HTML meta data, style links and jave script tags

[robgrigg]

Hi,

It is importaint that I can control the order of the meta data tags, sytle links and my own java script includes.

From an SEO perspective it is better if the meta tags come first.
Css forms on order in its overridding of style and therefore the order the includes for the sheets is imperative.
Some Java script files require other to have ben loaded so they can reference the previous code.
Loading style before java script has been shown to have significant rendering benifits and improves the responsiveness of the page, etc.

I need to do this for all pages, noit just catagory or produst pages.

I have looked at the master pages and noticed that many of these includes are not in the pages. Thay are making their way to the final HTML so must be being inserted in code?
Can anyone help by letting me know where these tags are inseted in the code and any other advice on how to manage this crucial aspec of my web pages.

Thanks for all your continued support.

Rob.

[mazhar]

Please read the following thread, hopefully it will help you
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9073

[robgrigg]

Thanks but this post does not really address my problem it only talks about breaks and not order.

For reference, I have removed the css files from the theme dir and edited the .master pages to add them in the order they need to be added.

Rob.

[draneb]

Hi RobGrigg,

I have always been very concerned about AC7 and SEO with my site. Would you be able to post the changes you made?

Thank you very much.

[kwikstand]

I too am concerned. When I upgraded to AC7, I though it was supposed to be much more SEO friendly. Now I a finding out that it automatically generates title tags, even though I specified them in the HTML HEAD section of category and product pages. Now my pages have multiple title tags.

I am in no way an expert on SEO, but I find that the Title is just about the most important page element of SEO. I was able to modify the /CategoryGrid4 to not include a title, but it still has <title></title> tags with nothing in between.

I don't understand why Able would force titles. There should be a check box if you want Able to auto-generate title tags and META tags.

[jmestep]

In .net, the title tag is not a part of the html head, so if you put the title in there, you will have duplicate tags.

[robgrigg]

To be clear, this is not entirly an AC issue.

The problem with the order of the .css entires is actually an asp.net issue and reletes to the use of themes. There are work arounds and this a a great article to explain how to apply some of them. http://www.dentaku.com/2007/01/take-con ... hemes.aspx

The SEO stuff in AC IMHO is ok but not as sophisticated as some of the other platforms. I also took a long look at znode, and this platform has great SEO, however it lacks significantly with is variant, kitting, bundles and crusially for me admin in comparison.

There is a post of this site about spacing (above) and another one about moving the meta data tagging into the top of the header. These are both easy to implement and will make a big difference.

When we talk about the proper use of symantic HTML and CSS, especially in regard to accessability (which is a big concern for my day time customers (by day I am a principle architect for a large eBusiness consultancy in the UK)) then I do think the playform has some progress to make. But to be fair again, you can pay 5 times as much for znode and still get not particularly clean html and tables galore.

With css the order you load the css files make a big difference. It is an element of the cascade. The best practice for handling multiple browsers is load specific css files (in my case my default is ie8, mozilla, etc and specific are ie6 and ie7) after the base ones. This will then overide with anyspecific styling.

For me, if i could choose the direction for able, it would be to drop theames, because I don't think many of us want to change that often, and instead concentrate on css and clear clean accessable HTML. They will of course need some help from Microsoft with the quality of html comin out of their control, but this is on its way.

Rob.

[kwikstand]

Do these issues affect SEO?

Does spacing and order of tags really matter to search engines? How about multiple title tags?

[robgrigg]

Order is an important factor.

You want the meta tags at the top of the page before css and java script entries. You should also do this for page rendering speeds.

Symantic Html does has an impact too. the description field and the proper use of H1, P, etc. Chucking everything in a table is not a great idea.

R.