SEO is getting increasingly complicated as search engines change the way they rank websites. There is so much to do now in addition to doing on-page and keyword optimization and the like. Most of what is needed to rank a website at the top of search engine result pages requires some coding knowledge, which makes coding useful for people doing SEO. But how is coding applied when it comes to SEO? Below, we will look at some ways search engine optimizers can use knowledge of coding to realize better SEO results.
Optimizing for Better Speed
Recently, search engines like Google have started prioritizing websites that load fast. This is in line with their desire to reward webmasters and developers who take their time and put a lot of effort in ensuring their websites are as fast as possible. There are many ways to make a website run faster, and one of the most common ones is combining different JavaScript and CSS files to optimize load times and, therefore, increase a website’s speed.
Websites are built using HTML, which gives the website its structure, CSS, which gives the website its styles, and JavaScript, which adds behavior like animations to the website. Loading all the different CSS and JavaScript files at once or one by one can cripple a website. Combining CSS and JavaScript files into two files can reduce load times caused by resource demands and make a website run faster, which improves the website’s SEO and helps with its ranking.
Another way to optimize for speed is by cleaning a website’s code to reduce bloat. New websites usually have “clean” code, but as modifications are made and new features added, the new code can introduce bloat and bugs that can slow down a website. Using tools like HTML validators to check for issues like unpaired or broken tags requires some understanding of code, as it is removing whitespace to reduce the size of the website’s files.
Optimizing for Mobile Responsiveness
As with speed, major search engines are prioritizing websites that are mobile responsive, as they judge these websites to offer a better user experience. While you may need a web developer to make sure the website is responsive as it is being built, you do not necessarily need them for small optimization changes. For example, Google can penalize a website for buttons that are too small or text that is so close together that it’s impossible to select on mobile devices. Small changes like this do not require that you hire a web developer, but if you know how to code, you could make them yourself, thereby improving your SEO and saving time and money at the same time.
Working with APIs
Many SEO tools use APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to send data to other SEO tools for better management, analysis, and breakdown. The information sent through an API might include a website’s ranking, keywords, traffic information, and a lot more. In order to set up the right API for the specific kinds of data you need to analyze and the information you need about your website, you need to have some coding knowledge.
Some SEO tools also let you take data sources from an API to build other data models, such as graphs and charts. Some knowledge of coding will make doing this significantly easier.
Help Make Your Website Accessible
Accessibility is another consideration search engines make when ranking websites. Accessibility means your website is usable by blind, deaf, or disabled people. To ensure your website is accessible, you need to ensure the images, video, audio, and script files can be crawled by search engine spiders correctly. Most of the time, this can be achieved by adding accessibility features to a website, which can be done easily by anyone with some coding knowledge.
Learn to Think Like a Coder
Learning to code also comes with learning how to think about problems and how to solve them. Programmers break down complex problems into smaller ones, so they are easier to solve methodically. When doing SEO, you might be required to break down complex tasks into smaller ones, so they become manageable.
In addition, learning to code as an SEO will give you a better understanding of how websites are built and how they work. This way, you will learn how to approach SEO from a technical standpoint, as well as communicate effectively with web developers who may be working on the same project.
You Can Learn How to Automate Tasks
Programmers translate problems into formats they can deal with easily. Often, they do this by creating programs that help automate tasks, which helps them solve problems. For example, if you would like to scrape data from a website, it would be tedious, time-consuming and wasteful to go through all of the website’s pages writing down or copying the information you need. A coder would create a script to automate a task like this. The aim here is not to learn how to code so you can come up with complex solutions, but to learn enough coding to help you build simple tools that make your work easier.
It Helps You Stand Out
The number of SEO agencies has exploded over the past few years. So, if you want to stand out, coding is a really good way to do that. Remember that learning to code is not easy, and it cannot be done in one or two sessions. That is why when you make coding your unique selling point as an SEO expert, clients sit up and take notice.
You are also able to stand out because you can offer clients the solutions they need faster through automation and understanding the inner workings of SEO like APIs and analytics.
Coding is becoming important in the world of SEO. SEO is no longer about keywords and backlinks anymore. Rather, search engines are looking for a lot more, and satisfying their conditions requires some coding knowledge. This knowledge is also important for personal reasons like the ability to work with APIs, analyze data, and find better opportunities. So, yes. Having some coding knowledge is absolutely useful in SEO.
