A meta description is a snippet of text placed in your page's HTML <head> section that tells search engines and users what the page is about. It appears below your title tag in search results, giving searchers a preview before they click. The tag looks like: <meta name="description" content="Your description here">. Google typically displays the first 150–160 characters (about 920 pixels on desktop), so keep it concise. Mobile can be shorter, around 120 characters. Anything beyond that gets cut off with an ellipsis, wasting your persuasion space. Meta descriptions don't directly influence rankings. Google confirmed this years ago. But they heavily influence click-through rate, and CTR is a user engagement signal Google watches. A compelling description that matches search intent can pull 20–40% more clicks than generic boilerplate, which indirectly helps your rankings by proving your result satisfies users. Write each meta description uniquely for the page. Include your primary keyword naturally, because Google bolds matching terms in the SERP, catching the searcher's eye. Focus on benefit or answer, not just feature lists. For a local Ottawa HVAC company, "Book same-day furnace repair in Ottawa. Licensed, 15+ years, flat-rate pricing" works better than "We are an HVAC company serving Ottawa since 2008." Google doesn't always use your meta description. If it thinks a sentence from your content better matches the query, it pulls that instead. This happens 60–70% of the time on some sites. That's fine. You're giving Google a strong default, and when it does use yours, you control the message. At Ottawa SEO, we write meta descriptions during keyword mapping, not as an afterthought. Every page in our portfolio gets a unique description tied to search intent. Missing or duplicate meta descriptions signal low-effort SEO, and while not a ranking penalty, they waste SERP real estate. If you're running 500+ pages, automate a template but customize your money pages manually.