The W3C docs imply that they should be in the head (http://www.w3.org/TR/html
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Will Meta Tags Work If Placed in Body of HTML Page Instead of Head?
I have a customer who recently asked me to perform some minor text changes to a site which someone else created. Once I got into the files, I started finding all kinds of weird things in the code. For example, all the meta tags, including the keywords meta tag, have been placed in the BODY of the page instead of in the HEAD section, which is where I was taught to put them.
I am trying to convince my customer that this needs to be changed -- that I need to move the meta tags into the HEAD section.
Unfortunately, the original creator of the site did not use a template approach, so I can't just make this change in a template which will then update the whole site. I have to go into each individual page on the site to make this change, which will be rather time-consuming.
Customer is reluctant to authorize this work. His attitude is, "The site looks fine and seems to be working, so why should I pay you to do this unnecessary work?If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
But I am wondering... is it "broke" or not? Will those meta tags actually work properly when placed in the BODY? Will search engine spiders be able to understand and use the keywords meta tag if it's in the BODY instead of the HEAD? Or will the spiders ignore the keywords meta tag because it is in the wrong place?
My customer does care about search engine rankings, so if I can state with confidence that the meta tags placed in the BODY are not working to help SE spiders index the site, then my customer will probably agree to pay me to relocate those meta tags into the HEAD section of each page. However, I don't know if that's true -- so I'm asking you folks at Experts Exchange to advise me about this.
Thanks for your help. I'm not at all sure what kind of points to assign -- this may be an easy answer for many experts, but it's perplexing to me, so I'm going to put "moderately difficult."
Teresa Ritter
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Answers
Part of the reason to have them in the head is so that they are (more or less) the first thing that is read by search engines. As you may already know though search engines are relying less on meta tags and more on content, but they still do play a role.
BTW: I'm a find and replace guy. If you are using something like Dreamweaver and all the meta tags you could find all files in a folder with <meta ...whatever.. > replace with a " " space, then go back again and replace all <head> tags with:
<head>
<meta ... >
<meta ... >
Just a thought
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by: SteggsPosted on 2006-09-28 at 08:45:44ID: 17620265
Greetings tgritter,
I dont know if it will work but as you say the correct page structure is to have meta tags in the <head> not in the <body>. I dont think pages validate at w3 if meta tags are in the <body>, which is a good reason to put them in the <head>. Also, some search engines may think you are trying to manipulate them and you might get penalized.
Regards