A meta description is an HTML element that summarizes what a page is about in roughly 150–160 characters. It sits in the <head> section of your code as <meta name="description" content="your text here"> and shows up as the snippet text under your page title in Google, Bing, and other search results. Google doesn't use it as a ranking factor, but it absolutely affects whether people click your result or your competitor's. The character limit matters because Google truncates descriptions around 155–160 characters on desktop and sometimes shorter on mobile. If you go over, your message gets cut off with an ellipsis, often at the worst possible moment. We typically aim for 145–155 characters to stay safe across devices. A strong meta description does three things: it includes the primary keyword naturally, it matches search intent so the searcher knows they're in the right place, and it gives a reason to click rather than just repeating the title. For a local page, that might mean mentioning Ottawa or your service area. For a product page, it might highlight a specific benefit or differentiator. Google doesn't always use your meta description. If it thinks a passage from your content better matches the query, it'll pull that instead. This happens more often on informational queries where intent varies. You'll still want to write one because when Google does use it, you control the message. At Ottawa SEO, we write meta descriptions for every page in the sitemap, prioritizing high-traffic pages and conversion pages first. For a 500-page site, that's a real time investment, but it's also one of the few places you directly control what shows up in search results. We track CTR in Search Console by page and rewrite underperformers every quarter. A 2–3 percentage point CTR lift on a page getting 10,000 impressions per month is 200–300 extra visitors without changing rankings at all.