Meta Title and Description Placement in Wordpress

[hfranz]

I noticed in wordpress code that the <title>and <description> are not at the top of the code and rather located a ways down the code and not displayed how previous sites used to be.</p> <p>Does this still matter for SEO.</p> <p>I thought it should have been,</p> <div id="syn_row5" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span><span class="HTML_TAG"></<span class="HTML_ELM">title</span>></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_ROW"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Description"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> <div id="syn_row6" class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><<span class="HTML_ELM">meta</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">name</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">"Keywords"</span> <span class="HTML_ATR">content</span>=<span class="HTML_VAL">""</span> /> (if still needed ?)</span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"> </span></span></span></span></div> <div class="SYN_TXT"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG"><span class="HTML_TXT"><span class="HTML_TAG">Is there a way to do this in Wordpress? Or does placment not matter anymore?</span></span></span></span></span></span></div> </span></span></div> </div></title>

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I think that it is preferable for many to follow this same placement of them, but I have many sites and pages with the same structure and have never had any problem

Regards,

Andy

[RyanKent]

The location of these tags within the tag makes absolutely no difference at all.

It is computer code which is compiled and extracted regardless of it's location within the tag.

[Pooks]

The placement of these tags within the head doesn't matter - Google and the other search engines will find them - but Wordpress sometimes seems to put a lot in the headers which isn't great and less code is always preferable for SEO.  There is a good article on meta tags here by Kate Morris: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-wonderful-world-of-seo-metatags where she says: _"Think about it like this, your page code is like a set of step by step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser, extraneous meta tags are the annoying 200 feet line items in directions that tell you to stay on the same road you were on!". _ So strip out anything not needed if you can and just have the core tags that you need.

She also answers your question regarding keywords - that is, they're not necessary and there's no point spending time optimising them.  If anything, they're a negative because they tell your competitors what keywords you're targetting!

Hope that helps,

Jen