Developers keep pushing your SEO tickets to the bottom of the backlog. How do you handle this?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Understand their constraints and priorities
- Quantify impact in business terms
- Write clear, small, testable tickets
- Build relationships and share wins
- Escalate respectfully with data if needed
Model answer
First I would talk to the developers and product manager to understand their goals and constraints, instead of assuming they do not care. Often SEO tickets are vague or seem low value. So I would rewrite them: each ticket explains the problem, the evidence, the expected business impact, for example "category pages bring 30% of revenue and 400 are not indexed", and clear acceptance criteria. I would split big tasks into small ones and suggest quick wins that fit into current sprints, like template fixes. I would also try to add SEO checks into their release process so issues do not come back. When a fix ships, I share the results publicly and credit the team. If an issue is critical, I escalate with data through the product owner, respectfully.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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