What it is
A meta description is a short snippet of text — usually one or two sentences — that lives quietly in your page's code and isn't shown anywhere on the page itself. Instead, search engines like Google often display it directly underneath your page's title in search results, as the small gray summary text people read before deciding whether to click.
Why it matters
Two pages can rank in the exact same position on a results page, and the one with a clear, specific meta description will usually get clicked more often than the one with none — because search engines fall back to grabbing a random, often awkward sentence from your page's content when no description is set. A missing or badly written meta description doesn't just look unfinished; it's a quiet, ongoing loss of visitors who saw your link and scrolled past it for a competitor's.
How to fix it
- Write one to two sentences (aim for roughly 120–160 characters) that plainly describe what the page offers and why someone should click — avoid vague marketing language like "welcome to our website".
- Include the main word or phrase someone would search for to find this page naturally, without stuffing it in repeatedly.
- Add it to your page's code inside the
<head>section as<meta name="description" content="your sentence here">— if you're using a website builder (Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Webflow), look for an "SEO" or "meta description" field in that specific page's settings instead of editing code directly. - Write a unique description for every important page — reusing the same one everywhere defeats the purpose, since it can no longer describe what makes each page different.
- Re-run your Launch Readiness check to confirm the description is now detected.