As you well know, it's extremely important to have the proper site architecture, technical requirements, and site infrastructure which is important for the search engines. With that said, I've found that most web developers are just that - web programmers who may not know the full effect of their core SEO strategies or marketing strategies. Most web programmers that I've worked with understand their jobs and their roles in the company very well and quite simply are unaware of the latest SEO trends or search algorithms and how they play a vital role to the search engine rankings of my client's website. Being able to work directly with these technical savvy professionals is a core requirement for any SEO firm or consultant that you bring on to help you with SEO. Keep these ideas in mind when trying to communicate with these types of people.

Remember the "good to great" methodology.
Most programmers and developers may not have the same personality traits as your management team or customer service teams. Keeping that in mind, some programmers and developers may be a bit resistant to training, advice, or direction from someone who is not a programmer or developer. This can cause conflict between the two parties and be detrimental for the overall goals of your SEO campaign.

Over the past few years, I've managed to gain excellent skills in handling these situations. The first thing to do when speaking to a programmer (or group of developers) is to clearly establish that these developers have more training, experience, and programming experience than you do (even if you think that they don't!) Acknowledge that they have done a good job with SEO up until that date, and that you've been brought in to bring them from good to great - NOT from bad to good.

Communicate best practices clearly and often.
Although I may not directly understand the relationship between variable functions in PHP programming versus ASP direct subsequent variations, I do understand SEO and how it relates to programming. Web programmers and developers need to understand the principles of searchability and absolutely need to build these techniques into their programming. Web programmers also need to have a set of standards and best practices for editing and modifying the website architecture - and to address any relevant problems that the website may have.

For example, there's been a lot of buzz going around about Google's new site speed factor in rankings. This has created quite a bit of panic in some of the major websites that have speed issues. Understandably, it's very important that a website can compete and stay on top of the game with fast load times and crawl rates. Addressing these concerns with a firm but gentle approach with your developers is best - instead of, "Our site loads extremely slowly, you need to fix it," try using a different approach. Explain the situation, explain why speed is now a factor in search results, and encourage the developers in their work. Try saying something along the lines of, "Google has just announced that speed is a major factor in our website rankings. Our website isn't as slow as some of our competition, but this is an area where we can really get to the top of the game and steal some great momentum to beat out the competition. We need to really focus on site speed and using our best practices in this area - look out for a company memo to be distributed later on these subjects."