What would you study?

[cradut]

Hey all, so here's a question....

I have been involved in SEO and Websites for about 10 years and have a fairly good grasp on SEO principles but feel that I should have a better knowledge of coding to take my knowledge to the next level.

Assuming that my knowledge of coding is zero, what would you SEO guru's suggest that I learn to improve my skills in SEO?

Thanks in advance for your input...

[EGOL]

I think that the answer that is right for me might be different than the answer that is right for you.

In the 1990s I used perl to code a basic shopping cart and used it for a couple of years.  I collected non-personal data about the customers' purchase intentions and passed it to Verisign, who collected personal and credit card data to complete the sale.  I used perl to code message boards, calculators, grade homework assignments, generate webpages from databases and much more.  All of this was done before such things were commercialized and made-to-order by big companies.

I stopped programming over ten years ago because it became so easy to get people to write short programs for me at freelance sites - and because age made it hard for me to concentrate hard on code.  I can write the specs and someone will code it and post a working copy before I have to pay for anything. They get it done faster than I could have done the work myself - and at a cost that is much lower than the cost of my time.  And, its kinda nice to now know a few people in Poland, India, or Peru who I can message through the freelance site to see if they will do a job for me.

Today, if I used WordPress, I would want to know php.  There are a lot of other widely-used content managers, shopping carts and other service platforms that use various languages.   I would learn the language that served my platform.   If I needed general data handing I would learn perl.  I require most freelancers to code in perl because I can understand it and can scan the code to be sure that they are not transmitting anything.  I can also tweak the code a year later if small tweaks are needed.   If I have a really big job or a job that handles really important functions, I will go to someone in the USA who I know and trust.