The Importance of SEO/GEO and Dev Team Collaboration

I was speaking with one of my consulting clients the other day. They work in-house as an SEO director and I advise their team on SEO/GEO strategies.

They told me about a site migration that went awry. The developers changed the domain and added a sitewide redirect, replicating all URL slugs on the new domain.

That doesn’t sound bad yet, until you also learn that they changed the URL slugs for the majority of the pages on the new domain.

Consequently, most of the redirects from the old domain were resulting in 404 errors.

This situation didn’t happen for lack of SEO knowledge. It happened because the SEO team wasn’t consulted on the site migration until a month later. (This company manages a lot of sites, so it wasn’t surprising that one could slip through the cracks.)

I advised them on a solution and the cleanup began, but this got me thinking about relations between developer and SEO/GEO teams.

Why do disconnects between SEO/GEO and dev teams happen?

The short answer is the teams have competing priorities. The dev team may be tasked with migrating a site to a new domain. The SEO/GEO team is tasked with preserving rankings and AI visibility. They need to communicate to work together.

That’s the second area for errors to occur: miscommunication. This usually happens because of unclear ownership over the task. If a project manager was overseeing the migration, for example, they could hold a meeting where the SEO/GEO team emphasizes the importance of proper redirects to the dev team.

Collaboration needs a repeatable process as an organization grows. Projects shouldn’t be managed ad hoc, but through standard operating procedures (SOPs), like having a migration checklist for pre- and post-launch.

The SEO/GEO team isn’t aware of the time pressure the dev team is under to complete the migration, and the dev team isn’t privy to the long-term impacts that their mistakes on redirects could have on the brand’s organic visibility.

Orchestration through SOPs is required to manage both teams, and that takes clear leadership and strong communication.

When should the SEO/GEO team be brought into planning?

I would argue they should be involved in any proposed website changes, such as migrations, URL changes, redesigns, navigation changes, CMS replacements, or changes to content or crawler access. Even a quick Slack message would do.

While the SEO/GEO team doesn’t need to approve or disapprove of every website change, those changes can impact organic visibility, and thus they should be brought in to strategize around that.

How can SEO/GEO teams collaborate with developers?

All requests to the dev team from the SEO/GEO team should be useful ones that account for the following criteria:

• Explain the problem and its likely business impact.
• Provide affected URLs and reproducible examples.
• Distinguish essential fixes from experiments.
• Define the expected result and how to test it.
• Invite developers to suggest the implementation.

Simply telling a dev team to “fix the redirects” is less actionable than providing them with a URL mapping document, for instance.

What should dev teams owe the SEO/GEO team?

Advanced notice. Any consequential changes, technical constraints, testing environments, or release timing should be on the SEO/GEO team’s radar as the dev team is discussing it.

There should be shared problem-solving, where developers feel comfortable approaching the SEO/GEO team for recommendations, and vice versa.

Why should both teams agree on what “done” means?

Implementation is only part of the job. There also needs to be acceptance criteria. For example, updating the redirects after a site migration is the first step, but those redirects must also be tested.

The acceptance criteria for a completed task should be explicit and both teams should be aligned on it.

Why should SEO/GEO teams prioritize their dev requests?

When SEO/GEO teams share every request with urgency, it weakens their credibility with the dev team. Suddenly, no requests become important.

Fixing erroneous redirects after a site migration should take priority over a random GEO experiment, and the SEO/GEO team should allocate dev resources accordingly.

Why should shared learning be part of the relationship?

There should be occasional knowledge exchanges between the teams, where the dev team educates the SEO/GEO team about developer tasks and requirements and vice versa, to help with alignment.

After an incident happens, the teams should meet to discuss what part of the process got missed and how it can be prevented going forward.

Takeaways

The botched redirects on the site migration example I opened with didn’t happen for lack of SEO knowledge. It happened because of a month-delay in communications, likely due to competing priorities within the SEO/GEO and dev teams and no clear project owner implementing SOPs.

When developers and SEO/GEO professionals work together, it can be a magical symphony where tasks get implemented and mistakes avoided. But when that relationship isn’t strong, it can result in extra work for both teams, not to mention an impact on organic visibility.

Focus on the communication between the SEO/GEO and dev teams, implement SOPs, and assign clear ownership to projects to help work progress smoothly.

If you need help with SEO/GEO strategies, feel free to contact me. I’m an independent consultant helping brands and agencies.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing!

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