Why I got an SEO certification as a developer
I spent about 12 hours last week getting an SEO certification from Moz. Not because I’m going to quit my developer job and become an SEO, but because of my philosophy about what the real job of a developer is.
I could have spent that time learning anything I wanted. I could have gone deeper with Vue and figured out this new composition API that everyone is taking about. I could have really buckled down to learn GraphQL or Typescript. I could have spent 12 hours on Hackerrank or whatever the current flavor-of-the-week code challenge platform is. I could have chosen any number of ways to level up my technical skills… but I chose SEO instead.
I can almost hear you screaming into your inbox, “Why?! Why would you do that? SEO is for marketers. You’re a WEB DEVELOPER! You could be learning valuable skills to make you more marketable. What are you doing wasting your time?”
But, you see, I don’t believe I’m wasting my time. That’s because I don’t think of a web developer as just an implementer. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing code. Code is never the end goal though. It’s just one tool to help us get there.
I like to solve problems, and problems don’t just live in code. I want to have a broader view of the problem I’m trying to solve. I want to be more than just someone who writes the code I’m told to write. I want to think about the business problems my software is trying to solve so I can have a bigger impact. Here’s what that gives me:
- I have greater satisfaction knowing that I’m not just a cog in a machine. I’m a trusted advisor.
- Understanding the larger goal informs the decisions I make about the software I’m building. No software is every fully defined on day one. You’re going to need to make some decisions as you go. Seeing the bigger picture helps you make better decisions as you’re building.
- I’m more valuable because I can talk about more than just the cool code I wrote. I can talk about the money I made and the money I saved.
Those are just a few benefits that come to mind. Having knowledge in other areas like SEO, marketing, and business allow me to recognize when a problem may be better solved without writing code. It also helps me implement better systems that serve these other functions.
You could easily extrapolate this and decide that, as a developer, you really need to know everything. You need an intimate understanding of every part of the business. That’s not what I’m advocating for here. Focus is important, and you should focus on one thing at a time to avoid spreading yourself too thin.
I’m seeing diminishing returns right now when I learn new tech. Also, I understand how to learn it, and I have enough context to learn it quickly. That means I can usually pick it up on-demand when a project needs it. SEO is something I’m brushing up against a lot. I didn’t understand it well, so it seemed like a logical direction to go. It felt like I could accomplish more by learning SEO than by learning yet another Javascript framework.
All this to say that you shouldn’t just think of yourself as someone who writes what you’re told. You can be more than that. You can do so much more than that, even if it’s just to push back and say, “I don’t think this web app you want me to write is really going to fix your problem. Here’s what you should do instead…”
If you’re on board with that idea, here are a few articles to get you moving in the right direction:
- Personal MBA review