Every technical SEO has a version of this meeting.

The migration shipped on Friday. The redirects went in. Someone on Monday noticed organic traffic had fallen off a cliff , and someone else remembered there was, in fact, an SEO on the team somewhere, and perhaps they should take a look.

This isn’t the meeting anyone puts on the LinkedIn headline. It’s the forensic cleanup. The polite explanation of why a decision you weren’t consulted on is now producing consequences you would have flagged if anyone had thought to tell you it was happening. The quiet realization that your job, not for the first time, is to do archaeology on an outcome that was predictable the moment the roadmap got drafted without you in the room.

Welcome to SEO. The dark art. The mysterious discipline.…