I have to say that the best thing I ever did for myself in terms of development was to learn basic HTML. I didn’t sign up for an expensive course or buy a bunch of books. I did it all with the help of Ebay.

When I was selling domain names on Ebay a few years ago, they began to offer sellers the option to customize their listings with HTML. You could either use the visual effects, where you would highlight the text and push buttons (bold, italics, colors, indent…etc) to make changes, or if you were daring, you could open up the actual HTML sheet. I haven’t been a seller in a long time, so I don’t know what it’s like now, but I would imagine it’s similar. This is also similar to the admin panel on WordPress.

Instead of simply using the “cheating” visual method, I also checked out the HTML and got a grasp for using HTML, which is a universal development language. I know what varies tags mean (like <b>bold</b> for example). Knowing basic HTML from my Ebay days a few years ago, I am now been able to manipulate and edit design code provided by my developers and designers. Each time I do this, I am able to learn new things and grow my knowledgebase.

I have never been entirely comfortable using HTML, and I would never call myself an expert, but I am confident enough to make changes and edits, and as a result, I am less reliant on developers for small changes. I can make edits on my sites much more quickly and for a lot less money. Whether I use full websites or mini-sites, my HTML knowledge is immensely helpful.

So, when you have a chance, learn basic HTML and you will be much better for it. Incidentally, I have absolutely no computer science or technology background at all, so this is all foreign to me – so that’s no excuse!

Here’s a simple web development tip that foolishly I didn’t do completely until today.   Using Google Analytics, find all of your site’s 404 errors. Locate the internal errors by seeing which internal pages sent the error traffic, open the pages up, and search for broken links.

It is also critical that you find external links that are going to a 404 page within your site. Perhaps the content moved, was removed, or the other webmaster made an error with his link to your site.   If it’s the later, perhaps you want to email or call the other webmaster and ask nicely for the link to change.   I find that calling is a better way to connect, although many people seem to be reluctant to pick up the phone.

If you find that the link is to a page that was moved or removed, you should redirect the link in your website’s htaccess file to a relevant page within your site – or to the page that moved.   It can be a pain to find the exact link that was used because Google only shows the referring website, however, you can do a site search on Google (ie search site:xyzreferrer.com yoursite.com) in Google, and you will probably find where your link originates. Instead of taking the chance that the other webmaster will remove his link, it’s probably better just to redirect it to a relevant page.

After doing this with one of my sites a couple days ago, error traffic is way down. This helps to reduce the bounce rate, which should help with Google rankings.