Does the location of the page title, meta description, and meta keywords in the head tag effect a pages rankings??? In my redesigned website the page title, meta description, and meta keywords are showing much farther down in the source code, below the css and a bunch of other javascript stuff... however, all 3 show before closing of the <head> tag. In my old website, every page had the page title, meta description, and meta keywords showing at the very top right below the <head> tag. I've been told by my programmer that this won't effect my rankings, but it's hard for me to believe this. Perhaps it is a myth, but I have heard that the farther down in the source code keywords exist the less impact they will have on rankings. I've spent 1 full year and thousands of dollars rebuilding. I have a PR6 website with 120,000 monthly uniques.. I do not want to lose rankings. I need some expert advice. Please tell me if the location of the page title, meta description, and meta keywords in the head tag effect a pages rankings. Thank You!
I would agree with your programmer. I don't think it matters. I think link building has a bigger effect on your rankings anyway. I think what you were thinking of is having the actual keywords in your content. I think it does help to have your keywords in the first paragraph of your content.
Can any other folks chime in with some advice on this? Is it really true that the page title and meta tags can be anywhere within the <head> section without the search engine rankings being effected?
Should not. If you are worried about it, have your programmer move the title and any meta tags up under the head tag. <head> <title></title> <meta name="description" content=""> <meta name="keywords" content=""> </head>
I have been doing this long enough that I can tell you, once upon a time, YES, the position of the <title> tag in the head definitely did affect your rankings. I do not know if that has changed. However, as a matter of procedure, I always format all of my title tags on the same line as the opening <head> tag, like this: <head><title>Title Goes Here</title> <meta name="something" content="something"> Besides pushing the title tag to the very top, this also helps me when I edit the page, because I can find the title tag very quickly.
Corwin, thank you. Do you have any idea where I can get more information about this? Should I read the entire Google algorithm? God, I hope not. Does anyone else with experience and wisdom about this? Does the location of the page title, meta description, and meta keywords in the head tag effect a pages rankings?
Its just simply not going to matter. Google won't stop reading your page before it gets to the Title tag.
Move your <title> tag to the top, the way I describe. I guarantee you that you won't lose rankings. Watch and see if you make any gains. <head><title>Title Goes Here</title> <meta name="description" content="something"> <meta name="keywords" content="something"> This is how I suggest you set it up, in this order. Why is this important? While all that's required is that these be between the <head></head> tags, Google is well known for giving some ranking benefits to EFFICIENT HTML. I will go through my websites and ruthlessly remove any characters that I can do without. Google likes this. After the spider grabs the page, it will parse what is in between the <head></head> tags and recover important data it needs to index the page. This obviously includes the <title> tag, which is the most important tag Google looks for in the header. Now, searching and parsing operations are not instantaneous - it takes fractions of seconds, but when a spider is indexing billions of internet pages, efficiency is key and small fractions of seconds become important. If the title tag is at the top of the header, the spider can parse it in a small fraction of a second faster than if it is lower. Google times this, and likes it when it can spider, and then parse, a website faster, and in my experience will reward that with a small ranking credit that can and will break a ranking tie with a competing website.
Yeah, thanks everyone. It's been helpful. Although many have told me it does not matter where in the <head> a page title and meta data is positioned, I think it's better to be safe than sorry. Also, I think Corwin made a good argument for putting the page title and meta data near the top of the head. Any other opinions?
Is there any logical reason to put the title and meta data anywhere but first? No matter what position your data is in, users will see the same site and so will the bots. As long as it's there, you're good to go.