What are meta descriptions? What is the meta description tag?

Though meta description tags are not a major factor search engines consider when ranking sites, they should not be left off the page. Both the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking, and the meta description tag influences the liklihood that a person will actually click on the search engine results page and visit your site. The meta description tag is intented to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content.
 
The meta description is a ~160 character snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a page's content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched for phrase is contained in the description. Optimizing the meta description is a very important aspect of on-page SEO.
 
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