Use a Meta Description

What is a meta description?

The meta description of a webpage is an HTML element contained in a page’s header that provides a brief summary of what that page is about.  Search engine results pages (SERPs) truncate the description after the first 160 characters, so generally you want to limit your descriptions to this size to ensure visitors see the meta description in its entirety.  Meta descriptions do not directly factor into the ranking algorithms used by search engines, but they do provide an opportunity to advertise your content to users and drive traffic to your content from the search results page.

SEO Best Practices

Interesting meta descriptions differentiate your content and help your pages stand out in the long list of items in SERPs.  Including common search terms in your descriptions is one way to capture traffic and get your content in front of potential users.  Duplicate content is another area of concern with meta descriptions, so do your best to make sure that each one is unique. You should also avoid using double quotation marks in your meta descriptions since search engines will cut off any remaining content once the first quote is encountered.  Meta descriptions also help social sharing sites determine what text to display when your content is linked within their ecosystem and without a meta description they will display the first text they can find on the page.