Working on technical SEO and AI search will inevitably require working with code. This can seem daunting, especially to those who come from a non-technical background.
Why bother since AI can write code for us? While AI can write, edit, process, and analyze a lot of code, AI makes mistakes. You need to know how to check the output for mistakes to ensure everything is correctly defined. Plus, having even a bit of familiarity with different languages will make it easier to work with AI to analyze what is happening with your website’s code.
What Languages You Should Know
The four most important languages to understand when working with technical SEO and AI search are JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Markdown. You do not need to follow every line of code, but you should understand enough to recognize what the code does and how it may affect search engines and AI systems.
JavaScript
JavaScript affects how websites are rendered when bots are crawling the site. Google may execute some JavaScript when crawling and may index some content loaded via JavaScript. However, many major AI crawlers do not currently execute JavaScript and would not see any content loaded with JavaScript. You need enough familiarity with JavaScript to determine how the code changes the website’s content. JavaScript is also a large contributor to slow load times, making it important to review when optimizing website speed. Understanding what each script does can help you identify code that can be simplified, deferred, or removed.
An understanding of JavaScript also makes it easier to review JSON-LD, which is commonly used for schema and some APIs. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. Arrays and objects, commonly used in schema, are defined the same way in JSON-LD as they are stored in JavaScript.
HTML
You’ll want to review a website’s HTML code to ensure the basic HTML tags are in place. This includes title tags, heading tags, meta tags, and link elements used for canonicals, hreflang, and other purposes. Well-structured, semantic HTML makes it easier for crawlers to understand and index a website’s content. It also supports accessibility, which is important in its own right and contributes to better support for AI agents.
If you understand HTML, you will have an easier time understanding XML as well. XML sitemaps are still important for SEO, especially for larger or more complicated websites. RSS feeds are written in XML, and some APIs use XML to exchange data, so a basic understanding of XML can help with other technical work too.
CSS
CSS provides rules for how a website should be displayed. As you review HTML code, you’ll also want to review how the HTML elements are styled within the CSS. Google not only looks at the code, but at how that code is represented on the site. For example, an H1 tag is less useful if it is designed to look like every other piece of text on the website. You’ll also want to make sure the CSS displays content correctly at different browser sizes, including on mobile devices. CSS can contribute to speed issues as well, especially when a website loads unnecessary or bloated stylesheets.
Markdown
Markdown is a lightweight markup language used to format plain text. HTML is also a markup language, but HTML uses complex tags, while Markdown uses simple symbols to format the text. Markdown is written as plain text and is more human-readable than HTML. However, it requires using characters in specific ways to define headings, links, lists, and other elements. View more details about working with Markdown.
Markdown is becoming increasingly important for AI search. It is used for the proposed llms.txt file, which can provide AI systems with background information and links to important website content. Cloudflare and other services also allow websites to deliver Markdown versions of webpages to AI systems.
Other Helpful Languages
PHP
PHP comes in handy if you work on WordPress websites. Sometimes you need to make changes to template or function files, like adjusting the way titles or descriptions are output. You may need to change the HTML to use a different tag—like changing from a span tag around headers to an h1 tag. Or you may need to work with Claude to refactor the theme. I commonly need to review the theme file to help a developer understand how to make a change to the website.
Python
Python is the go-to language for data analysis and statistics. If you are doing major analysis work, Python is a critical tool to help you solve problems and get the answers you need. Once you are ready to move beyond basic analysis that can be accomplished in Excel or once you are working with larger data sets, you are going to need Python (and AI systems are incredibly helpful at producing Python for these tasks).
Final Thoughts
While you do not need to master these languages, it is important to have some familiarity with them. A basic understanding can help you recognize technical problems, communicate more effectively, and identify new areas to improve.
As always, let me know if you have any questions. If you need help with your website, please contact me.