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How to Read Your Website's Source Code and Why It's Critical for SEO

Your website's source code is hidden beneath all the gorgeous pictures, design, and well-placed calls to action. This is the code that your browser uses on a regular basis to create interesting experiences for your visitors and users.

To evaluate where your webpages should display in their search result pages for a specific search query, Google and other search engines "translate" this code. Therefore, a big part of search engine optimization (SEO) depends on your source code.

This blog post is a simple instruction to show you how to read the source code of your own website to ensure that it is properly optimized for search engines and, more importantly, to guide you on how to sanity-check your SEO efforts.

You can also find a few other scenarios in which understanding how to view and analyze the proper segments of source code can be beneficial for other promotional campaigns.

How to view your site's source code

Viewing the actual code is the beginning step in examining the source code of your website. Any web browser makes it simple for you to do this. The keyboard shortcuts for reading your website's source code on both Windows PCs and Macs are listed below.

- PC Computers (Microsoft/Windows)

Firefox – press CTRL+U. Or you can go to the Mozilla Firefox menu and click on “Web Developer” and then “Page Source.”
Internet Explorer – CTRL+U. Or right-click and select “View Source.”
Chrome – CTRL+U. Or you can select the dropdown menu in the right-hand corner, click on “Tools,” and select “View Source.”
Opera – CTRL+U. Or right-click on the web page and select “View Page Source.”

- Mac Computers

Safari – Option+Command+U. Or right-click on the webpage and select “Show Page Source.” Ensure you have developer tools enabled in Preferences. This will activate the Develop menu in Safari.
Firefox – Command+U. Or right-click on the page and press “Page Source.” You can also find it under “Tools” in the menu, pressing “Web Developer” and clicking on “Page Source.”
Chrome – Option+Command+U. Or right-click on the page and select “View Page Source.” You can also navigate to “View” in the menu bar and then click on “Developer” and press “View Source.”

Press CTRL+F (for Find) to quickly search for anything in the source code and check for coding, web design, and troubleshooting mistakes.

What to look for in the source code

Title tag

The center of on-page SEO is the title tag. It is the most crucial component of your source code.

You're familiar with the results that Google gives you when you perform a search? The title tags of the web pages they are directing to are where all of those results are found. Therefore, you cannot appear on Google search result pages if your source code contains no title tags (or in any other search engine, for that matter).

The opening tag, <title>, indicates the title tag. It completes with the closing tag: </title>. The title tag is often located in the <head> section of your source code, close to the top.

A page must contain the keyword in the title if you want it to rank for a certain term. Unique titles are essential; repeated titles mislead search engines' understanding of the page's intent.

One last thing to keep in mind is that each page on your website needs its own title tag. Never use the same text twice.

Meta description

Meta descriptions are the sales material if the Title tag is the billboard of search results. The challenge is that you have only 160 characters to entice readers to click on the hyperlink in your content.

Google updates or rewrites approximately 60% of meta descriptions because most websites fail to provide them. You may outshine the competition and make your website stand out by adding descriptions.

With so many "meta's" in the source code, finding meta descriptions can be a little tricky. Look for <meta name="description"> to see your description.

H1 headings

Your page titles, or H1 tags, are what visitors read first when they arrive at your page. If your H1 tags aren't appealing and detailed, visitors will leave your page and go somewhere else. The HTML5 standard now allows for more than one H1 tag, but you should still only use one per page.

Additionally, it's crucial to avoid stuffing your H1 with too many essential phrases, which could make you appear strange to readers and affect your ranking in Google's algorithm.

In the code, look for <h1> to locate your H1 tags.

Links

Follow Links

Since there is no attribute for "do follow" links, all links are followed unless specifically defined to be otherwise.

NoFollow

You can instruct search engines not to follow internal links by adding the "nofollow" attribute. As in the old days, this attribute was mostly used to shape PageRank; no-follow links can be identified by the rel="nofollow" attribute.

USG

User-generated (USG) links have been made by visitors to your website who have written access. Online forums frequently add this user-generated link. By using the search term rel="usg", you can find these links.

If a person or organization has sponsored you to add a link to the page, you must add the text rel="sponsored" to indicate that the link is advertised.

Image Alt Tags

While content is king, images help people understand what you are saying. For the benefit of search engines and people who are blind or visually impaired, you must add ALT tags to your photos.

The only information a search engine can see or read when it crawls your website are the file names and alt tags because they only look at the source code.

Analytics

In the rush to create a new website, people frequently skip the important step of making sure the Analytics codes are correctly installed.

If you are using Google Analytics, type "UA-" into the search bar to locate the tracking code. You can also use the Google Tag Assistant Browser Extension for Chrome.

This step is essential for ensuring that analytics are appropriately implemented on every page.

Navigating your website

No matter how well-organized your website is, discovering pages quickly may be challenging.

I prefer using XML sitemaps to browse and review pages. By visiting your website and then entering /sitemap.xml, you may access your XML sitemap. For example your_domain.com/sitemap.xml

Your search visibility could suffer if you don't have an XML sitemap. By integrating the Dynamic Sitemap module and creating an XML sitemap for your static website, you may automatically install one.

Once a module has been added or installed, you should inform Google of its location by adding it to your Robots.txt file.

site-map