Underneath all the snap shots, textual content, and calls to motion for your website lies your website supply code.
Google and different search engines “examine” this code to decide where your webpages must seem of their indexes for a given search query.
This is a brief manual to expose you a way to study your own website supply code with a view to make sure it is search engine optimization-pleasant.
I also will go over a few other conditions wherein knowing the way to view and examine the right elements of source code can help with different advertising efforts.
How to View Source Code
The first step in checking your internet site’s supply code is to view the actual code. Every web browser allows you to do that easily. Below are the keyboard commands for viewing your webpage supply code for both PC and Mac.
PC
Firefox: CTRL + U (Meaning press the CTRL key on your keyboard and keep it down. While protecting down the CTRL key, press the “u” key.) Alternatively, you can go to the “Firefox” menu after which click on on “Web Developer,” and then “Page Source.”
Edge/Internet Explorer: CTRL + U. Or right click on and select “View Source.”
Chrome: CTRL + U. Or you may click on on the weird-searching key with three horizontal traces in the upper right hand nook. Then click on “Tools” and pick “View Source.”
Opera: CTRL + U. You also can right click on the web site and select “View Page Source.”
Mac
Safari: The keyboard shortcut is Option+Command+U. You also can right-click on on the webpage and select “Show Page Source.”
Firefox: You can proper-click and pick out “Page Source” or you could navigate to your “Tools” menu, choose “Web Developer,” and click on “Page Source.” The keyboard shortcut is Command + U.
Chrome: Navigate to “View,” click on “Developer,” after which “View Source.” You can also right-click on and pick “View Page Source.” The keyboard shortcut is Option+Command+U.
Once you understand the way to view the supply code, you want to recognize a way to look for things in it. Usually, the identical seek functions you use for ordinary net surfing practice to looking for your source code. Commands like CTRL + F (for Find) will help you quick scan your supply code for crucial SEO elements.
Source Code Title Tags
The identify tag is the holy grail of on-page search engine marketing. It’s the most important aspect to your source code. If you’re going to take one aspect far from this article, be aware of this:
You recognise those effects Google gives when you’re looking for some thing?
All of those outcomes come from the identify tags of the webpages they’re pointing to. If you don’t have name tags to your supply code, you could’t show up in Google (or in some other search engine, for that remember). Believe it or not, I’ve surely seen websites without name tags!
Now, permit’s do a brief Google search for the time period “Marketing Guides”:
You can see that the primary end result is for the KISSmetrics weblog section on advertising publications. If we click on that first end result and examine the page supply code, we are able to see the title tag:
The identify tag is particular by using the opening tag: <title>. It ends with the ultimate tag: </title>. The identify tag is generally close to the top of your supply code in the <head> phase.
You can see that the content material inside the identify tag suits what is used within the headline of that first Google result.
Not simplest are identify tags required with a purpose to be included in Google seek effects, but Google identifies the critical keywords for your name that they assume are relevant to customers’ searches.
If you need a certain website to rank for a selected difficulty be counted, you’d higher ensure words that describe the issue matter are in the identify tag. To learn more about how keywords and name tags are important to your usual web page structure, test out this put up.
There’s one last thing to don’t forget: each webpage for your website have to have a completely unique title tag. Never reproduction this content material.
If you have got a small internet site, consisting of 10 or 20 pages, it’s smooth enough to study each name tag for area of expertise. However, when you have a bigger internet site, you’ll want some help. This is a easy 4-step technique:
Step #1: Open Ubersuggest, enter your URL, and click on seek.
Step #2: Click “Site Audit” inside the left sidebar.
Step #three: Review Top search engine optimization Issues.
After touchdown at the website online audit overview, scroll all the way down to the fourth section of consequences (it’s the last one at the page) to check Top search engine optimization Issues.
This is where you’ll find when you have reproduction name tags or meta descriptions. If not anything is displaying right here, you’re inside the clear. If you see duplicates, along with the 30 pages for my website, dig deeper.
Step #4: Click on “Pages with Duplicate <title> Tags”
You can also find a foremost difficulty, which include numerous of your weblog posts sharing the equal identify tag. You may additionally find that it’s no huge deal, along with the 26 pages in my file with the identify “Blog Neil Patel’s Digital Marketing Blog.”
Upon clicking on the 26 pages spark off, you see:
While the title is the same on 26 pages, it’s not anything greater than the pages of my weblog that residence the content material. It’s no longer the actual blog posts or primary pages of my website.
Meta Descriptions in Source Code
Another vital part of your website’s head section is the meta description tag. This 160-man or woman snippet is a loose advertising and marketing copy that gets displayed under your name content material within the search engines like google and yahoo.
I’ve seen masses of web sites that absolutely forget about this tag. It’s very clean to locate in your supply code:
Check to make certain it’s on all your webpages. More importantly, test to make certain you’re no longer duplicating it across multiple pages. Duplicating a meta description tag is not a seek engine penalty, however it’s a totally massive advertising mistake.
A lot of human beings gloss over the meta description, but you certainly ought to positioned some idea into it due to the fact it is examine with the aid of seek engine customers. Think approximately what copy could assist pull in extra visitors and growth click on-throughs.
H1 Headings in Source Code
H1 headings bring a bit on-web page search engine marketing weight, so it’s an amazing idea to test your pages to make certain you’re the usage of them properly. For each web page in your website, look over the supply code to peer in case you spot this tag:
h1 heading source code
You don’t need multiple set of H1 tags appearing on any given website. In different phrases, don’t try to purposely increase your SEO through together with a couple of H1s. If you over-optimize your web page, it’ll harm you in the long run.
Use your H1s for what they’re meant for: the most important heading at the page. On your property page, this is probably your value proposition.
Nofollows in Source Code
If you have interaction in hyperlink constructing, then checking your inbound links to peer if they may be nofollowed is a need to.
But earlier than I pass similarly, I even have to speak a bit about what “hyperlink juice” is.
In the arena of search engine optimization, getting another internet site to link on your website online is a excellent success. That link is seen through search engines like google and yahoo as an endorsement. Search engines aspect inside the number of links that point for your website online whilst they are ranking your site of their engines. “Link Juice” is a non-medical time period for the so-referred to as energy that the hyperlink affords your internet site or website in query.
Nofollows are an characteristic that may be coded right into a link to stop the link juice from flowing to a website. This is a completely common issue you will see in the hyperlinks present within the remark section of blogs.
To find out in case your back-links are passing link juice, you must check to look if the links have nofollow attributes inside them. If they do, then the hyperlink you worked so hard to get isn’t doing an awful lot for you since the nofollow attribute essentially tells Google to ignore your web site.
In the picture above, rel=’outside nofollow’ is in the anchor hyperlink. Even though a person can click via on the link, no hyperlink juice is being handed.
Some human beings suppose that Google in reality does rely some hyperlink juice from nofollows, however to be conservative in your inbound link counting, you must expect not anything is getting handed.
Alternatively, you can need to “web page sculpt” some of your own webpages. Some SEOs agree with it’s a good idea to restrict what pages you send your inner hyperlink juice to so that greater crucial webpages get the general public of the site’s ordinary hyperlink juice. You can do that through nofollowing a number of your internal website hyperlinks. For instance, you might want to nofollow all of the hyperlinks on your privateness policy or different boring / boring pages.
Google will inform you to ignore this practice, and I really agree. It’s sort of a tedious, useless challenge, and your power is better spent on developing extraordinary content material as an alternative.
Image Alt Tags in Source Code
Empty photo alt tags are very common SEO boo-boos. Image alt tags describe what your snap shots are to robot search engines like google and yahoo.
If you run an e-commerce website, you surely need to ensure your alt tags are crammed out. A properly idea is to ensure that the product brand call and serial wide variety are within the alt tag description.
Above is a screenshot of an image tag with the alt tag buried inside it.
You shouldn’t use alt tags for ornamental pictures. That can be seen as an over-optimization and could earn you a penalty. Just make sure you’ve got your alt tags stuffed out for:
Images of Merchandise
Diagrams
Infographics
Your Website Logo
Screenshots
Photos of Team Members
Verify That Your Analytics Are Installed Properly
One ultimate fantastic motive for checking your source code is to make sure you have got Google Analytics hooked up on every website of your website.
Checking is very simple. For Google Analytics, simply view the source code of your webpages and search for the letters “UA.”
If you locate an instance in which the “UA” is accompanied by means of a 7-digit quantity, you then have showed that Google Analytics is installed on that one page.
Also, keep tune of ways commonly “UA” shows up on your website. Sometimes, your analytics tracking code could be inserted greater than once accidentally, which is not sensible. If that’s the case, you have to have your developer remove the greater instances.
Next, you want to check the last webpages on your site to look in case your analytics code has been inserted on every web page. If you don’t have your analytics tracking code on every web page of your website, you’re not getting a whole image of what’s occurring in your web page, which type of makes analytics vain.
This can be a daunting venture when you have an sizable website. It even can be not possible to check manually.
I like to use xml-sitemaps.Com to get a text record of all of the URLs my website has within it. This offers me with an stock checklist which enables to maintain music of which URLs might want a few more attention (like having analytics hooked up on them).
It’s also a tremendous device for being alerted to copy content troubles and other bizarre things that is probably lurking on a web server.
Even xml-sitemaps.Com will provide you with only 500 results at no cost. You may additionally need to ask your developer to offer you a URL inventory so you have a complete map of your massive internet site.
Additionally, you can want them to create a script or program to perform those exams for you so that you don’t must do them manually.
Conclusion
Knowing how to examine primary source code is crucial for anyone constructing a internet site. It helps you create search engine marketing-pleasant webpages and websites, as well as perceive pre-existing SEO troubles that damage your website online’s function inside the SERPs.
If you’re having problem fixing search engine optimization troubles or need assist with search engine marketing in standard, our business enterprise can help.