Why should SEO experts know programming?We can break down programming based elements of SEO into 2 segments:Technical SEO includes tasks such as,Tabpear

Why should SEO experts know programming?

SEO experts don’t necessarily need to know programming top to bottom, but they need to have an understanding of programming elements that will affect SEO.

We can break down programming based elements of SEO into 2 segments:

Technical SEO includes tasks such as:

PageSpeed: SEO experts will want to make sure that sites load blazing fast - ideally under 2 seconds for users in all locations. Put simply, fast load speeds are achieved by minimizing the number of files loaded, minimizing code on each page, compressing files.

Valid HTML/CSS: Matt Cutts claims that invalid code won’t affect rankings, but it depends on what exactly is invalid. The most important aspect here is making sure the page is easy to view from the user experience, and that Google is able to make sense of the page it is crawling.

Responsiveness/Mobile-Friendliness: Any SEO expert knows the importance of responsiveness in websites. On high end sites, this can involve a lot of testing across devices/screen resolutions, or by using tools such as BrowserStack.

Using code that works across all browsers: Ever so slowly it’s becoming easier to write code that works across all browsers, however there is still no one-size-fits-all. Google won’t rank your page #1 to a user browsing in Internet Explorer 8 if your website doesn’t work in that browser. If you want to maximise your reach, your site needs to be compatible across all browsers and versions. Again, a tool such as BrowserStack can be handy.

Website Security: To ensure a website is appropriately secured you’ll need to make sure the site and server is configured to work with an appropriate SSL certificate. Additionally, that site should not be loading “mixed content” (a mix of files from HTTP and HTTPS). This is more of a devops task that requires knowledge of both programming and server configuration.

Though Content SEO is less about the code, there are still some elements that need to be considered, such as:

Correct use of title tags: in the case of automatically generated pages, this needs to be done in a descriptive, compelling, unique way that is appropriate length.

Proper use of meta tags: back in the day many SEOs decided it was smart to add a few million meta keywords per page. Devs with no clue are still doing this, damaging the potential of otherwise great content. Concise meta description tags are still useful, though this is changing fast.

Using correct heading hierarchy: From experience, this is the simplest way to make Google happy. It’s amazing how many off the shelf WordPress (or otherwise) themes use bad hierarchy across a website. Simply tidying up heading tags through pages makes for a better user experience and an easier time for Googlebot. Take the time to learn this and you’ll be one step ahead of many self proclaimed SEO experts.

Logical lists: want more space in Google SERPS? Maximise exposure in rich snippets by making numbered and bullet lists easy for Googlebot to understand. This is one of those cases where less formatting is more. KISS!

Depending on the type of site you’re running, structured data/schema is also useful code that you’ll want to learn how to use. This can help for local SEO (e.g., address, contact details), eCommerce sites (e.g., product weight, product dimensions, product colors), recipe sites (e.g., ingredients, method) and so on.

Please note, this is not an authoritative list of what programming knowledge can do for you.

The takeaway should be that having a theoretical knowledge of SEO is great, but to make sure you get results, you’ll want to be able to verify that your code is up to scratch.

Without a working technical knowledge of HTML/CSS/PHP and other technical elements (.htaccess, Apache config, etc), you will need to trust your developer to do the right job. This is possible but can take some trial and error.

Tabpear is a Software Technology Co., Ltd which has many domestic excellent  e-commerce platform R & D teams and mobile R & D teams. We divide the software engineer teams into several levels according to the project development experience. Level one is more than 3 years of development experience. Level two is more than five years of development experience. Level three is more than 10 years of development experience and Level four is expert team which has more than five participating in research projects, Invention patents and software copyrights of 6 or more, published in the core periodicals more than 10 papers. There is also a team ,working at cloud computing and service computing including four doctors, seven masters and 23 persons who have master's degree.