• Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Robots

There are two types of META tags: HTTP-EQUIV and NAME

HTTP-EQUIV

• Expires

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  This tells the browser when the document will expire. Can be given as a date in RFC850 format or as a number of days (+25)
  Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 23 Apr 2003 12:25:01 GMT">
  Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="+25">
  

• Pragma

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  Tell the browser not to cache a page locally. Should work in Netscape Navigator but some sites reports that IE ignore this MetaTag. There is only one valid value: "no-cache".
  Example <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
  

• Refresh

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  Specifies the time in seconds before the Web browser reloads the document automatically. It can also specify a different URL for the browser to load - redirect your site.
  Example <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0.01;URL=http://www.drdirect-url.com">
  Be aware that if you save this - your site will be redirected as first time you save the MetaTags!!
  Also be aware that using refresh can disturb web-crawlers and search engins visiting your site, with negative effect on your rating as a consequense.
  

• Set-Cookie

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  This is one way to set a cookie in the user’s Web browser. If you set the expiration date, the cookie will be considered permanent saved to disk (until it expires), if not date is set it will only be considered valid for the current session and will be erased when closing the browser.
  Not all allow their browser to set cookies, sodo not relay on its use.
  Example <META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie" CONTENT="cookievalue=your value here;expires=Wed, 23 Apr 2003 12:25:01 GMT; path=/">
  

• Window-target

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  Specifies the "named window" of the current page, and can be used to prevent a page from appearing inside another framed page. This means that the Web browser will try to force the page to go the top frameset.
  Only one valid value: "_top"
  Example <META HTTP-EQUIV="Window-target" CONTENT="_top">
  

• PICS-Label

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  PICS-Label (PICS stands for Platform for Internet Content Selection). World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed this standard for labeling online content for more information go to www.w3.org/PICS/ ). The W3C’s standard left the actual creation of labels to the "labeling services." Anything which has a URL can be labeled, and labels can be assigned in two ways. First, a third party labeling service may rate the site, and the labels are stored at the actual labeling bureau which resides on the Web server of the labeling service. The second method involves the developer or Web site host contacting a rating service, filling out the proper forms, and using the HTML META tag information that the service provides on their pages. One such free service is the PICS-Label generator that Vancouver-Webpages provides. It is based on the Vancouver Webpages Canadian PICS ratings, version 1.0, and can be used as a guideline for creating your own PICS-Label META tag.
  Even PICS-Label was designed as a ratings label, it is also used for code signing, privacy, and intellectual property rights management. A PICS-Label for an entire site can look like this:
  
  Example <META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1 "http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWP1.0/" l gen true comment "VWP1.0" by "webmaster@visayas.dk" on "2003.04.19T14:07-0700" for "http://visayas.dk" r (P 0 S 0 V 0 Com 0 Tol 0 Env 0 SF 0 Edu 0 Can 0 MC -3 Gam -1 ))'>

NAME

• DESCRIPTION

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  Widely used by the search engins. Often shown when a site is found in a search: so this is the way your site get presented!. use some time to get a neat and good description of what the site is about. Do not will it with keywords - it keeo people away from clicking at the site. Make sure to use words that also can be found in KEYWORDS and on the first page of the site. Due to spam many search engins tries to verify if the DESCRIPTION is likely to be about the site by comparing the words - no similarities means spam - lower ration or even black listed.
  Example <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Visayas - the heart of Philippines. Interactive information site about Visayas .....">

• KEYWORDS

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  Keywords are used to give extra information to search engins. Use important and descriptive words from the site. Add words in common mis-spellings - like 'philipines'. Do not repeat words to improve ratings - the trick do not work, actually it makes it worse!
  Example <META NAME="description" CONTENT="This page is about the meaning of life, the universe, mankind and plants.">
  

• ROBOTS

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  This controles how Robots (spiders, webcrawlers, search engines) index a web site. Also seek information about the robot.txt file that is used to stop indexing of certain foldes and files. For more information visit Robots.txt
  There are these valid values: all, none, index,noindex,follow,nofollow. When using 2 they are seperated by a comma.
  
  INDEX means its ok for a robot the page.
  NOINDEX means its NOT ok for a robot the page.
  FOLLOW means its ok for a robot to follow the links found on this page.
  NOFOLLOW means its NOT ok for a robot to follow the links found on this page.
  ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW
  NONE=NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW.
  Default is ALL
  Example <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">

Many Other MetaTags

Links