If you’ve seen my post about what I look for when recruiting members of my online marketing team, you know that I think being able to code an essential SEO skill for those who I hire.
At the very least I think that online marketing professionals need to not be scared of looking at code (for junior hires) and are able to adjust or talk about code to web developers (for senior hires).
I have to admit that I’m biased in the SEO skills that I think are required as I “joined” the Internet in 1994 and built my own website that year from scratch. Those were the days where there were not any WYSIWYG editors, you had to understand C prompt commands to upload your files to the server, and the chat program that was popular on campus would let you “finger” someone to see if they were online (yes really).
There’s also no excuse to not know the basics of coding when there are online tutorials that are either free or cheap. And those tutorials are no longer boring, but allow you to learn the concepts via gaming.
Where can you learn how to code?
You can learn CSS and Javascript for free from Code School, and if you’re a woman you can apply to see if Google will give you 3 free months of Code School. Learn more about the initiative here.
You could also sign up for The Hour of Code (also free) to learn the basics of computer science.
Or you can sign up with Code Academy (also free) to learn html, css, javascript, php and other languages.
Why should online marketers learn to code?
Because a full third of the effort required to being found online is ensuring that search engines can find, read, and index your site, all of which is driven by the code and servers that make up your website. Additionally, sites and apps are usually built by developers who are not as immersed or as passionate about online marketing as you. Your challenge as an online marketer is to convince them that even though they are crunched for time, you need them to adjust the code to be more search engine/user friendly. When you can chat with your dev team intellectually about coding and server infrastructure suddenly that challenge of convincing them get substantially easier.
So what about your coding skills? If you’re still unsure about how websites are built, there’s now no excuse! Sign up for a class today.