SEO depends on a lot of different things for it to work out properly. It depends on keeping up with the times (and by that I mean algorithm changes made by Google), it depends on hard work and dedication (you can’t just give up on a link building campaign and expect it to work), but most of all, it depends on creativity.
And on top of that it truly depends on being able to scale up your processes creatively. Because of that, there are all sorts of Internet marketing tools out there that have been made available to Internet marketers (mostly in the SEO niche). These tools include software like Buzzstream, SEOmoz, SEOBook, and many others.
But to all you SEO’s out there, I am telling you that you should take a little time out of your day (as many days a week as you possible can) and learn how to start programming. You should learn as many languages as you possibly can – starting with HTML & CSS.
Two other languages that would be a good idea to learn how to start programming in right away would be JavaScript and PHP.
Why is it a good idea to start learning these languages?
The answer is very simple really. Once you start learning these languages you begin to have doorway after doorway open up for you. Your mind starts to understand how these machines operate and how these computers are actually crawling your website. When you do everything custom you begin to open up doors that allow you to be very flexible.
And flexibility is the key when is comes to any business, any programmatic functionality, and everything that has to do with SEO. You have to be able to make the right moves as they come to you, and it is in that fashion that programming will teach you a lot about SEO.
Let me kind of elaborate on what I mean here.
Someone that doesn’t know how to code is going to have a much easier time creating a website using a website creation tool like Dreamweaver than they are by hard coding it up from scratch.
An intermediate coder will probably have an easier time coding a dynamic website with a WordPress or Drupal foundation than they will with Dreamweaver. In fact, they may just think that Dreamweaver gets in the way.
A very experienced coder will think that templates like WordPress & Joomla get in the way, and they will have a much easier time writing all of the JavaScript and PHP functions themselves. This gives them the most flexibility, and to attack it from this approach requires a lot of thinking, not just doing.
SEO is often mistaken to be used best as a quick fix, and usually when that is the case there is very little thinking involved, and when there is very little thinking there is usually very little creativity. The SEO process should start being implemented as soon as you start coding. Your first line of code should be written with SEO in mind, because creativity dawns from extensive programming – whether it be from coding websites or creating automatic mobile network optimization software.
Article written by Philip Rudy. Philip is the search and social manager at ImageWorks Studio. In his spare time he enjoys writing articles on SEO and is also a part time web programmer. Follow him on twitter @primorudy.