A presentation by our Senior SEO Consultant.

1. How to make
change happen in
your organisation
by talking your
devs’ language
Email: maria@builtvisible.com
Twitter: @mariacamanes
Slides: https://bit.ly/300QzGI

2. Developers are not your enemy!
They should be your allies

3. But they didn’t become developers to do SEO

4. You’ll need to make an extra effort to make them understand why they should
care about your recommendations…
…so that they can dedicate the time to implementing them successfully.

5. Reasons behind the fractured relationship
Bad experiences with
each other
Lack of education and
awareness
Lack of context
• SEOs have faced
pushback when
requesting certain
implementations
• Developers have been put
off by bad/inexperienced
SEOs selling
untrustworthy services
• SEOs don’t know enough
about development. Devs
don’t know enough about
SEO
• Lack of knowledge of the
fundamentals and
priorities of the other side
• Improved relationships &
trust can only be built
once an understanding
has been established
• When describing the
requirements for a new
feature / task to the dev.
team
• Aspects that might seem
evident to you might not
be as intuitive as you think
• They may end up with a
very different idea of what
you are asking for

6. A good Dev & SEO relationship will ultimately help you to
Make things
happen
Successfully
implemented
Implemented on
time

7. How to improve
communication
1. Delivering your SEO recommendations
2. Setting up the tools required to work together
3. Integration within the development workflow
4. Educating and empowering your dev team

8. Delivering your SEO
recommendations
The way in which you deliver SEO
recommendations will determine
how and when the developer
implements them.

9. Provide context & set
clear goals and
expectations
Give as many details as possible on your recommendations
• Explain the context of your recommendations
• Include the reasons why they are important
• Highlight the impact or potential benefit you expect to get out of its
implementation
• Break down the requirements into small tasks – providing context is important,
but you need to make sure it is structured clearly so that you can get every detail
implemented successfully.
To get developers on board, make sure
your requests include:
• What the problem is
• Why fixing it is important
• What is required
• What is the end goal

10. Enrich your
recommendations
• Include illustrations of the issues
• Provide developers with examples of
how the code should look
• Use wireframes and mock-ups to
communicate UX requirements more
effectively
• Add screenshots from competitors
for non-technical audiences

11. Help them understand what your users are experiencing

12. URL structure: webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=<Test 1 ID>,<Test 2 ID>
Compare how users experience your site and your competitor’s

13. Give only one solution
to the problem
• Give only your preferred option and fight for that one to be
implemented.
• If you provide a few options, they’ll always go for the easiest one (which
won’t necessarily be your preferred one).
Tip: make sure you are familiar with the other alternatives too, in case the
development team shoots that one solution down.
In most cases, a single issue will have
more than one solution. Don’t present all
of them on your document.

14. Include a prioritised list of
your SEO recommendations
Rank them based on impact and difficulty
of implementation.

15. Accompanying spreadsheet
with data
• Create one tab for each recommendation and
order them in order of appearance in the
document (from highest to lowest priority).
• Reference tabs in the audit
• Use the same name and code number

16. Use log files data when
possible
• Basing your recommendations on actual log file data will help you
understand how Google interacts with your site and prioritise tasks
accordingly
• This will also increase your credibility and the trust of devs on your recs
You can see exactly what resources
search engines like Google are crawling
on your site
Useful log file analysis guide

17. Make sure your recommendations make it to the receiver.
Don’t send an email and hope for the best.
People are busy and chances are that your precious audit,
which took you days to complete, ends up buried by other
‘more urgent’ emails.
Face to face delivery
• Schedule a face to face meeting (ideally) or call with the relevant stakeholders
and developers and go through your document.
• Make sure everyone knows what’s required from them and don’t leave the
room until you get the buy-in from relevant stakeholders and developers.
• Now is time to prepare your backup solutions in case your preferred choice is
not shot down.

18. Setting up the tools
required to work
together
Make sure you keep track of your
recommendations to ensure they
get implemented successfully.

19. Get logins and access
to the ticketing system
Make sure you have access to the ticketing system. This way, when
they create the stories for your change requests, you’ll be able to
check:
• That they correspond to your requirements
• That all your recommendations are in tickets
Configure the system to get notifications when there is an update
on one of your SEO tickets or when someone mentions you in a
comment.
This will help you track and
monitor the day-to-day
progress without having to ask
the development team.

20. Implementations
tracker sheet
task
• To keep track of all the
recommendations provided.
• Educate your dev. team and/or
project manager to use it –
things will go smoother.
• Use the ‘Complete’ tab to report
on performance on QBRs &
monthly reports.
Tip: making devs. aware of the
success will enhance your
relationship & their trust on your
recs.
Here is a link to an example of
spreadsheet we use with our
clients
Priority
order Project Description Impact Ticket #
Status
Dates
(recommendation &
implementation)
Owner
Difficulty

21. Build a business case
Know what is important to the
stakeholders so you can justify the effort
for decision-makers.
Applying figures to your SEO recs will
add some pressure on the dev. team to
get things done.
E.g.: use Google’s impact calculator to
calculate the potential revenue impact of
implementing site speed recs.
E.g.: Group recs together and provide
combined value (e.g. page templates,
site speed recs together, etc.) Tip: whilst this will help you prioritise tasks against each other, as well as get the buy-in
from stakeholders, you should never guarantee these results; this is a forecast after all,
so make sure you make this clear.

22. Integration within the
development workflow
Don’t expect developers to disrupt
how they normally operate to
accommodate an SEO
recommendation.
Understand their development
methodology and accommodate as
much as possible to them.

23. Get involved in regular meetings and roadmap planning so you can make changes
ahead of time rather than after something has been shipped.
Work with them to make a plan to keep you informed of any big site changes that
might occur and offer them support.
They don’t want to do their job twice. Getting you involved from the beginning
will save everyone time.

24. Put your SEO recs into a
format that they understand
Use their language
Have a better understanding of how
they work and what is most important
to them within their day-to-day job.
• Find out what kind of project management methodology they use. E.g.
agile, waterfall, etc.
• Make sure you write tickets in the format they like them to be written
in (e.g. very to the point with no context, more context, etc.)
• Depending on their discipline, engineers will vary in their priorities and
what they care about the most (e.g. front end? Back end?)
E.g.: a front-end engineer will pay more attention to SEO issues that
will provide a poor user experience

25. Maintenance is key
Use the ticketing system on a regular basis
• Respond to any comments and questions on SEO tickets made by developers
• Make sure you closely follow updates on any of your stories
• Check implementations once they are implemented in staging, before they
are deployed
• When pushed live, check the live environment again to make sure everything
has been released successfully
• QA by yourself before launch will help you ensure that all requirements were
implemented without any bugs
Use your tools!
• Go through the top priority actions on your tracker on every call and get an
update on how things are
• This way, if there are any blockers, you’ll have time to act without causing
major delays
• Remember to update the spreadsheet to move any (successfully) completed
actions to the ‘Completed’ tab (include the implementations date so that you
can use to report on performance)

26. When you spend more time with developers you’ll learn
from them, and they’ll learn from you.
This is even more important when working agency-side.
Embed yourself within your dev team
Allocate one day where both sides have to spend
time together to learn one another’s processes,
priorities, and roadblocks
• Isn’t enough to simply provide a list of SEO recommendations off the back of
an audit and expect these to be actioned by the developers
• There is a fair chance your suggestions will get lost amongst other priorities
• Sitting with them 1 or 2 days a month will allow you to:
o provide support
o help with prioritisation
o make things happen
o better understand their priorities, challenges, and ways of working

27. Don’t be afraid to ask them if you see something strange!
If you are unsure about something, ask them before you proceed to create
recommendations. This will save you time!

28. Educate and empower
your dev team

29. Explain to devs how their
work impacts SEO &
establish yourself as a
trusted authority
• One of the reasons why developers may not care about SEO is because they
don’t think that it has anything to do with their day-to-day jobs
• It is your responsibility to explain it to them so that they can buy in to the
importance of SEO and understand what they can do to improve it
• Make SEO an habit & integrate SEO work on the daily routine by promoting
ongoing education on SEO topics
Examples:
• Organise regular SEO training sessions for developers
• Weekly knowledge share sessions
• Create an SEO best practice guide
• Write documentation
Make sure they are updated and train new starters!
E.g.: tags that can remove pages from
Google’s index, files that can slow down
page load times, snippets that can break
the HTML, etc.

30. Show them the data
• Let developers know when one of their implementations have had a positive impact
• Try to attribute performance changes directly to implementations made at the back of
your recommendations
• When this happens, make developers aware of the positive impact as well; they’ll be
happy to know that their effort have paid back, and this will enhance your relationship
with them, as well as their trust in the value of your recommendations
Share with developers any success
stories caused by their
implementations
Sitemaps upload

31. A few final thoughts…

32. Never throw an individual under the bus! As SEOs we need to be taking full
responsibility. You can’t just delegate & not validate implementations.

33. Be flexible! Let devs teach you about the issues with your site, why certain
recommendations can’t be done and allow them to come up with relevant
alternatives.

34. Sometimes what will make the most impact isn’t technical SEO. It can be
frustrating but your suggestions aren’t necessarily going to be the best thing for
the website or business to do at that time.

35. • Developers are not your enemy, but your ally!
• When interacting with developers, make sure you do so in a way that shows
you value their work.
• If they feel like you value their contribution, they’re more likely to put in
extra effort to get work done on time.
Remember...

36. Thank you.
builtvisible.com
Maria Camanes Fores
Senior SEO Consultant
Email: maria@builtvisible.com
Twitter: @mariacamanes
Slides: https://bit.ly/300QzGI