by The Computing Australia Group | Optimising a website’s source code is one of the key on-page SEO tactics. Any error in the source code of a website can impact your SEO efforts. Yet, it is a common oversight our Perth SEO team comes across while doing technical SEO audits for clients. Being the backbone of any website’s smooth functioning, the source code can influence your website’s SERP ranking. What can you do to optimise it? Let’s find out.
How to optimise your website source code
Search engines use the source code to figure out what your website is about. Any content on a web page needs to be HTML coded for the search engines to comprehend it. The SEO components in a source code include the title tag, meta description, H1 heading tag, internal links, anchor texts, nofollow links, image alt tags and canonical tags. To view the source code, open a webpage and use “Ctrl + U”. Here are some steps you can follow to optimise your website source code.
Title Tag Optimisation
Title tag has a significant impact on your site’s search engine rankings. It helps Google determine how appropriate your web or blog page is for the query put forward. A well-written title tag can make your site stand out from the rest and easily attract the search engine.
- Make sure all your web pages have unique title tags that describe the pages perfectly.
- Follow an optimal length for your title tags so that they’ll not get cut off in search engine results. 50-60 characters work quite well.
- Ensure not to stuff keywords in your titles. Instead, add one or two significant keywords.
Unique Meta Descriptions
A meta description is an HTML element that summarises the web page content for the benefit of users as well as search engines. It appears as a snippet in the search results under the title. The idea behind meta descriptions is to give your readers an accurate idea of what your page offers.
- Avoid lengthy descriptions- Descriptions that contain 130 to 156 characters is the ideal length.
- Use relevant keywords in the description.
- If possible, include a call to action.
Work on Structured Data
The purpose of Structured Data is to add more details to your snippet to make it a rich snippet in the search results. The code needs to be marked up properly to increase your chances of ranking higher. Schema.org is the most popular when it comes to Structured data forms for search engines.
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Using “item scope” in a tag lets the search engines know that all the info given in one section is about the same topic
- The “item type” term specifies what the topic of each section is
- “item prop” communicates additional information about the section
H1 tag
- Make sure the description is short and specific
- Use keywords but do not stuff them
- Tag images that are associated with your brand, not images used for decorative purposes
You can also add subheadings starting from H2 to H6. To improve readability, ensure that the text following the subheading is not too long, preferably between 250 to 300 words.
Alt Text for Images
For e-commerce, as well as other websites, the alt tag is an important HTML tag. It informs the search engine what an image is about. If the image file cannot be loaded, Alt text will be displayed in place of the image. Good images with proper Alt Text make the pages appealing for engine robots as well as the users and improve user experience (UX).
- Make sure the description is short and specific
- Use keywords but do not stuff them
- Tag images that are associated with your brand, not images used for decorative purposes
Canonical URL tag
This is a powerful tool to identify duplicate content. Canonical URL tags are used mainly for e-commerce sites, as you may need to create different pages for your products using the same content with minor differences such as colour or variety of the item. Adding these tags to each page variation would help search engines recognise the main/ original page from a group of pages with similar URLs.
Is your website code optimised for SEO? Contact us or drop an email to us at sales@computingaustralia.group and let’s find out.
Jargon Buster
HTML codes – HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) are codes used to structure a web page and its content.
Anchor text – refers to the visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. It is of a different colour than the surrounding text and sometimes underlined.
No-follow links – Links with no follow tags tell search engines to ignore that link for SEO or page ranking calculations.
