Yes, meta description does matter. Meta description becomes part of the SERP snippet right under your title and url. Although, meta descriptions are not taken into consideration by search engines when ranking, they play a significant role in CTR because they offer a short description of the following content and any words that match the searchers keyword will be bolded in the description.

Why is the meta description important?

A meta description is your last chance to grab that click. By investing a small amount of time into writing compelling descriptions, you can increase your CTR which may tell google to rank you higher than your competition.

If you do not write your own meta description, google will do it for you. If you have thousands of products and you are told to make a meta description for each one, do not copy paste – it is actually best to leave it to google. But if you have the time and resources, it is always recommended to write your own unique meta description. 

10 rules of writing a perfect meta description

Follow these rules to begin writing perfect meta descriptions.

1. It should include your target keywords
2. Make it unique
3. Include call-to-action
4. Provide and solution or benefit
5. Keep it under 155 characters
6. It should match the content
7. Keep it relevant
8. Increase credibility by adding trusted names
9. Check your competition
10. For a product - Include specs
11. Don’t include double quotation marks 
    

Examples of great meta descriptions

Here are some great examples of meta descriptions that you may find useful: