What if a person is both a developer and an SEO? Does said person hate ones self for this?

Often SEO is on trial… if it will help things, we’ll do more (or institutionalize it, codify it, etc), but maybe it’s just a trial. In other words, the General Solution (typically chosen by developers for efficiency and poetry reasons) is not always the best solution.

In other words, manual changes are sometimes the best solution, for business reasons. Even a lot of them can be cheap, compared to making significant changes to the code base (such as example above, where reverting the manual changes is actually super cost effective due to the autogen… a nice bonus if needed).

And there are *many* “judgment calls”made every day by SEO people, who keep an eye on business and performance issues. If we need to bring the developer in because they are resistant or unresponsive otherwise, costs increase (the risk/benefit ratio for SEO changes, which exists naturally due to the search marketplace, is tilted by the developer’s attitude… which costs everyone time/money).

Keep in mind that marketplace is VERY fluid.. more fluid than the technology world the developer lives in (Google changes faster than jQuery etc).

Also keep in mind that changing image filenames and ALT attribs (example here) is done “on the fly” by an SEO, but uses a lot in-context judgment (proper words to select, order, style, etc). Even segregating image adjustments to a separate Excel sheet adds complexity/costs (it does.. might be worth it, but it is more costly than making changes in-line).

The game is to move a page up in the serps, and LEARN about that serp using the data obtained ( did it move, how did it move, who did it beat, who didn’t it beat, what was the traffic for old position, what is traffic for new position, etc). The insight gained will be used to help decide whether or not more work is cost-effective (including whether or not it is cost-effective for the developer to institutionalize the process into the code).

Too many chefs? Does the developer need to be brought into every business decision? Does the developer’s judgment on these specific issues have to be considered? Catered to?

“it’s for SEO” is indeed an explanation… but the groundwork should have been laid out already, that the SEO effort is going to make changes, how permanent are they, what levels of cooperation are needed, etc. And then, follow the agreements, don’t second-guess. If you want to challenge, challenge on outcomes not strategy or process. Anything else and you’re getting in the way.

If this is a requirement for SEO, then a good developer will write this into the “auto generate” script that can read on named subdirs or something like that. If files need naming like that, tell the developer so he can design for change moving forward.

BTW, “it’s for SEO” is never an explanation. Saying that, a developer hears, “It’s a need to know and you don’t have a need to know.” If you explain how search engines see images and how that helps the site, a good dev will be more than happy to make the changes. A bad one deserves to be unemployed.

DEV: you’re kidding, right?

SEO: No, please change them. It’s for SEO.

DEV: but we autogenerate those filenames, and thumbnails, from our sooper-dooper image.php function. They can’t be changed.

SEO: Okay. Then give me ftp access to change them directly on the site.

DEV: but your manual changes will be overwritten on next content update via autogen, which we do whenever the hell we feel like, without telling anyone. You’ll have to change them again, manually, each time.

SEO: No worries. We bill hourly. Your Christmas bonus should cover it.

But there’s one unanswered question here: are the SEOs the green gang or the blue gang (’cause the green guys look tougher – the blue ones look like wimps).