What Is a Description? An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Its Meaning, Reading, and Usage

Are you wondering, "What exactly is a description?" or "I hear it a lot in SEO, but I don't know how it's read or what it means"? A description is explanatory text that summarizes the content of a web page and conveys it to users and search engines, and it is an important element related to the click-through rate in search results. This article explains the reading and meaning of "description," how it is used in SEO, effective ways to write it, and guidelines for character count, in a way that is easy for beginners to understand.

What Is a Description? Reading and Meaning

"Description" is written as "description," and in Japanese it is read as "disukuripushon." The English word description has meanings such as "explanation," "statement," and "depiction," and refers to text in general that explains something in words.

However, when people simply say "description" in the context of web marketing or SEO, they almost always mean "meta description." This is one of the HTML meta tags that describes the overview or summary of a web page, and it is the text that becomes a candidate for the explanatory text (snippet) displayed below the page title in search results.

The Role of the Meta Description

The meta description has two broad roles.

• Conveying the page content to search engines: It serves as a clue that summarizes "what kind of content this page has" for crawlers.
• Conveying the appeal of the page to users: It is displayed below the title in search results and becomes material for deciding whether to click.

The second role in particular is important. Even if you are displayed at the top of the search results, if the appeal of the explanatory text is weak, users will not click. By accurately conveying the content of the page and the benefits to be gained, you can expect an improvement in the click-through rate (CTR).

The Relationship Between Descriptions and SEO

Some people think that "writing a description will raise your search ranking," but the meta description itself has no direct SEO effect (impact on ranking). Google also officially explains that the meta description does not affect search result rankings.

On the other hand, an indirect SEO effect can be expected. If an appealing explanatory text raises the click-through rate, more users will visit the page, and as a result it may lead to higher site evaluation and increased inflow. It is practical to regard it not as an element that directly raises rankings, but as an element that encourages clicks.

A Description Is Not Always Displayed

What you need to be careful about is that the meta description you set is not always displayed in the search results as is. Google may automatically generate snippets based on the relevance to the page body and the user's search terms. Depending on the search keyword, the explanatory text displayed may change each time.

In other words, the meta description is merely an element that "proposes the content of the snippet to Google." That said, setting it appropriately makes it more likely that your intended explanatory text will be displayed, so it is recommended to set it for each page.

Guidelines for Description Character Count

There is no limit on the number of characters you can write in a meta description itself. However, because the snippet in search results is displayed adjusted to a readable length according to the device and situation, if it is too long it will be cut off partway through.

The general guideline for the number of characters displayed is about 70 to 90 full-width characters on smartphones and about 90 to 120 full-width characters on PCs. Taking these into account, it is preferable to place important information in the first half and keep it within 120 full-width characters.

How to Write an Effective Description

To write a description that is easy to get clicked, keep the following points in mind.

1. Summarize the page content accurately: By making the explanation match the actual content, you prevent a gap with the user's expectations.
2. Naturally include your target keywords: Words that match the search terms may be displayed in bold, making them easier to catch the eye.
3. Convey the benefit to the user: Show what they will learn from reading this page and what problems it will solve.
4. Place important information in the first half: Because the latter half may be omitted, bring what you want to convey to the beginning.
5. Make the explanation unique to each page: Do not reuse the same explanatory text across all pages; create it to match the content of each page.

How to Set Up a Description

The meta description is written as a meta tag inside the head of the HTML. The basic form is to specify "description" in the name attribute and write the explanatory text you want to display in the content attribute.

If you are using a CMS such as WordPress, it is common to be able to set each page's description from an SEO-related plugin or the post editing screen without touching the HTML directly. To avoid having the same text across all pages, it is important to set an individual explanation for each page.

Summary

A description means "description (explanation/statement)," and in the context of SEO it mainly refers to the meta description. As an overview text displayed below the title in search results, it is an element that conveys the appeal of the page to users and contributes to improving the click-through rate. Although it has no direct ranking effect, an indirect SEO effect can be expected. Keeping the guideline for displayed character count (within 120 full-width characters) in mind, set a description unique to each page that accurately summarizes the page content while incorporating keywords and benefits.