What are Meta tags?

Meta tags are HTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page. Such elements are placed as tags in the head section of an HTML document.

Purpose of Meta tags:

The two most common uses of meta tags on the Web are to provide a description and to provide meta keywords for a web page. This data may then be used by search engines (such as Google) to generate and display their  search results matching a given query.

Your websites can get top position in search engines by using correct keywords and description by using meta tags.

Different types of Meta tags:

Description Meta Tag

Description Meta tags gives a general description of what is contained in your webpage.

Search engines that support Meta tags will often display the Description Meta tag along with your title in their results.

Keywords Meta Tag

The Keywords Tag is a group of keywords that represents the content of your site. You should choose keywords that are relevant to your site and avoid excessive repetition as many search engines will penalize your rankings for attempting to abuse their system.

Robots Meta Tag

The Robots Tag declares to search engines what content to index.The information specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt. Most search engines look for this Meta tag and will only index and/or spider the pages you want to be indexed.

Revisit Meta Tag

The Revisit Tag defines how many days the search engine should revisit your webpage. This tag can also be beneficial in boosting your rankings if search engines display results based on the most recent submissions.

Abstract Meta Tag

The Abstract Tag defines a brief abstraction of your website. Although search engines do not as often use this tag, it is a useful complement to search engines that read the first few lines of text of your web pages. It is a brief summary of the description Meta tag.

Author Meta Tag

The Author Tag declares who is the author of the document. The most common format is to insert the name of the person or organization and a contact email address.

Copyright Meta Tag

The Copyright Tag defines any copyright information which you wish to disclose about your webpage documents. 

Distribution Meta Tag

The Distribution Tag defines the level of distribution of the present document for examples you can use Global (indicates that your webpage is intended for mass distribution to everyone), Local (intended for local distribution of your document), and IU - Internal Use (not intended for public distribution).

Language Meta Tag

References: Wikipedia –The Free Encyclopedia and Internet.