A: Is it important what tags you put at the very top of your HTML code?

Hi Ros

Your HTML should follow W3C guidelines and include your doctype, open HTML tag and header tags first. What you are doing is fine, provided you are in fact using HTML 4.0 to code your site.

The other tags you list look like they were taken from a document that uses Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) and they are referencing the specific version of XHTML they are using as well as linking to a specific DTD template example provided by W3C org here. This is most likely for the benefit of internal programmers to ensure consistency and code validation in the event of changes.

In terms of search engine compatibility, it's best to keep your header as close to the top of the code as possible and move as much code as you can into style sheets so that you don't suffer from code bloat and end up pushing important content to the bottom of the code. Search engine robots are thought to only index a limited amount of code on each page and you want your most important, keyword-rich code to be indexed first. Even more important is a search engine's ability to index your code. Make sure it validates to W3C standards so robots don't get tripped up while indexing.