Hello my fellow Front-End Web Devs, this post is here to tell you about one extra skill you can add to your skillset, SEO. SEO, if you don't know is short for Search Engine Optimization, which is basically the practice of increase the visibility of our website and its pages on search engines. Most of you have definitely heard of it, but if not, here is a small but informative article.
What is SEO?
According to Moz, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. When we search for something on Google, we get results, and the SEO person has to work on putting their website on those results for relevant queries. This field falls under the digital marketing domain and if you are working in a company, your marketing department is working on that.
However, I would like to mention that SEO has 3 big advantages over any other digital marketing field, It's Free, Sustainable & Relevant. First, we do not need to pay anything to search engines like Google to rank us (but you can put paid ads). Second, the results will stay there for a long time, while even viral media posts lose visibility in a couple of weeks. And third, it is relevant, since your results will only be shown to someone who is searching for it, and if he/she is searching for it, he must be having some intention to get that product/service.
Why do you need to learn it?
Since the digital boom during this coronavirus pandemic, most companies are switching to less staff or freelance small tasks. Especially front end dev get lots of work via freelance sites. Most of the time, front-end devs do not have to care about SEO, either because their company's marketing is not dependant on it, or it is done by some other department already before the work is put on their desk.
But if you know it, you will get to learn the process of how actually SEO works and if the marketing guy needs some help from the web devs department, you will be the person who will stand out. I am telling you to learn everything, I am just talking about the basics.
How to Learn SEO?
Here, I am mentioning some resources that you can check out:
1) Here is a great video by Ahrefs. This is a great introduction to how to do SEO.
2) Here is a great checklist by SEJ. This is great if you already have some basic knowledge of SEO.
3) While there are many courses, most of their education is already available for free to learn, so you can learn it at your own pace. However, I am finding companies giving SEO work to their existing web dev guys, and so, if you want to learn fast via private lesson or any some instant help, here is SEO tutor online, where this company select the best tutor for you, instead of you have to select
What should you learn?
SEO is divided into 3 sections: On-page, Off-page, & Technical SEO. Off-page is not important for us, so leave it. Now it left is On-page, and the knowledge you need is just the basic HTML stuff like headings, anchor, alt text, etc. The only thing you should learn is Keyword Research and how to structure the content for making it easy for Google to scan it. Last but not the least, Technical SEO. Google is now more focused on the technical aspects of websites. Especially with the Core Web Vitals coming soon, SEO people now need more help from front end devs. So, I think you should definitely learn about it.
So, here it is. I think you might start watching the first video now on SEO. Happy Learning!
Discussion (1)
Love this, SEO is so important during this time and a great way to stand yourself apart from the crowd when freelancing. Learn how to present this (sell & business acumen) to a prospect combined with web design skills and you've got yourself a skill set for life!