4 replies to this topic

[compar]

I remember reading an article several years ago on the WordTracker site -- the article is no longer available, I just checked -- in which the author said that he put the meta description tag before the title tag in his code.

I believe he said this had happened by accident originally, but that the page involved had prospered better with the search engines than normal. So he claimed at the time -- pre Google -- that he was doing this by design.

His possible explanation for the efficacy of this method was that the meta description may be more keyword rich than the title tag and as such by being the first thing the spiders or bots encounter on the page it would enhance the value assigned to the keywords.

We tried it for a while and didn't really see any difference, although we certainly didn't think it hurt us. But we have generally stopped doing it now. Has anybody else ever seen this suggestion? Or had any experience using this method?

[Scottie]

By accident, when I first started out, my title was listed last in the head section. I can't say that it made any difference. These days, I would be surprised if that had any effect at all.

[fred]

I always put the non visible tags first , but that's only for coding purposes and I'm getting good rankings anyway. This way I get rid of the non visible text , then can work on the real pages content.

So I don't think that the order has anything to do with your results

Fred
Coming Soon - Nousolutions

[Matt B]

Maybe a few years ago this method may have had some viability, but, like Scottie said, I can't see it being effective presently. Especially when people are even debating the merits of the meta-description tag.

[Jill]

It made no difference 7 years ago, 5 years ago, 3 years ago, or now.

The order of the tags is irrelevant and always has been.

Jill