Five Online Platforms where Marketers can Learn to Code for Free

When it comes to online marketing, especially SEO, there is coding involved and marketers require basic coding skills so that they can effectively execute their strategies without any hassle. If you want to freshen up your website coding skills or want a beginner-level programming skills, you do not have to go back to college and spending huge loan for your tuition fee. The ability to code is indispensable and it is not a skill reserved for tech-nerds or geeks. It allows marketers and business owners to identify an quickly resolve problems such as a string of ‘shaky’ HTML in a CMS system, to more effectively optimize landing pages, or weighing on powerful new Google AdWords Scripts.

Coding also gives you a unique perspective in SEO content development, when you understand the inner workings of your systems and can play around with it and get creative. There are many free online platforms where you can learn coding such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript for free, and there are some websites that charge fee for advanced courses, but learning advanced coding is worth an effort.

Codecademy – For starting from the Basics

Codeacademy is where you are going straight to coding sessions that are interactive and are designed to build hands-on experience for first-timers. If you are looking for theory, this is not place to look, and here, you will start doing coding and Codecademy offers variety of courses such as HTML & CSS, Python, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby on Rails and many more. Here, you will learn to code, but you won’t acquire a deep understanding into why you are doing anything you are doing. There are other resources for that, but if you are a marketer or you are using an HTML-based CMS in your work, hands-on experience is just what you need.

Khan Academy – Unique Teaching Approach

If you are looking a learning platform that is highly interactive and uses a unique teaching approach towards coding, then Khan Academy is the one you are looking for. It is one of the first online resources to provide free coding lessons and it often provides education through gaming elements. They offer variety of courses other than coding (HTML & CSS, Javascript), which include economics, math, physics, chemistry, arts and humanities. The website makes use of drawings, games and animations to teach students, and it allows students to interact with one another online and even share the work they have created.

MIT Open Courseware – For Deep Understanding about Coding

If you already have some coding skills and want to learn more or want a deeper understanding about it, then visit MIT’s Open Courseware site which offers a number of programming courses. Their Open Courseware website contains material from 2,510 courses which belongs to MIT, and all open and available to the world. First-timers should start out with the Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course, which needs a commitment of 3 hours per week. Students can interact with one another using the OpenStudy platform and forums and the course consists of text resources, video lectures and an exam.

Udacity – The Software Learning Hub

Udacity is founded by Sebastien Thrun who is a Stanford Research Professor and Google Fellow, and the brain behind Google’s driverless car. Sebastien had a vision to standardize education by making courses available free to anyone via the web, all over the globe. If you are going for the basics, it is better to start with their ‘Intro to Computer Science Program’ and it takes about three months to complete at six hours per week. By the time you are done, you will be capable of building your own search platform or a social media site. You can browse the course materials free of cost, or take a full-time course with coaching for a fee.

Coursera – For University-level Course

You can think Coursera as a platform to free courses from established universities around the globe. The site offers free introductory coding courses that come from universities such as Stanford, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Toronto. Many courses are also available in different languages, and you can participate in Coursera courses for free, where available, pay a course fee to acquire a verified certificate.

As an online marketer, gaining basic coding skills can certainly help you in understanding problems facing by your team on a current project, and it may help you in making edits and build websites or mobile apps by yourself.