Get things in order behind the scenes
4th August 2008
By Chris Rand
Here’s a technical item which I hope to be able to talk you through more thoroughly in our Insider Programme if you join it. Your web pages (indeed all web pages) are made up of “source code” which instructs visitors’ web browsers how to display things as the designer intended. You can see the source code of any page (including this one) by clicking “View Source” under “Page” (if you’re using Internet Explorer; if you’re using Firefox, click “Page Source” under “View”).
It’s quite complex stuff, but it’s what the search engines have to deal with - they have to examine this code and pull out the real copy. So you’ll get better results if the words you want them to see are as close to the start of the source code as possible. Badly designed pages will force them to wade through pages of source code before getting to the real words.
For more, read Source Ordered Content: SEO Benefits (and Drawbacks?) in Search Engine Journal.
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