How do you write an SEO-friendly meta description?

Short answer

Write it as a short, specific pitch for the page: what it is, who it is for, and why to click, in a sentence or two. It is not a ranking factor in any useful sense and Google often replaces it with text from the page. So write them properly for the twenty or so pages that matter, and do not spend a week on the rest.

Meta descriptions are one of the most over-worked items in SEO. Audit tools flag every missing one, so teams spend days writing hundreds of them. Most of that effort changes nothing. A few well-written descriptions on the right pages can make a real difference to clicks.

What a meta description actually does

The meta description is a short summary in the page’s HTML. Google may show it as the snippet under your title in the results. It does not have to. Google’s documentation says snippets are primarily created from the page content itself, and that it uses the meta description when it gives a more accurate summary than text from the page.

In practice, Google often writes its own snippet, especially when the search is specific and some other passage on the page matches it better. Your description is more likely to be used for searches that match the page’s main topic.

It is not a meaningful ranking factor. Its job is to earn the click once you are already ranking.

How long should it be?

Google says there is no limit on how long a meta description can be; snippets are truncated to fit the device. So aim for something that makes sense in its first 120 characters or so, because that is roughly what survives on a phone, and let it run a little longer if the extra detail helps on desktop. Do not pad it to hit a number.

What to put in it

What the page is. In the searcher’s words, not your internal ones.
Something specific. A price, a time frame, a number, a location, a named thing the page covers. Specifics stand out in a list of generic snippets.
Who it is for, or what they get. “For agencies who need unbranded delivery.” “A ranked fix list in seven working days.”
A reason to choose this result. What your page offers that the others might not.

Skip the clichés. “Click here to learn more”, “we are the best”, and lists of keywords separated by commas all waste the space.

Every page different

Google is explicit that identical or similar descriptions on every page aren’t helpful. If you cannot write a unique one for a page, leaving it blank is better than copying a template, because Google will then build a snippet from the page itself.

For large sets of similar pages, like products, a description generated from the page’s own data, such as product name, key attribute, price and availability, can be better than either a blank or a handwritten one.

Which pages deserve one

This is where most of the time is saved. Write careful descriptions for:

Your homepage and main service or category pages. Pages that already rank on page one for valuable searches but get a low click-through rate. Pages people share on social media or messaging apps, where the description is often shown.

On most small and mid-sized business sites, that is around twenty pages. The HTTP Archive found that about a third of pages have no meta description at all, 67.2% of mobile pages carrying one in 2025. Plenty of those pages rank perfectly well.

An example

A generic description for an SEO audit page: “We offer professional SEO audit services to help your website rank higher on Google. Contact us today.”

A better one: “A fixed $500 SEO audit: technical, content, links and the live results against your competitors. Ranked fix list in seven working days, no retainer.”

The second tells the searcher the price, the scope, the deliverable, the time frame and the terms. Someone comparing results knows what they will get before clicking.

How to check whether it is working

Search Console shows clicks and impressions per page. Pick a page with steady impressions and a weak click-through rate, rewrite its title and description, and compare the next four weeks with the previous four. Search the main query yourself to see whether Google is using your description at all. If it is not, look at what text it chose instead; it often tells you what the page should be saying near the top.

A note for local businesses

For service businesses, the description is a good place for the one detail that decides a call: the area you cover, whether you take emergency jobs, whether you work with insurers, whether there is free parking. Those details rarely fit in a title and they are exactly what a person scanning five results is looking for. Put the location in naturally if the page is about a place, and leave the phone number out; it takes space better used on something that helps someone choose.

If your pages rank and do not get clicked, my technical SEO work looks at titles and descriptions on the pages where they will actually move something, rather than every URL a tool flags.