Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Viewing Page Source

Anyone who’s put together a website already knows how to view page source. But if

you don’t ever touch your site’s code, this may be a new experience for you. Viewing

page source is a simple way to see the inside workings of your competitors’ (or anyone

else’s) website.

Source

is shorthand for

source code

, which is the HTML content that

tells the browser what to show on the screen. In the source code, you can see all of the

invisible text elements, such as meta tags and ALT tags (discussed in Chapter 3, “Eter-

nal Truths of SEO.”) You can also view the HTML title tag and other behind-the-

scenes information on your competitor’s page (see Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8

Viewing HTML source code

It’s easy to view source in major browsers. Here’s how:

• In Internet Explorer, select View

Source from the Explorer menu.

• In Safari, select View

View Source from the Safari menu.

• In Firefox, select View

Page Source from the Firefox menu.

On Wednesday, we’re going to ask you to view source to assess your competi-

tors. But for now, take some time to get used to viewing source code on your own site.

Now:

Practice viewing page source by opening up your own website and viewing the source code on a

few pages.

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