Luke Davis

Some brief thoughts about web devs and web performance

Filed under: tech | SEO | the Internet

Look: I know web devs have it really hard at the moment. If they’re not being thrusted into sprints and advocating for 10X engineering (I still don’t get this), they’re competing with AI that will either take their jobs or become an unwanted intern that they MUST use or… have AI take their jobs anyway. But as a technical SEO, it’s frustrating to be tasked to assess web performance and present findings, fixes, and the importance of implementation and get told it’s a low priority, it’s a third-party issue, or not hear anything at all and not have anything fixed.

Core Web Vital relationships

I’ve written about how web performance and improving Core Web Vitals metrics does not mean your site’s rankings will improve directly and that these considerations are more about UX and session quality than ranking and visibility. Given that web development contributes a lot to the former, it’s in everyone’s interest to work on it.

For developers/agencies that monitor RUM data and action things, I salute you. I also understand that you need buy in to get this done because it costs more and adds further work on top of other things. But slower sites lose revenue so if we emphasise that, that has to bump up its importance even a little, right?

Guiding lights

There are so many guides telling us how to measure and fix LCP, CLS, and INP issues alongside case studies[1] and experiments for every framework and CMS you can think of. But the guide-to-action ratio is too high on the guide side. We need the fixes put in or to be told why they can’t more often.

  • If it’s a low priority, what can we do to make it a higher priority?
  • If it’s a third-party issue, has that been tested? Is there an opportunity to liase with that third party to find a fix? Or maybe a short term fix on the front/back end if it’s deemed worth it?
  • If there’s radio silence, can we establish a regular form of contact just to hear if it’s being worked on or on hold and when to check back?

What you saying, devs?

Looking at these, this is more of a “me” problem and not establishing these processes. But for a SEO-client-dev relationship to work, it has to be on an equal footing. As well as an abundance of how-to guides for web performance, there are a lot of “how SEO can work with devs” guides as well but very few going in the opposite direction. I’d love to hear more from devs on what they might need from us.

Reputation management

SEO has a bad reputation amongst anyone who isn’t an SEO thanks to mass proliferation by content site owners, Google, and “SEO guru” culture. I know there’ll be plenty of web devs who see SEO in those kinds of lights and treat it accordingly. Sadly, I don’t see a lot of damage control on that front but perhaps if we talked it out Red Table Talk style or battled in the ring like Celebrity Deathmatch[2] (showing my age there). This isn’t me trying to be a liberal, I just want to feel some worth in my work and maybe mend some bridges so it doesn’t feel like a stuggle when raising tickets or making recommendations.

If you’re a web dev and none of this has offended you, feel free to email me with any of your thoughts or comments and I’d be happy to talk.

Iceberg Notes 🧊

1 I really wish people would show more methodologies and confidence levels in their case studies. How do we know if web performance improvements really contributed to better revenue or ranking?

2 I’m a lover not a fighter really.

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