Source code

Source code is the human-readable "blueprint" of a website, usually in HTML. Browsers turn it into the visible layout. You can see the code via "view page source"; clean code helps with crawling/indexing.

For undisturbed digital communication between web servers and clients, standards were created that enable the worldwide use of information and websites. These standards include the programming language HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is written with so-called tags, which are usually marked in tag form. The entire text of a website is referred to as source code, in German also commonly called Quelltext.

The source code, which can be associated with a computer program or a website, is read by a computer and presented to the internet user by browsers in terms of content and function. The source code thus represents the basic framework of the website or the program. The source code can generally be divided into two different types: proprietary and open source, also known as open-source. Open-source software refers to (usually free) programs that allow modification or redistribution with the delivery of the source code (e.g., Linux). This means that any user can customize the software's source code as desired. For many industry professionals, open-source software offers the advantage that errors can usually be fixed faster and more carefully (by the mass of programmers) than by a small development team. Its opposite is proprietary software, which is provided only under licenses without providing the source code (e.g., Microsoft software). While access to the source code must be obtained from the licensors for software, the source code of websites is visible to everyone. It can be easily displayed with a right-click of the mouse.

What is source code?

When surfing a website or browsing social networks, one rarely has trouble reading the text on a page. It is clearly structured, sometimes divided for the eye with subheadings, bold text, or color highlights. However, what we see is based on specific instructions running in the background. These instructions are called source text or source code.

The source code is written in a human-readable programming language and forms the basis of websites.

That code is human-readable means in this context that, in contrast to “machine-readable,” the code is written in a language consisting of words instead of numbers. However, these are programming languages that are not so easy to understand and must first be learned by humans. One can create code with a program - for example, the simple text editor that is often pre-installed on PCs. Notepad is also suitable as a program to display the text as code for the web.

Programming languages

There are countless programming languages. No one is better than the other; it solely depends on the purpose for which a programming language is used. Nevertheless, some languages occur more frequently than others. For example, you might have already heard of the following programming languages:

Java
Python
JavaScript

Markup languages

A website, as mentioned, is based on a source code. This, in turn, is written in a markup language. The most common markup language is HTML. However, there are other languages such as XML. With the HTML code, a page can be formatted. Headings, color highlights, positions, links, etc., can all be specified in the HTML code.

Show source code of websites

Anyone can view the source code of a website, even though we usually see the final result of a site. This is quite easy in Google Chrome: With a right-click on a page, you can select "View Page Source." This is particularly suitable for those who want to delve deeper into a page structure and learn how to build a page as HTML code.

The importance of source code in search engine optimization

In search engine optimization, the source code naturally has an important significance. If a bot cannot read the text without errors, it also cannot index the website correctly. The rule is: The more extensive the source code is, the lower the likelihood that the bot will fully scan the content (due to the limited time available per website). If the source code is "lean," the crawl depth of the website is increased—in other words, more subpages are crawled.

In the HTML markup, one should also ensure that parts of the text are properly marked up so that they are displayed correctly and important keywords can be highlighted. This is done, for example, by dividing headings into H1, H2, H3, etc.

One should refrain from manipulating the source code to influence rankings, as this can lead to penalties. Instead, time should be invested in meaningful methods.