[Wed 7 May] Learning SEO as an Engineer

[alistairjcbrown]

Learning SEO as an Engineer

• Starting point: I built a site with great data but Google didn't know it existed
• The engineer's instinct is to build features, not think about discoverability
• Using an LLM as an SEO advisor — what worked, what was naive
• Technical SEO: structured data, meta tags, sitemaps, Open Graph — the stuff that feels like engineering
• Content SEO: the stuff that doesn't — page titles, descriptions, how Google actually reads your pages
• Static site specifics: SSR/SSG advantages for SEO, how Next.js helps or hinders
• What you measured and how you tracked progress (Search Console, indexing, impressions)
• The gap between "technically correct" and "actually ranking"
• Honest take: what's still a mystery, what felt like guesswork
• Needs: some before/after data from Search Console if possible