When it comes to the wide world of the Internet, there are many moving parts — and sometimes these parts can be intertwined or cross paths. Two paths that run parallel to each other in this instance are SEO and programming. As SEOs, we always want to do our best to get our client found on search engines; we’ll do whatever it takes.
Sometimes SEO means taking risks to understand the fundamentals of how a website is built and functions, as well as how search engines crawl websites. This is where knowing programming comes into play. We’re not saying you need to become an expert (because if you did, you wouldn’t be in SEO in the first place), but it can be very beneficial to know the following program languages.
- HTML/CSS. Although technically not a programming language, HTML and CSS are some of the main components to a website. HTML allows search engines to understand the structure of your website, while CSS is the visual component to the website that users see. Knowing both is good for meta tags, schema markup and page markup.
- Python. An increasingly popular programming language, Python has proven to be very useful for SEOs. By knowing what you can do with Python, you can build a search engine crawler like the ones Google and Bing use to rank websites. This is instrumental to understanding why and how search engines rank websites.
At the moment you may believe that there’s simply no time to pick up a programming language. On the contrary, there are so many useful online tools to help even the busiest (read: laziest) of people learn programming!