Essential Web Development Skills

If you are thinking of developing your own websites or customising your blog then you will need to know or learn a number of important web development skills. This article provides a brief overview of tyhe main web development skills.

You can develop excellent websites with just HTML and CSS but if you want to add interactivity to your websites then you are likely to also need Javascript, PHP and a database like MYSQL. These skills are described briefly below:

HTML

HTML is the language of the web hence you must understand it if you want to build your own websites. An investment in learning HTML is very rewarding and it will allow you to understand much of how the web works. This is also a must have skill if you want to do your own Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

CSS

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is the next skill you should master. CSS is quiet easy once you take the time to understand how it works. CSS makes changing the style used on your websites easy. Good use of CSS will minimize the number of graphics you need on a website to make it look good.

Web Graphics

Your website needs to look good so you need to have a good understanding of web graphics. If you decide to produce your own make sure that you don’t overdo the number of graphics on your website and also be warned that its very tempting to spend too much time making your graphics look better than they really need to be. Keep it simple.

In addition to the above 3 essential skills one or more of the following will be needed for the more complex sites:

Javascript

Javascript allows you to add what are effectively mini programs to you web pages. Typical uses of Javascript are to:

• interact with users
• validating user input to forms
• fancy menus

PHP

PHP is a scripting language that is used to create dynamic websites. The best way to explain this is via an example:

One typical and very powerful use of PHP is to personalize sales pages. For example lets say you have a squeeze page (explained in sales process section) offering a free demo of your product. When the user enters their name and email address into the form on the squeeze page you can have a php script(program) that reads the persons name and then uses it on any following pages that they see. When done well this is very impressive to your website visitor.

PHP is also a great tool to use to interact with a database on your website. A simple example would be where you have a membership website that requires members to log in every time they use the website. The members username and password are stored in the database and the login page uses a php script to check that the username and password are valid.

MySQL

If your website needs a database them MySQL is a good option. Its free and integrates well with PHP. WordPress uses both PHP and MySQL so if you are a WordPress user any knowledge of PHP and MySQL will come in useful – though for most uses you won’t need any detailed knowledge.

I hope this is useful and helps you to decide what skills you need to brush up on for your web or blog development.

The Simple Skill That is an SEO Secret Weapon!

There is one key skill that is often overlooked in the quest for higher search engine rankings. Yet almost everyone who uses the web will at least have heard of it. Good Web Designers use it every day and real SEO experts use it too. So what is this skill? Lets see what the well known and respected SEO Expert Jim Westergren has to say about it. Recently he listed what he sees as the essential skills that any SEO expert or good Internet Marketeer needs to know. Top of that list was HTML:

“As an SEO, knowing HTML is a must. You need to see and understand how the search engines are reading the source code of the web pages.”

Its an excellent and often overlooked point – hence the little known secret! If you know HTML (which is easy to learn) you can really get under the skin of any web page and start to see how the search engine reads the page. So it seems that a little time spent brushing up on your html skills will be time well spent.

You can use your updated or new knowledge of html to design or alter your pages so that the search engines can read through them easier. If you stop to think about it for a moment you will see that this makes perfect sense. I mean who likes a hard read! I remember having to study Dicken’s classic book “Hard Times” during my school days and boy that was a hard read. It wasen’t just the subject matter but also the tiny font and the immense word density of the pages.

In order to put this key skill into practice you don’t have to be a profesional code wrangler but you must at least know how a web page is structured, what the main tags are, and how they effect the readability of the page. With this knowledge you can take your current SEO skills to the next level and fine tune your pages for even more exposure.

So the Secret SEO Weapon is not so secret afterall. Yet my guess is that many internet marketeers and many self proclaimed SEO experts have probably overlooked this simple and yet essential skill. So be good to your search engine robot friends amd make it easy for them to read your pages. I am sure they will thank you for it by promoting your pages up the search engine rankings.