An SEO expert doesn't need to be a web developer—but being familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can greatly improve and streamline your workflow. Why? Well, one of the tasks that an SEO specialist often has is to collaborate closely with the web development team to ensure SEO best practices are properly followed throughout the website content.
Also, if as an SEO expert, you’ve never felt the desire to change something in the design or function of a website... well, let me know the secret! Being extremely bothered with landing pages and the function of a website but not being able to communicate properly with a developer was so frustrating that it pushed me to learn web development.
I started with the basics and ended up falling in love with coding. Nowadays, I know that my SEO considerations are being properly integrated into the web design from the get-go.
If you are an SEO expert or even a Content Marketing Strategist who wants to learn how to code or at least learn the basics, here are a few tips for you (and a few course recommendations as well).
Don't Do Expensive and Long Courses at the Beginning
When I decided that I wanted to learn how to code, I started looking for boot camps and other really expensive courses. This is not a good way to go, especially if you just want to learn the basics and have never had the chance to get involved with coding before. You can end up like me, who actually loved the whole thing, or you can just hate it and end up with an unfinished course and lost money.
Start on YouTube: If you are totally new, start with a few videos that can explain what HTML is, why CSS is important, and what JavaScript does. These videos will help you start communicating with developers better.
Free Courses: There are so many free coding courses out there and developers willing to teach new people—so take advantage of it! You can start with Codecademy; they have a bunch of free courses that can teach you a lot!
Basic Courses: After researching coding and realizing that you actually enjoy it and want to code something, it's time to pay for a course. My recommendation is SheCodes or paying for Codecademy’s premium version!
Start Building SEO-Focused Projects
This is something that I'm also working on, but if you want to showcase everything you’ve learned, it’s important to work on projects that incorporate SEO elements, such as optimizing a site for speed or implementing structured data. You don't need to do this by yourself; you can suggest improvements to your web development team and put together an article about your ideas and the entire process.
However, I built an app using APIs and it was pretty fun—you can watch the video here
Focus on SEO Implications and Accessibility
You can get distracted really easily when learning how to code because, honestly, there are so many amazing things you can do. But you need to remind yourself that you are an SEO expert and you're learning how to code for the right reasons. With this in mind, start studying how different JavaScript frameworks and libraries can affect SEO and how you can solve these issues.
Learn About Web Performance Optimization
Start learning how to use tools like Google Lighthouse, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest to analyze and optimize web performance. Also, don't forget to study best practices for reducing page load times, such as image optimization, lazy loading, and caching.
Conclusion
I don't know if I convinced you to learn how to code, but I hope that at least I got the chance to show you how web development can be an important skill for SEO experts. You don't need to be the best, and you don't need to focus on developing the next Facebook. You just need to understand how things work to improve the flow of your work, achieve better results, and be the best at your job!