Why Engineers Should Care About GTM and SEO
How go-to-market thinking and SEO influence engineering decisions, product adoption, and real-world impact.
Why Engineers Should Care About GTM and SEO
When I started building side projects, my focus was simple: write clean code, ship features, and move on to the next thing.
But over time, I noticed a pattern.
Some projects were technically solid — yet no one used them. Others had average code — but real users, feedback, and traction.
The difference wasn’t engineering skill. It was GTM (Go-To-Market) thinking.
Code Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum
As engineers, we often assume:
“If the product is good, users will come.”
In reality:
- Users can’t use what they can’t find
- Features don’t matter if they aren’t understood
- Performance, SEO, and clarity affect adoption as much as functionality
This is where GTM and SEO quietly influence engineering decisions.
SEO Is Not a Marketing Afterthought
Working on SEO made me realize that it’s not just about keywords.
It affects:
- How pages are structured
- What content exists at all
- Load times and Core Web Vitals
- Accessibility and semantics
Suddenly, engineering choices like routing, rendering strategy, and data fetching had business impact.
GTM Thinking Changes How You Build
When you think about GTM early:
- You design clearer onboarding flows
- You prioritize features that unblock adoption
- You build pages meant to be discovered, not just used
- You optimize for clarity, not cleverness
Engineering becomes a means to enable growth, not just correctness.
Side Projects Taught Me This the Hard Way
While building products like an AI career platform and other tools, I realized:
- Shipping fast mattered
- But shipping something discoverable mattered more
- Feedback loops mattered more than perfect abstractions
That’s when I started caring about how users arrive, not just what they see after.
Final Thought
GTM and SEO don’t replace good engineering — they amplify it.
The best engineers I’ve worked with:
- Understand users
- Care about discoverability
- Think beyond tasks
- Build with context
And that mindset changes everything.
If you’re an engineer building products — even side projects — GTM thinking isn’t optional anymore.
It’s leverage.