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There is a basic, but interesting thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Does Title Tag Need To Come First? The question is more detail is, does the title tag within the HTML code of a page, need to come at the very top or can other code be above it, without it affecting search engine rankings?
There is a core rule in SEO that your keyword specific content for the page, should be as high up in the source code as possible. Meaning, your introduction content and your header tags, should be as high up within the source code as possible. There is also the belief that these keywords are important to have in the visible content as high as possible, not just for search engines but also for your readers.
But does that apply to the title tag and meta data for the pages? Good question.
Danny Sullivan and David Wallace both say it should not matter. But for standardization purposes and having clean code, it might be best to place the title tag at the top. But in terms of ranking, they both say, in the past it has not mattered and it probably doesn't matter today.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
Comments:
Change is Near..
04/26/2006 01:21 pm
Simply - Yes.
Sparks Flying
04/26/2006 02:42 pm
Very unusual.. My site isnt listed in Google index yet... But when I search for blogs it finds it.. And very strangely , when I click on "Search Web" and enter sparksflying - It finds my site.. but same search in www.google.com doesnt... Oh well... :-)
Michael Martinez
04/26/2006 04:12 pm
These kind of glib remarks are very damaging to the SEO community's understanding of ranking factors. There is no one killer element. There is no one must-have element when it comes to ranking. Title tags help, just like bolding text helps, just like H1 tags help, just like link anchor text helps, just like reusing the same words a few times helps, etc. It's absolutely ridiculous for anyone to say something like "title tags don't matter". That's just naive, and these guys should know better.
Barry Schwartz
04/26/2006 04:22 pm
Who said "title tags don't matter" - that is just nuts. Title tags do matter. Did you read the entry?
Richard
06/03/2011 10:20 am
I think they are talking about the positioning of the title tag in the html code, as opposed to whether it should "matter or not" completely... The readers below, although 5 years old now, have missed the point of this argument altogether. Oops! lol