Does it matter if the meta description and meta keywords come before the title tag in the

[Vacatia_SEO]

The way our site was built, engineers put the title tag blow the meta desc. and meta keywords. I asked to have it changed based on the best practice of putting the most important content first, but apparently doing this will cause a major ripple effect in the way the site was engineered. Will we lose out on full SEO benefit with this structure? Should I stand down?

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[FCBM]

Title should go first as that's one of the most important factors for SEO and sticking to best practices is encouraged.

Also using meta keywords is so 1999 that not a single person I know recommends the practice.

[Vacatia_SEO]

Do you have proof that "title" before "description" equates to better rankings? I have not found a definitive answer one way or the other.

Also, I agree about keywords. Good news is that it is dynamically generated and programmatically included with no effort.

[FCBM]

I don't have proof that what I said was scientifically proven as I haven't tested it, nor do I want to test it on a live site. Looking at all the best practices docs online you'll repeatedly see that title is recommended above the description. As for keyword tag http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/

[KeriMorgret]

I can't find anything from Google that talks about order of importance in this case. They list the tags that they understand at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en and just say to have them in the head section.

[Vacatia_SEO]

Regarding testing, I read one article where the guy did an extensive test and saw results increased when the title was above the description, but I couldn't really validate who this person was or what kind of test he did. He just said, "I did a test and results were better." (Not very scientific)

And yes keywords don't help according to President Cutts. That has been known for quite some time now. But no one has come out and said they hurt either. And believe it or not, there are other search engines out there besides Google. Quite a few, actually. Our meta keyword tags draw on the title tag keywords only. We do not stuff.

[Vacatia_SEO]

In fact, the example they use on that link has description above title.

[KeriMorgret]

And with Google testing out things on a daily basis, it's hard to determine with just one test if it was you or them.

[KeriMorgret]

Actually, Bing has said that a bad meta keywords (spammy) can be a negative signal to them.

http://searchengineland.com/the-meta-keywords-tag-lives-at-bing-why-only-spammers-should-use-it-96874