Placement of Meta-tags in Page Source

  • A potential link exchange partner contacted me today to say he’d like to exchange links but my Meta-tags aren’t right. He did not see them in the page source code in the following order: Title, Description, Keywords. In my page code the order is Title, Meta http-equiv=”Content type”; Meta name=”generator” and then a whole bunch of link codes. Meta-tags for description and keywords come in about 40 lines of code down the page. This fellow says that’s not right and it will prevent me from ever being popular on the internet because search engines won’t read it there.

    OK, I used All-in-one SEO before and shifted to Add-Meta-Tags just today and they both put the code in the same spot. I would think that a decent search engine could find it there, and I read the info at https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Meta_Tags_in_WordPress that says Google doesn’t use that system any more, and I recall reading such things a long time ago. Should I even be concerned with meta tag location in the page source? I’m willing to bet there’s some other reason I’m not rich and famous.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • https://yoast.com/meta-keywords/
    I trust this guy!

    Thread Starter jimmyth

    (@jimmyth)

    Yeah, I know that pitch, but I would like some opinion on whether it matters AT ALL if the code is located under the title or just anywhere before the body. I don’t really think it does and apparently the creators of WordPress plugins agree.

    My personal approach, since Google keeps f—ing with things, is just to write good stuff and let people find me. If there’s anything obviously wrong in terms of code on my site, I’d like to know and be able to fix it. I do ad layouts the way I want, I say what I want, and screw people who don’t like that.

    It doesn’t matter in the slightest as far as I am aware.

    Thread Starter jimmyth

    (@jimmyth)

    God bless you! That’s what I thought, if a computer is looking for meta something it doesn’t care if it’s in the first line or the billionth line, time is nothing to a computer.

    I already told the guy, hey, thanks for the input, but I ain’t changing nothing. I deleted his response to just avoid unnecessary arguments.

    Should I even be concerned with meta tag location in the page source?

    Apologies, I was keying in on this particular part of the question, so didn’t fully answer you with my post!

    Thread Starter jimmyth

    (@jimmyth)

    No problem, not upset and I do understand where you are coming from on this point. I agree. This fellow just confronted me with an ultimatum, fix my page code or he won’t trade links with me because I’m doomed, DOOMED I TELLS YE! because my meta-tags aren’t in the right location in the HTML code. I just really don’t think that makes any sense, was wondering if somebody could clearly explain why I’m wrong to think that.

    I’ve never really thought about it. Meta tags are simply there to provide information about your website. Unlike link and script tags, which occasionally DO have to be in order, meta tag order shouldn’t matter at all as long as the right ones are filled with the proper content.

    Thread Starter jimmyth

    (@jimmyth)

    I wondered at first whether the plugin I used conflicted with my theme in some way, but when I tried a different SEO plugin it put the code in the same place. I thought it was unlikely that two highly rated professionals would make exactly the same mistake. The plug-ins are handy, I’ve gone back to All-in-one SEO. I suppose I could tinker with page code just to get the link exchange from this fellow but it’s not going to benefit me, will just make problems with every WordPress update. So I’m good with things the way they are. Screw the search engines! just let them try to find me, the good stuff is always buried deep.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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