SEO and Source Code

Source: Wikimedia

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), there are a good number of tools that can help you. 

However, it is the human intelligence, and the good skills of an analyst, which can really help you to promote your small business websites. 

SEO tools can only help you to a certain extent, and eventually, you would have to rely upon the source code of the website to derive exceptional results. 

The source code can provide incredible insights into the functioning of the site, and it allows you to solve SEO problems quickly. 

On the other hand, a small error can damage the website's reputation significantly. Here are a few things you can do to improve your SEO with source code modifications.

Canonical URL tags

Canonical URL tags are helpful when it comes to dealing with duplicate content issues. They are used to bind the links that contain the same content. It is a very good tool when it comes to SEO. 

However, if a Canonical URL tag is not used correctly it can confuse the search engine bots and the result can be disastrous. 

It is best to not use the canonical tag as much as possible and when you do, make sure you are doing it right. If you are not quite sure how the canonical tag may work, it is best to refrain from using it.

Meta robots

Like canonical URL tags, meta robots tags can cause a lot of SEO problems if they are not used correctly. 

The meta robots tags are generally used whenever you do not want the search engines to follow any links on a particular page or you don’t want them to index the page itself. 

Here too, using meta robots tag is not recommended unless it is absolutely necessary. For example, if you are creating a private portal for your business, you would not want it to show up on the search engines.  In this situation, a meta robots tag can come in handy. Otherwise, there is not much need to use these tags.

Script code

A good number of small business websites today use JavaScript. There are two methods you can use to implement JavaScript on your web pages, you can either embed the script on the page itself or you can create a separate file for the script and then call it on the page. 

Using a separate file is the ideal option as excessive script on the web page can slow down the pages and lead to errors. The first thing to do when it comes to SEO is to consolidate all the scripts on your page into separate files. While doing this, you can also check for unnecessary scripts and filter them out to quickly load your web pages

These are just a few different ways in which, your source code can sabotage your SEO efforts. While SEO tools can give you an external outlook at your site's performance, the source code could point you at internal errors that affect your site's performance. It is always a good practice to have a professional SEO analyst look at the source code of your small business websites, to eradicate any SEO issues.