BUG: Meta descriptions don't display on most pages

[AnitaYCheng]

Expected behavior

There should be content in <meta name="description" content="HOPEFULLY STUFF GOOGLE WILL USE">

Actual behavior

Many pages on 18f.gsa.gov have nonexistent meta descriptions. Example: the homepage:

One page has a nonsensical description:

Observations

The meta.html template only calls description and not many pages actually have a description value in their front matter.

Pages in the main nav have lead which is the subheading. Older blog posts have both excerpt and description which are often duplicative. More recent blog posts have excerpts in front matter, used in blog collections. The excerpt is not visible in the blog post itself.

Suggested fixes

• Meta descriptions set for pages in the main nav (I can ask the content team about this)
• Consolidate functions of excerpt and description and maybe lead for pages in the main nav

[AnitaYCheng]

General consensus in the 18F content team is that meta descriptions on the 18F site are a nice-to-have, but not prioritized.

Google (and other search engines) seems to use different things to populate search result descriptions, not always using the meta description content provided on the page.

Although, consolidating the functions of excerpt and description would help reduce confusion when people are creating new blog posts.

[michelle-rago]

I think we should prioritize this work. Meta descriptions are important for SEO and they're a standard for federal websites https://standards.digital.gov/standards/meta-page-description/. cc @amandacostello