Tell me more ×
Webmasters Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for pro webmasters. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 9 down vote favorite

A SEO company suggested we change the order of our HTML meta tags so that <title> and <meta name="description"> are the first two. They say this is to ensure search engines can utilize these two tags. I've been under the impression that the order of tags inside the document's head is not significant. Have I been wrong? Are there really search engines that assume that the first two tags are always title and description and give up looking for them if they aren't?

share|improve this question
2  
Maybe this should be asked on webmasters.stackexchange.com – Alin Purcaru Apr 4 '11 at 13:51
1  
This sounds like a SEO urban myth. – Pekka 웃 Apr 4 '11 at 13:57
The only meta tag that required a specific order to work is the one for forcing the Internet Explorer compatibility level. – Agent_9191 Apr 4 '11 at 23:10
AFAIK, the only meta tag that should be at the start is the one defining the character encoding. – Javier Badia Apr 5 '11 at 1:35

migrated from stackoverflow.com Apr 4 '11 at 13:56

1 Answer

up vote 10 down vote accepted

You are correct. The order of those tags do not matter for SEO. They just need to be present. Whomever said that is obviously clueless (and of course running an SEO business. Sigh).

share|improve this answer
Can you provide a source or case study? – s_hewitt Apr 4 '11 at 15:41
2  
Just opinion based on experience. Here's a SearchEngineWatch discussion on the topic - order doesn't matter: forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=16452 – Ciaran Apr 4 '11 at 18:53

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.