Learning how to code or even just the logic behind programming can make you a better SEO and marketer.
It opens up an entirely new world to efficiency, data analysis, and can eliminate human error
for things like data entry.
When you combine the creativity of marketing with the logic of programming, it gives you
the ability to do some really cool stuff.
So today, I'm going to break down how programming and SEO intersect, and what you can do with it
even with just the basics.
Stay tuned.
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What's up SEOs?
Before we get started, there are two things you need to know.
First, this tutorial isn't meant for beginners.
If you're just starting out with SEO, focus on the fundamentals first.
We have a ton of videos to help you out with that so I'll leave links for you in the description.
And second, just because you don't know how to code, it doesn't mean you can't be an excellent SEO.
But I'm a strong believer that the learning curve to programming is well worth the effort
because of the way it benefits your efficiency, wallet, and career.
So with that said, let's jump into our first use case of how you can use programming
in your SEO arsenal.
#1. By learning a server side language you can automate redundant tasks.
SEO is full of redundant tasks.
For example, imagine you have an eCommerce store with 100,000 product pages and you need
to change all title tags and add one sentence to the bottom of every product description.
You could ask someone to manually do this over the next three months, but it's going to
cost a lot of time and money, plus you're putting your site at risk to human error.
But this can be done programmatically in a fraction of the time.
Plus, the code you create can easily be repurposed or reused.
Now, where things get really powerful for SEOs is when you start working with other
companies' data through APIs.
API stands for Application Programming Interface.
They allow you to programmatically send requests to a system
and receive a response based on your request.
The best analogy I've heard is to think of an API as a messenger.
For example, when you go to a restaurant, you need to order food so the kitchen can prepare it.
And in order for the kitchen to receive your request, a waiter acts as a messenger,
to deliver that request.
When the food is ready, the waiter will return your food, aka. the response.
So what does that look like in SEO automations?
Well, there are virtually an infinite number of things you can do, but one of the tools
that I've built recently automates search intent classification.
I started by using Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer and came up with a list of thousands of keyword ideas.
Now, if I were to manually review SERPs to classify whether queries were informational,
navigational, commercial investigation, or transactional,
it would have taken a long time — especially at scale.
So using a SERP API, I was able to get thousands of SERPS for all of these keywords within minutes.
I stored the information in a local database and programmatically analyzed SERP features
along with page titles and URLs.
And the result?
Thousands of keywords that were automatically classified with a 95% accuracy rate.
The best part was that I didn't have to write the code from scratch.
Benjamin Burkholder shared his code in a Medium article which I modified and rewrote to a language
I'm more comfortable using.
I'll leave a link to his article in the description — it's derfinitely worth a read.
There are tons of great APIs you can use for SEO like Ahrefs' API, Google's APIs, Hunter,
NeverBounce and Mailshake.
And this isn't even scratching the surface.
In terms of what you do with them and how you combine the data, well, the sky's the limit.
Now, you don't need to be fluent in any programming language to create automations with APIs.
There are tools like Zapier, which give you an easy-to-use interface for non-coders.
But in order to use them effectively,
you should have a basic understanding of how programming logic works.
So understanding conditional functions like IF and ELSE, booleans like OR and AND, and
loops like FOR, FOREACH, and WHILE can go a long way.
So let's build a hypothetical automation in Zapier that can automate part of your email
outreach using Google Sheets and Mailshake.
I've already selected Google Sheets as my app, selected the sheet I want to work with
and then I set up a trigger.
In this case, something should happen IF a value is added to the email column in my Google Sheet.
Now, we need to tell the program what to do.
So in this example, I've set it to add the user to my "Ahrefs Sample Campaign" in Mailshake.
After the trigger executes, the email should get added to Mailshake's system and send
my first touch email and any follow-ups I've configured.
As you can see, there's some pretty powerful stuff you can do just by understanding
the basics of programming logic.
Another reason you should learn at least the basics of programming is to communicate more effectively
with your dev team.
Marketers and developers tend to think differently.
Marketers often think of the final result, while developers think of all the steps that
are required to get to that result.
Now, while it might sound like a match made in heaven,
the synergy between the two departments often falters.
The most common reason I hear is because marketers can sometimes request developers to build things
without really knowing what's involved.
For example, let's say John the marketer works in a boutique car insurance company.
As he's doing his research, he realizes that all big insurance companies have quote calculators,
which are driving a ton of qualified search traffic.
So he reaches out to Sally, one of the developers, and says…
"Hey Sally, I like this calculator from Statefarm.
It looks pretty basic so can you build me one by the end of the day?
Or actually, I'll give you a week"
What John doesn't realize is how the systems and processes work within the company.
Sally would probably need to work with some internal APIs, build it, test it, have designers
and other devs step in, and have QA check the work before it's pushed to production.
It's basically the equivalent of Sally the developer telling John the marketer to go
and rank for "car insurance quotes" by the end of the week since it's a "low-hanging 3-word query."
By understanding programming logic and how your company builds apps, you can respectfully
improve communication with your developers.
These are two of the main reasons why I think learning code can help you become a better SEO
whether you work alone or at a big company.
Another reason worth mentioning is that understanding how code works can make you a better technical SEO.
Being able to read through source code efficiently can help you identify technical SEO issues
that most crawling tools wouldn't discover.
You can also identify PageSpeed-related issues by understanding how a browser renders a page
and prioritizes resources.
And if yours or your client's websites use JS frameworks like Angular or React,
you can help identify issues related to crawling.
Now, it doesn't really matter which language you learn.
The main difference usually lies in syntax while logic remains the same or at least very
similar for most languages.
Programming is a fun way to pick up a new skill, sharpen your brain, and to combine
the creative aspects that come with marketing.
So my recommendation is to learn what you need to learn.
For example, if your main objective is to create automations, then learn a server side language
like PHP, Python, R, Ruby, or Node.js.
Or if you simply want to communicate more effectively with your developers, learn logic
programming and how systems are built.
Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences related to learning code.
Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share and subscribe
for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials.
I'll see you in the next one.