====== Meta Description ======

The meta description is a small snippet of text up to about 150 characters in length. The job of the meta description is to describe what the page is content is all about.

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  * The first few words in the Meta Description are perhaps the most important and should match your title tag
  * Write your meta description in the active voice
  * Always include a form of "Call To Action".
  * Make sure that the content is structured and in tune with what your page is talking about
  * Generally speaking you're only allowed about 150 characters
  * Repeat your key expression one or two times to make sure the message gets across
  * The meta description should be **unique for each of your pages** or posts
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When it comes to looking at **[[Why_Local_SEO|local SEO]]**, the meta description should have a **mention of the local areas that you cover**.

The meta description usually has **action words**. For example you may be selling a certain product and in the meta description you would add an action word to go to the sales page. 

The meta description should also be very **similar to the start of the text on the page** (the first heading and first words in the first paragraph on the page).

The meta description is used to describe what the page is all about. It provides a summary of the content of your page. The meta description is partly used by Google for the search engine results page ([[SERP]]) when viewing results after someone has searched for something.

> By optimising the meta description you can affect the way in which Google will display the results.

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Many people ask where are the results that Google shows on a search result are taken from?

Generally speaking, the results are a combination of the meta description and what Google thinks is relevant to that person's search phrase. So by //getting your meta description to match what the page is about// Google will have a much higher chance of using your meta description rather than just some random text taken from the page.
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