I am often get asked whether you can learn SEO without any coding knowledge?
When it comes to search engine optimisation, many people think that you need coding knowledge in order to be successful and to build websites that perform to an optimal level.
In this blog post, we will explore the different aspects of SEO and how you can improve your website’s ranking without any coding experience.
Why is coding important for a website?
- Why is coding important for a website?
- What is technical SEO?
- Do I Need Coding Skills for SEO?
- Is it hard to code a website?
- Is SEO a programming language?
- Which coding language is best for SEO?
- Conclusion
A website is built by coding and whatever a customer sees on the front end is down to what is coded in the back end.
Whilst the visual aspect of a website is what the customer sees, the back end coding is what search engines use to understand a website.
Organised and structured code makes it easier and faster for Google to crawl your website as well as help your site load faster, in turn providing quicker load times and better user experience.
All of this can help your organic rankings significantly and will give you a better chance of succeeding within your particular space. Whilst website coding can be a challenge if you are a novice, there are ways in which you can still build a well structured, lightweight website without too much technical SEO or coding knowledge.
What is technical SEO?
When we talk about coding and SEO, we are generally talking about technical SEO and what goes on under the hood of your website.
Technical SEO is a subdivision of SEO that involves optimising the infrastructure of a website to make it easier for web crawlers to crawl and be discovered by search engines.
It also involves improving speed and loading times which we know is another significant ranking factor for Google. It deals with page speed, site navigation, robots files, sitemaps, organising code and a lot more.
Technical SEO is one of the most difficult aspects of SEO but when done right it can really help with rankings and user experience.
Do I Need Coding Skills for SEO?
You do not neccessarily need any coding skills when it comes to SEO. You can definitely still rank a website with little coding knowledge as long as you know of the best practices when it comes to creating a website from scratch.
When it comes to technical SEO, you may need some level of coding knowledge but it is not essential in order to get the basics right. There are also website builders that can help make your life a lot easier if you are unsure about how much coding knowledge you have.
Website builders like Oxygen provide very lightweight website themes out of the gate that makes creating fast and well-designed websites a lot easier.
Is it hard to code a website?
Whilst coding a website from scratch may be difficult, there are plenty of content management systems that allow you to create beautifully designed websites without the need to code.
Whilst good coding practices will allow you to create a super lightweight and ultra-fast website, there are ways in which you can achieve fast loading speeds without the need of too much coding knowledge.
Depending on the scale of the website, you may need professional developers at some point. For instance, large eCommerce websites that have thousands of pages will have much more chance of coming across a bug or an issue that will need some back end development work.
But, if you are just looking to get started and have little to no developer experience, there are a number of great solutions that can help you get a website built without the need of any coding knowledge.
Is SEO a programming language?
When we talk about SEO, it is not strictly in development terms and is not a programming language. SEO or search engine optimisation is a term that specifically relates to search engine optimisation.
A programming language is a notation designed to connect instructions to a machine or a computer. Programming languages are mainly used to control the performance of a machine or to express algorithms.
Source: Wat Electronics
When we talk about programming languages, we are talking strictly about development and coding languages that are used to build websites. There are many programming languages that developers will use to build a website but is not generally a term that SEO professionals link with their line of work.
SEO is much more about optimising a website experience for search engine crawlers and whilst there is certainly overlap between the development and SEO world, it is not strictly a term that is linked directly with programming language.
Which coding language is best for SEO?
Whilst you do not neccessarily need to know too much about coding in order to execute a successful SEO campaign, it is worth noting the more notable coding languages that are generally best practice.
The best coding languages for SEO include:
JavaScript
JavaScript is one of the most popular coding languages used in website design. It is used very widely and effectively in creating desktop applications and websites. Javascript is supported by most browsers and is a great way to create visually engaging designs for your website.
CSS
Cascading style sheets or CSS is another widely used coding language. When paired with HTML, CSS allows a developer to decide and define how a web page or a website will eventually look. It enables developers to have control over styling, font sizes, colours and other visual elements.
PHP
The term ‘PHP’ can be defined as the PHP hypertext processor language and is a free server-side scripting language that has been designed for not just web development but also it is used in general-purpose programming platforms.
Conclusion
To summarise, you certainly do not need to be a coding expert to be able to learn SEO effectively.
You can still rank a website very well without the need to have extensive coding knowledge. Using a lightweight website builder, ensuring your images are compressed and are the right size and then utilising an organised site architecture will help massively.
Combine this with a good on-page SEO experience for your users and there is no reason why you can’t optimise a site well enough to rank.
