The meta description belongs in the HTML <head> section, coded as <meta name="description" content="Your description here">. It sits alongside other meta tags like title, viewport, and canonical. If you're hand-coding HTML, place it anywhere inside <head>, typically after the <title> tag for readability. In practice, you'll rarely edit raw HTML. WordPress users rely on Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All in One SEO Pack, which add a meta description box below the post editor. Shopify has a dedicated "Search engine listing preview" section under each page or product. Webflow, Squarespace, and Wix all offer similar fields in their page settings. For headless CMS setups or custom React/Next.js sites, you control meta tags through components like next/head or helmet, pulling description text from your content API or front matter. The description itself should run 140–160 characters to avoid truncation in Google's desktop snippets, though mobile can show slightly less. Write it as a concise pitch that includes your primary keyword naturally and gives searchers a reason to click. At Ottawa SEO, we treat the meta description as ad copy, not a keyword-stuffing opportunity. Google doesn't use it for ranking, but a compelling description lifts click-through rate, which indirectly signals relevance. One common mistake: duplicating descriptions across pages. Every page needs a unique description that reflects its specific content. E-commerce sites with thousands of SKUs should programmatically generate descriptions using product attributes rather than leaving them blank or identical. If you omit the meta tag entirely, Google pulls a snippet from your page content, which sometimes works but often produces choppy, irrelevant text. Control the narrative by writing your own. Check Google Search Console's Performance report to see which pages get impressions but low CTR—those descriptions likely need rewriting.