It is one of the most challenging areas of been a SEO, where you have to pass your recommendations over to a team of web developers who are some usually going to want to argue why you want to make a H1 heading on website or you will want to make some changes with their flash designs on their lovely designed website, which have have put together with much love and care and most of the time their website is like their baby, they want to protect it at all costs and do not want any changes.
I have put together some recommendations from my time working as an SEO and Social Media Specialist and dealing with some different web developers both large scale web dev companies with 100+ employees and small contractors who work by them selves.
1. Start the recommendations with the web developers as early on as possible, ideally when they are planning the website. It is highly advisable to get SEO functions in place before website goes live. This is a mistake many companies do they put the SEO process last when really the SEO recommendations should start when the CMS is been picked or the new design process is starting.
image – business hit
2. Build a good relation ship with the web developers, you have to really suck up to some degree to the wed developers because these are the guys who are going to make things happen for you. Do not just talk about business to them try and break down the business barrier and chat on a personal degree to some level i.e what are you up to on the weekend, talk about football, the weather i mean this is a point most business people know from dealing day to day.
3. Explain every thing with a reasoning, you have to have a reason for every change on a website you are going to be making, for example web developers may not understand why Title tags need to be different on each page, explain that if the title tag is on each page is the same it can cause cross site content duplication.
4. The more you know about web development the better you can talk on a like minded level with web developers. I have found that some web developers actually look down on SEO’s and try to send emails with highly technical language in them. Lucky for me I have been practicing web design and development for a few years so 99% of the time their technical terms are normal language for me. But really if you don’t understand something a web developer has take the time to ask what each point means, never be afraid to learn something new from a web developer as they have a great wealth of knowledge. It also goes both ways some times it is great to provide the web dev with some SEO insights and train them up a little more with SEO. But really it is advisable to brush up on some technical skills if you are missing them because key technical skills will assist the SEO process for all projects.
5. Make sure you know exactly what is going to be charged with your web developer. Some web developers will charge an arm and a leg so you have to be warey that your client is not going to be left with a heafty bill after your 30 minute phone call for example. You all ways have to be in your clients best interest.
Overall if you follow these recommendations and also include some of your own ways of dealing with web developers it will be a great working relation ship which is vital for the SEO process working effectively.
