Meta Tags, In what order?

Hello,

Does it matter what order I put my meta tags in? I am currently using the following meta tags:

<meta name="keywords" content="">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="author" content="">
<meta name="copyright" content="">
<meta name="distribution" content="global">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="">

Thanks

 

The only 2 you need...

<meta name="keywords" content="">
<meta name="description" content="">

 

keyword tag first?

 

The order has no significance.

 

Thank you dcristo

 

The ordering doesn't really matter, but it is common to see the title near the top of the head section followed by the description then the keywords tag.

The rest can follow, but that is how MOST people do it for organization and since crawlers scan the source from top to bottom, usually.

 

Just wondering, is the keywords meta tag even needed anymore or used?

 

Needed? No

You do not NEED the keywords tag to rank well, or to have search engines find you and rank you under your keywords.

Used? Yes

People still use them for different reasons which may include; misspelled keywords, geographic location words, extra words that do not appear in the body, for minor search engines that may still recognize and give value to site with that tag.

 

Ah ok, I'll hack something together for my site then and see what kind of additional results I get for it.

 

msn and Yahoo still use keyword meta tag. You will have better ranking if you keyword is on your title, description, keywords and page copy.

 

I still use them in case various search engines decide to use them at one time or another.

Structurally, I think the keywords makes as much sense if not more than page content in my opinion.

Content is important. But as the writer of my text, I'd prefer that the search engines go to my keywords, because that would be like my announcement of exactly what I expect people to come there for - who I want, what's prepared for them.

If search engines included keywords more, I think it would start to reduce the volume of the text. Not in a bad way, but it could cause articles and information to be more concise and to the point instead of writers repetitively using words again and again.

 

well meta tags dont do any difference in serps , im right i suppose

 

I thought that the only "major" engine still using meta keywords was Inktomi? This may not be correct, but I have read that in a few places. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

I've also noticed that Google Adsense displays more relevant ads when the keyword tag is used. Just a tip for all you Adsense users!