Last week the focus around the web seemed to be centered on improving skill sets and refining your methods.  Alex Iskold started this trend over at ReadWriteWeb with the post, Top 10 Concepts That Every Software Developer Should Know.  Alex gives his list of concepts that will support developers who wish to become more well-rounded and able to contribute to every aspect of a project.  Alex’s list includes:

1. Interfaces
2. Conventions and Templates
3. Layering
4. Algorithmic Complexity
5. Hashing
6. Caching
7. Concurrency
8. Cloud Computing
9. Security
10. Relational Databases

By mastering each of these areas, developers will be more prepared to handle many of the uncertainties that arise in their projects.  Having a solid foundation allows developers to program faster and more efficiently.  Check out Alex’s article to learn more about how each of these concepts can help strengthen your skills as a developer.

Search Engine Guide followed the trend with a post from Manoj Jasra titled, Become A Better Analyst With These 5 Skills.  Manoj gives five areas that are crucial to becoming more than an average analyst.  The underlying point is that understanding web analytics is never enough - to excel at your job you need to understand all the elements that create the data you are looking at.  Manoj recommends these skills to becoming a better analyst:

1. Search Marketing
2. Programming/Software Development
3. Office Tools, Excel/Access/Powerpoint
4. Deeper Analysis
5. Passion

Although conquering each of these areas isn’t a requirement to becoming a great analyst, gaining familiarly and becoming confident in each area will definitely boost your ability to analyze traffic patterns and understand your visitors.  Visit Manoj’s article to learn more about how these areas can support your growth as a web analyst.

In her regular in-house spot on Search Engine Land, Jessica Bowman questioned SEOs, You Think You Know Enough To Do ALL of Your SEO In-House?  A fully optimized website can be a beast, and if you aren’t planning appropriately it can end up costing you or the company you are working for thousands.  Before deciding you can handle your entire SEO operation internally, make sure you are ready.  Becoming an SEO expert doesn’t happen over night and takes years of experience.  Overestimating what you know and what you are capable of handling can easily become more costly than hiring outside support to help make sure you are doing the best job possible.  While you are still developing your skills and becoming a completely self-reliant SEO, Jessica suggests leveraging what you know and paying only for the knowledge gap.  Instead of hiring someone to do the work outright, find someone who can act as a consultant to check your work and reassure decisions that you make.  This will help you evolve as an SEO faster while avoiding making costly mistakes.

That’s it for this week.  Check back next week for another update.