What is the source code

The source code is the basis of a program. Computers read it and convert it into text, images, or functions. The same principle applies on the Internet-the source code of a website is available for the user’s terminal device. Since only with a correctly written code can the website appear correctly and read by search engines, it plays a central role in search engine optimization (SEO). Here are some pointers on how to consider it in your SEO strategy.

On the Internet

For website owners, it is an important part of building their website. While many content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, allow even non-professionals to build a functioning website, some errors can only appear in it. Therefore, despite modern, user-friendly modular systems, basic knowledge of HTML is still important. Some problems only become visible in it and can solve their issues there with the appropriate prior knowledge.

Creating and modifying it

To create the code, you need nothing more than a simple text document. However, because the source code of a program can be several thousand lines long, so-called IDEs (development environments) are better. IDEs have many useful functions, such as auto-completion or the debugger. This allows the code to be more efficient and errors to appear more quickly.

What elements can the source code help

Meta tags are an important ranking factor in search engine optimization and can be changed in the source code or inserted into it. These include the page title (title tag), the meta description (meta description), or the robots tag. The robots tag can be used to signal to the crawler whether indexing of the website in question is desired or undesirable. Other tags relevant for search engine optimization are the Canonical Tag, which identifies duplicate content, and so-called Alt Tags, which describe the content of an image file.

Remember that a well-coded source code is also important for website usability, as it makes websites load faster. Also, the simpler the source code is written, the faster the crawlers can analyze the page. The page rank increases and the website is more pleasant to read for the audience.