Meta Tags: What are they and why do I care?Meta tags are used by search engines to see if they want to list your site as a result. This isn't the sole instrument used by search spiders, but it is a major one. So read on... The meta tag has a variety of uses. The meta tag is used primarily to instruct search engine "spiders" on what to do with your page when they spider over them. It also is the tag used to cause a page to "refresh", or automatically reload and open up a new URL. Here are the elements used in a meta tag:
Keywords
<meta name="keywords" content="baseball, hockey"> The keyword element states that the page concerns hockey and baseball, and if someone does a search for those 2 words, that your page should come up as a search result. You can list as many keywords as you please. Keep in mind, though, that repeating keywords will likely have your page removed from a search engine's listings. In addition to that, if you are trying to get visitors without actually earning them, then they won't stick around and will likely never return.
Expiration Date
<meta name="expires" content="6 December 2001"> Tells search engines when your page should be deleted from it's directory. You should keep the date in the same format as I list it above [day month year]. This is only necessary if you are a responsible webmaster and don't wish to clog search results with old information.
Page Description
<meta name="description" content="A page about sports"> Tells search engines the description of your page. This can be as long as you wish, but it is doubtful that a search engine will list the entire description. It's wise to use some keywords in the description, as search engines also rely on this data to rank pages. As always, though, don't go overboard.
Author
<meta name="author" content="Your name here"> Tells them who made the page.
Revisit-after
<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days"> Tells the search engine to visit your site again in 30 days. This is good if your sites description, keywords, or material changes often.
Distribution
<meta name="distribution" content="Global"> Tells the search engine that your site is meant for everyone, and that it can be distributed globally. You can also specify "local" and "IU". IU means Internal Use, which means that it's basically not meant for the public.
No-cache
This next one tells the spider to not use a cached version of your website, and instead to use the most up-to-date version by downloading the site directly. A cached copy is a virtual snapshot of your web page that is used so that it's already on the engine's server, therefore letting user's download the page faster. The disadvantage is when your page contains info that is updated often and possible has time-sensitive data, like news or recent announcements. So, if you have that kind of time sensitive data, use the "no-cache" option. <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">
Robot Tags
There are some other META tags, also. Check out these "robot" tags that tell search engines whether or no to index the page, and whether or not to index pages that are linked to. There are many combinations of the robot tag. *Not all search engines can handle the robot tags as of now, but I'm sure they all will soon. It can't hurt to use them. <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
And you can put all these together by just lining them up like so: <meta name="keywords" content="baseball, hockey">
<meta name="expires" content="6 December 2001">
<meta name="description" content="A page about sports">
<meta name="author" content="Your name here"> etc., etc. | 
