to skip them.