What is a meta description?

A meta description is the description of a web page. The meta description, together with the meta title and the URL, is the most important information for Google. Filling the meta description is one of the basic techniques for search engine optimization.

The importance of the meta description

The meta description literally appears in the search results in 98% of the cases. In 2% of cases, Google adjusts the meta description itself in the search results. They do this when they think they can provide a more relevant meta description to the user.

Below you can see exactly where you can find the meta description in the search results, the red frame is the meta description.

Writing the meta description

When writing the meta description you must take into account a maximum length of approximately 156 characters. If you use more characters, there is a chance that Google will truncate the meta description.

In addition, you should not underestimate writing the meta description. This ensures the CTR (click through rate) from Google. This allows you to convince people to go to your web page, think of it as a kind of pitch of 156 characters.

Tool

Our partner Webbouwers.com has a SERP Snippet tool developed with which you can write your meta description online and immediately get a preview of the snippet as it will appear in Google. We also take the length of the title and meta description into account.