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Should Entrepreneurs Know Programming Basics?

Entrepreneurs need to wear many hats and be familiar with a wide range of skills. Depending on what stage of development your business is in and which team members you have supporting you, you may need to play the role of team leader, sales executive, accountant, and product development lead—all in the same day.

While general business and management skills are the best “all purpose” skills to master, it also helps to have secondary skills ready to go for various applications. Among these, you may consider learning how to program.

So why would an entrepreneur need to know programming basics?

Applications for Programming Skills

These are some of the most common and straightforward applications for which programming will be useful:

Website development and troubleshooting. Every business is going to need a website, and whether you use a team to create a website from scratch or rely on a website builder, it pays to know a bit about programming. If you’re creating a website from scratch, you’ll have the power to customize every element on the page—rather than relying on templates—and you’ll have a sufficient understanding of what a basic website can or can’t do. If you’re using a website builder, you can tweak templates to your liking and earn the benefits of increased customizability.
Software development and troubleshooting. The same logic applies if your startup is developing software (internally or for clients). Though only a fraction of entrepreneurs will be leading a business that develops software on a regular basis, if this applies to you, you can take a more direct role in planning sprints and monitoring the work your team is producing.
If you learn something like Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), you can use your programming skills to customize Microsoft Office applications you use on a daily basis. By changing layouts, user interfaces, and tools available to your team, you can create the perfect tools for improving all-around productivity. Almost any team can benefit from having custom-made apps.
Side gigs and earning potential. Even if your startup is generating revenue consistently, you can benefit from working on side gigs. Programming is a skill in high demand, and it pays quite well. If you’re looking to make some extra income or diversify your revenue stream, it’s a valuable skill to have. Granted, not every entrepreneur will have the time or inclination to pursue extra work, but the option is there if you want it.
Team and project management. If your company creates software, you’ll be a better team manager and project manager if you understand how programming works (and have worked on programming projects in the past). It will equip you with a better understanding of how products are developed, and give you an accurate sense for how long various tickets and tasks will take.

Secondary Skills

Learning how to program can also grant you a number of secondary skills:

Creative problem solving. Though the fundamentals of programming are built on logic and, to an extent, math, you need creativity to be a master. There are always multiple ways to accomplish what you want to do, and sometimes the straightforward path of development doesn’t work out the way you think it will. Practicing programming regularly makes you used to looking for (and finding) creative solutions, which comes in handy when you’re brainstorming solutions for your startup’s biggest problems.
Logic development. That said, programming is still highly logical. Writing code, reviewing the code of others, and debugging can help you think more logically and meticulously about the problems you face in your business. Not every problem you face will be resolvable with the use of logic, but it can help you construct better arguments, perform better root cause analyses, and ultimately come up with more ordered directives.
Critical thinking skills. Programming will teach you how to think critically. If you’ve worked on a section of code or an application for a while, it’s natural to feel attached to it, but when you go to test it, you’ll likely find a few mistakes or functionality differences that you weren’t planning on. When you get to a situation like this, you need to challenge your assumptions and think critically about the work you’ve done. Practicing this habitually enough will help you think critically about every area of your business.
Networking opportunities. Learning basic programming skills will also force you to become acquainted with the programming community, which is massive. Chances are, there are multiple coding and programming meetups in your area. Even if there aren’t, you’ll inevitably find dozens of forums and platforms where programmers can get together, talk about the problems they’re facing, and hopefully, find solutions. All of these spaces are valuable opportunities to meet other professionals, whether you’re looking for employees, partners, clients, or just other entrepreneurs to trade tips with.
Negotiation and expertise. Knowing the mechanics of programming can make you a stronger negotiator and make you seem like more of an expert as well. This is most valuable for startups that create software or develop websites, but it could feasibly apply to any entrepreneur. The logic required in programming will help you structure your arguments clearer and more objectively, and being able to talk like a developer could improve your image with new clients, investors, or business partners.
Self-confidence and fallback skills. Mastering the art of programming will improve your self-confidence, which is necessary if you’re going to lead a team, execute sales, speak publicly, and so on. You’ll also develop an entirely unique set of skills, which will provide you with a solid fallback in case things with your primary business don’t pan out. Being a freelance programmer can be challenging, but it’s certainly better than being stuck without income if your business is drying up.
Last but not least, remember that programming is fun for many people. If you like the idea of creating things from scratch, if logical problem solving gives you a good challenge, or if you’re fascinated by computer science, programming can be stress relieving for you. It’s an entertaining distraction—and one that comes with many other benefits.

The Costs

These benefits make programming seem like a valuable asset for any entrepreneur (which it is). But there’s usually a cost to learning these basic skills, in terms of both time and money. If the costs are too high, it might not be worth pursuing, no matter how valuable the skills would otherwise be.

It takes a long time to learn a programming language, especially if it’s your first language. It takes something like 500 to 1,500 hours to learn a programming language fluently enough to consider yourself adept, which is time that would make most entrepreneurs shudder. But remember, this isn’t something you need to learn overnight, nor do you need to become an expert to get many of the benefits. If you put in just an hour a day, that adds up to 350 hours a year of experience, so in just a few years, you could consider yourself an experienced coder.

As for the costs, it’s possible to learn a language using free online resources, though it might be in your best interest to pay for a class, since you’ll get more resources and hands-on help. Even so, you won’t have to pay much—so you shouldn’t worry too much about the monetary costs.

Programming Language Considerations to know

The worlds of coding and programming are very diverse; there are dozens of viable programming languages you could specialize in, and each one has strengths weaknesses, and a different level of demand in the gig economy. You could start with something you know has a wide range of applications, but you could also go with a “specialist” language that’s ideal for the type of software you plan on developing in your startup.

For example, JavaScript is probably the most popular programming language, with more than half of all developers using it for something. HTML, CSS, and SQL are also especially common. Languages like Python and Ruby are known for being relatively easy to understand, but there are also up-and-comers, like Rust, which are worth considering. Almost any language you choose will have some benefits, and once you learn one language, you’ll be able to pick up others with relative ease. Do a bit of research to plan your decision, but try not to fall into analysis paralysis; there aren’t many wrong decisions here, and you can always switch gears if you find a language too challenging or stressful.

Considering the low barrier to entry and the massive list of benefits you’ll get from learning, it’s valuable for almost any entrepreneur to learn basic programming skills. It shouldn’t be at the top of your priority list—especially if you still have to write a business plan, or create the fundamental elements of your business from scratch. However, if you have a few spare hours a week and at least a fleeting interest in programming overall, it’s worth the expenditure of time to add this to your skillset.

Your Google Rank Doesn’t Matter Anymore

SEO

For a long time, keyword rankings were a staple part of any SEO campaign. In a lot of cases they were a primary metric used to judge performance.

Today, your Google keyword ranking is just one of several reasons your traffic can increase or decrease.

Google Keyword Ranking

Google keyword ranking indicates where on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) an individual webpage is positioned when a user enters a keyword. Typically, 10 results comprise a SERP, and the higher your position on that SERP, the more organic traffic your webpage will get. Lately, however, there are other SEO variables marketers need to pay attention to.

Just six or seven years ago, we had so much more information on the keywords users were searching to reach our web content. All of this information was available transparently within Google Analytics, and you could get relatively accurate search volume estimates from within Google’s Keyword Tool.

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The first major update that changed this was Google’s move to encrypted search and the dreaded appearance of “not provided” within Google Analytics. This means you can no longer find out which keywords are bringing in the organic traffic your website is receiving. The “not provided” tag looks a little something like this:

keyword-not-provided-google-analytics

This created a ripple effect across many SEO software providers that made a lot of their tools less effective — or at least tougher — to measure the impact coming from organic search on a granular level.

Google’s next major change — a more recent one — was its decision to move search volume estimate within their Keyword Planner tool to show estimates in broad ranges. Instead of learning that a keyword was being searched for 1,400 times each month, we’re told that it’s searched between 1k-10k times per month. This isn’t overly helpful when developing your content strategy.

These changes have forced marketers to adapt their search strategy to focus less on individual keywords and shift to a topic-centric content strategy, especially for content sitting at the top of their marketing funnel.

Keyword Rankings are Inaccurate

One of the major criticisms of keyword ranking data is the fact that it is largely inaccurate. Many industry leaders and even software providers of rank tracking data have admitted that this is the case.

The reasons behind this can be broken down into three broad buckets:

Personalization.
Device.
Location.

Personalization

Around the time of the launch of Google+, the SEO industry was talking a lot about personalization within search. Even after the death of Google+, personalization has remained a big consideration.

Bonus points if you remember Authorship snippets (circa 2012).

Ultimately, Google will deliver results that are personalized to a user based on their search history. This means that if I were to search for a query like “electric cars” and I’d previously been browsing the Tesla website, it’s a possibility that Google would tailor the rankings of the search results to show Tesla near the top.

This wouldn’t be the case for someone that hasn’t previously visited Tesla’s website, which makes it very tough to determine which website actually ranks #1 (because it can be different from one person to the next).

Device and Location

Whilst personalization plays a part in the ambiguity of keyword rankings, it’s nothing compared to the role of implicit query factors like device and location.

One of Google major advancements in search over the past five years has been its ability to take into account aspects of a search query that aren’t explicitly stated. To make sense of what I’ve just said, let’s take a query like, “Boston restaurants”.

Go back to 2010 and a search for “Boston restaurants” would yield a list of relatively generic websites that either talk about Boston restaurants or maybe are a restaurant.

Fast-forward to 2018 and a simple search for “Boston restaurants” will arm Google with a whole lot more information than before. They’re able to see which device you’ve searched from, where you’re located whilst you’re searching, even if you’re currently on the move.

Let’s say that you searched on an iPhone and you’re walking around in the center of Boston at 11:30 am. Here’s what this query would actually look like to Google:

“Which restaurants are currently open for lunch within walking distance of my current location in the center of Boston, MA?”

Google Maps results with location search for Boston restaurants

They’ve gathered all of this information without the individual even having to type it. As a result, they’re able to completely tailor the search results to this individual searchers’ current situation.

So … to answer the question of who ranks #1 for “Boston restaurants” becomes an even more challenging task.

Keyword Rankings are Directional at Best

Strong keyword rankings don’t always equate to high volumes of organic traffic, let alone improvements in revenue. As I mentioned at the beginning, we’ve lost a lot of visibility on search volume metrics, which makes it very difficult to accurately estimate the amount of traffic you can gain from an individual keyword. Factor in the changing appearance of the search engine results page (e.g. the widespread increase in featured snippets) and it becomes an even more daunting task.

If keyword rankings are your North Star, you may be traveling in the completely wrong direction.

Here are three search features that can interfere with your keyword rankings while presenting you with opportunities to capture traffic from Google in new ways:

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are the enhanced search results that appear at the very top of Google SERPs. They’re a form of “rich snippet,” a grouping of structured data that Google has collected from a webpage. And due to their size, they can take an extraordinary amount of traffic away from the the results beneath them.

google-featured-snippet

What makes featured snippet results so important? Publishers can earn them regardless of their Google rank. That’s right, it is entirely possible for a site below position #1 on the SERP to win this top-dwelling space, making Google rank noticeably less important for topics that are vulnerable to them. Check it out below — as you can see, the featured snippet is pulling in a result that technically ranks in position 3, allowing it to steal organic traffic from the results in positions 1 and 2.

Videos

Video is playing an increasing part in content marketing strategies, and not for superficial reasons. Videos published to any platform, not just YouTube, are now ending up on SERPs where Google has determined the intent behind a search query is best served in this medium.

google-video-carousel

These video results might take away traffic from publishers, but they also allow you to “rank” for keywords you might not have written content to target.

Image Packs

Image packs are large groupings of images that Google pulls into its SERPs from the Images tab in a Google search. As you can see below, they can be so large that they take up all the space “above the fold” of a SERP. This makes results ranking in position 1 for a particular keyword hard-pressed to capture organic traffic from that keyword unless they’ve published images dedicated to (and optimized for) this keyword.

google-image-packs

When all you’re obsessing over is where each page is tracking against a ranking goal, you’ll likely be misses a ton of other value that your content is bringing in. For example, what if you’ve built out some content with the primary goal of driving backlinks or social traffic, but it isn’t necessarily designed to rank for much itself (e.g. a research report)? Using keyword rankings as a determining factor of success could evaluate content in a completely inaccurate way.

Measuring Performance at the Topic Cluster Level

To combat a lot of the issues I raised above, we shifted the way that we measured content at HubSpot. For the past couple of years we’ve taken a step back from analyzing the performance of content on a page-by-page level and looked at the performance of content at the topic cluster level.

Organic search traffic and conversions are our primary search goals, so when we group our content into clusters to try and gain visibility for any searches related to a given topic, we look at the collective performance of these groups of webpages vs just the performance of individual pages.

This model of analysis helps us account for the varying goals of each individual piece of content. Also, running this analysis at scale tells us which topics tend to drive more traffic growth compared to others, and which topics tend to convert traffic at a higher rate.

This information tends to provide much clearer insights for the team as to what they should focus on next without obsessing over individual keyword rankings.

Is There Still a Place for Keyword Rankings?

Despite everything I’ve said above, I’m not actually saying that keyword rankings are dead (I can already see the tweets ready to be fired at me!). Keyword data can be useful for digging into any SEO problems that happen to your site, and also to look into the intent behind certain types of searches.

That said, the new version of Google Search Console that has just recently been rolled out should give you pretty much everything you need here.

More than anything, as a marketer you need to be aware that the data that you’re looking at related to keywords is not 100% accurate. As a result, this should never be your primary performance metric.