How SEOs Should Work With Developers | Lillian Purge

How SEOs should work with developers

SEO and development should be natural partners yet in my opinion this relationship is one of the most common failure points in digital teams.

From experience working across agencies, in house teams, and complex builds, SEO rarely fails because of bad ideas. It fails because SEO and development work in parallel rather than together.

Search performance today is shaped as much by technical decisions as it is by content and links. Rendering choices, site architecture, performance optimisation, and deployment processes all sit squarely in development territory. When SEOs are brought in late or developers are treated as implementers rather than collaborators, results suffer.

This article explains how SEOs should work with developers in practice, what each side needs to understand about the other, and how to build a working relationship that produces sustainable SEO results rather than constant friction.

Start with shared goals not tactics

The biggest mistake SEOs make is starting conversations with tactics.

Requests like add schema, fix Core Web Vitals, or change internal links often land badly when they are not connected to outcomes. Developers care about stability, performance, and maintainability.

In my opinion SEO discussions should begin with shared goals. Visibility, crawl efficiency, performance, and reliability are objectives both sides can support.

From experience, when developers understand why something matters rather than just what to change, implementation quality improves dramatically.

Respect that developers optimise for different risks

Developers manage risk differently to SEOs.

They are responsible for uptime, security, scalability, and technical debt. SEO changes that seem simple can introduce risk if they touch templates, routing, or rendering.

In my opinion SEOs should acknowledge this reality openly. Showing awareness of risk builds trust quickly.

From experience, developers are far more receptive when SEOs demonstrate an understanding of trade offs rather than assuming SEO should override everything else.

Involve SEO early in technical decisions

SEO works best upstream.

Rendering strategy, CMS choice, URL patterns, and hosting decisions all have long term SEO consequences. Fixing them later is expensive and sometimes impossible.

In my opinion SEOs should be involved at planning stage not post launch. Even a short consultation can prevent months of technical debt.

From experience, early involvement reduces rework and avoids adversarial conversations later.

Translate SEO needs into development language

Developers think in systems not keywords.

Telling a developer that a page needs to rank better is not actionable. Explaining that search engines cannot crawl certain routes or that rendering delays indexing is far more effective.

In my opinion SEOs should frame requests in terms of behaviour and constraints. What cannot be crawled. What is rendered too late. What breaks internal linking.

From experience, technical clarity is more persuasive than SEO jargon.

Be precise and prioritised with requests

Long SEO task lists overwhelm development teams.

From experience, handing over a spreadsheet of dozens of issues with no prioritisation almost guarantees inaction.

In my opinion SEOs should group issues, explain impact, and clearly identify what matters most.

High impact low risk fixes should be highlighted. Nice to have improvements should be clearly labelled as such.

Understand development workflows and constraints

Every development team has a workflow.

Sprints, release cycles, code review processes, and testing all shape what is possible and when.

In my opinion SEOs should adapt to these workflows rather than working against them. Asking for urgent changes outside normal processes creates friction.

From experience, aligning SEO work with development cycles leads to more consistent progress even if it feels slower initially.

Use evidence not opinion

Developers respond well to evidence.

Crawl data, rendering tests, log analysis, and performance metrics carry more weight than best practice statements.

In my opinion SEOs should bring data to conversations whenever possible. Show what search engines see. Show what fails to load. Show where crawl is wasted.

From experience, shared evidence turns debates into problem solving.

Agree on success criteria together

SEO success is often measured in rankings and traffic.

Development success is measured in stability and performance. These metrics need alignment.

In my opinion SEOs and developers should agree on shared indicators. Faster indexing. Reduced crawl waste. Improved response time. Cleaner architecture.

From experience, shared success criteria reduce tension and make wins visible to both sides.

Avoid positioning SEO as an exception

SEO should not be treated as a special case.

When SEOs ask for exceptions to standards, shortcuts, or undocumented changes, developers become cautious.

In my opinion SEO requirements should fit within existing engineering principles wherever possible.

From experience, SEO that aligns with clean architecture and performance best practice is easier to maintain and defend.

Collaborate on performance improvements

Performance is a natural bridge between SEO and development.

Both sides care about speed and reliability. Core Web Vitals improvements often benefit users and search at the same time.

In my opinion performance projects are the best place to build trust and collaboration.

From experience, joint wins in performance create momentum for more complex SEO changes later.

Treat schema and structured data carefully

Structured data often sits between SEO and development.

SEOs understand intent and accuracy. Developers handle implementation and validation.

In my opinion schema should be designed collaboratively. SEOs define what needs to be communicated. Developers define how it is implemented safely.

From experience, schema implemented without collaboration often becomes outdated or misaligned with templates.

Communicate in writing and document decisions

Verbal agreements get lost.

In my opinion SEO and development decisions should be documented clearly. What was changed. Why it was changed. What impact is expected.

From experience, documentation reduces repeated debates and protects both teams when questions arise later. It also supports onboarding and long term governance.

Be realistic about timelines

SEO urgency does not always align with development capacity.

In my opinion SEOs should be honest about urgency but realistic about delivery.

From experience, pushing too hard often delays work rather than speeding it up.

Clear timelines and phased implementation build trust more effectively than constant escalation.

Learn enough development to be credible

SEOs do not need to be developers but they do need technical literacy.

Understanding how rendering works, how routing is handled, and how templates are structured improves communication.

In my opinion technical credibility is one of the strongest assets an SEO can have when working with developers.

From experience, developers engage more openly when they feel understood rather than instructed.

Encourage two way education

The relationship should not be one sided.

Developers benefit from understanding how search engines crawl and index. SEOs benefit from understanding system constraints.

In my opinion the best teams encourage mutual learning rather than rigid roles.

From experience, shared knowledge leads to better decisions on both sides.

Avoid blame when things go wrong

SEO issues often surface after launches or updates.

Blame erodes trust quickly. Problem solving builds it.

In my opinion SEOs should approach issues as shared challenges rather than pointing fingers.

From experience, calm diagnosis and collaboration resolve issues faster than escalation.

Build SEO into technical acceptance criteria

One of the most effective practices is embedding SEO checks into development acceptance criteria.

Rendering works without JavaScript. Internal links are crawlable. Response codes are correct.

In my opinion this turns SEO from a reactive role into a quality standard.

From experience, this reduces regressions and repeated fixes.

Use shared tools where possible

Shared tools improve collaboration.

Access to Search Console, performance monitoring, and error logs helps developers see SEO impact directly.

Search platforms like Google provide insights that support both teams when used together.

In my opinion shared visibility leads to shared ownership.

Final thoughts from experience

SEOs should work with developers as partners not service providers or blockers.

Both roles care about quality, performance, and sustainability even if they approach problems differently.

From experience, the most successful SEO outcomes come from teams where SEO is integrated into technical thinking rather than bolted on afterwards.

Good SEO does not fight development. It aligns with it.

When SEOs respect development constraints and developers understand search behaviour, technical decisions become strategic advantages rather than ongoing compromises.