 Talking about developer guide to work with marketing teams, I can relate to that. Yeah, I do a lot of SEO, you have to work with developers and you want to make sure things work smoothly. Any day you have to work together. So, yeah, I think it would be interesting for a lot of us to give it up for Rich. As I said, I'm a developer. I'm here to present to developers guide to working with marketing teams. So, just first of all, a very brief introduction about myself. So, I work with WordPress in 2006. I then worked as a search engine optimizer slash WordPress developer for an agency based in Wales, where I'm working from, for four years. I then went to Manchester, worked as a pure digital marketer between 2010 and 2012. I then returned to WordPress development for a marketing agency in 2012 and I went freelance in 2018. Why am I telling you all this? Basically, I'm a developer who kind of knows a little bit about marketing. So, as well as WordPress, I go to a lot of SEO and do some marketing meetups. And because a lot of my background is originally in there, I know a few people there and I get introduced and people kind of put their arms around me and say, hey, this is Rich, he's a developer. He kind of knows a little bit about SEO. And the look back is akin to these three idealians, the look they give the claw in the original toy story because it's kind of like, ooh, he's a developer. He kind of knows about SEO. It's great. And then we kind of get talking. It's a wonderful time to talk to them and then it gets really, really depressing because they talk about all the time today to be burned. And it kind of sucks because it's not necessarily about developers or bad marketers but about communications. So, hopefully by the end of this presentation you'll learn to work together as an amazing team and learn a few great things. Like what Wales did in Euro 2016 and I still know have not shut up about it. So, why can you do it? Well, if you get them on your side, it's a really, really useful position to be in because it helps out a lot. They come to the English workout and there's been great talks about all sorts of developments in WordPress and how to do cool stuff. It can be difficult to kind of get inspiration and ideas for things like that. So, having a marketer who will come up with these great ideas that you can then build is a really, really cool thing to have. They will also go into battle for you. So, they will also sit in meetings and say, look, we can't lose the development team from the budget. They're really, really cool. Can we keep them? Please, thank you very much. It's a useful thing to have. Plus, also what you do can seem like magic. So, whilst it can be easy to impress, it can also be easy to frustrate them. So, what do you do? Marketers are judged on key performance indicators with your KPIs. These are what marketing strategies are built around and this is what the agency ultimately will be judged on. Things like sales increase. Have there been an increase in sales? Traffic increase. Has there been an increase in traffic? Ranking's increase is also one. There are other things as well like social media kind of interacting that you won't be able to control. So, you won't be able to control all of them, but you could control some of them. So, once you can control, basically things like on-page changes. So, conversion rates. Are there improvements in the site to improve the user experience on the site and to make a conversion easier? Rankings. Google has said that rankings, you may not think that, but Google has said that the new site speed is a ranking factor. So, thinking about improving site speed can improve your ranking, so you can help with that. And click-through rates. Improving the site architecture and improving the on-page experience can help click-through rates from search engines. Now, you won't be able to control all of it. So, for example, a conversion rate, if the marketing team doesn't call the click campaign, conversion rate will drop. Rankings. If the marketing team does really, really dodgy links from really, really dodgy places on the internet, you can be hit with manual penalty. Rankings can drop. And if the marketing team prioritizes an on-page, it can affect the click-through rate and click-through ratio. So, be aware, but just don't be judged. Now, usually when you start working with marketing teams, it's usually like a couple of meetings at the beginning. And the first meeting is generally quite lovely because you're kind of like finding out about them and it's really, really sweet. And you're like kind of going, oh, you know, usually have a coffee or beer or a nice lunch or something. It's really, really fluffy and really, really lovely. And then they send you an email three weeks later and I go, I really enjoyed working, you know, really enjoyed our first meeting together. Here is a list of everything you've found that is wrong with your site. Now, you don't necessarily say it in those words, but that's what they mean. And this is like the big list of things they want to turn your pride and joy, you know, to improve it. So, how do you deal with it? Well, the easiest thing to do is for us for it to be prioritized. Now, if they're a good marketing agency, they'll turn around and they kind of go, okay, cool, right, go away, prioritize, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and send it back. It could be really unhelpful and say, well, all of it's a priority. And if all of it's a priority, none of it's a priority, so you will probably have to prioritize it for them. And this is the point you have to refer back to the key performance indicators. This point is also really, really useful to get Google Analytics and Google WebMessage tools access. I still call the Google WebMessage tools the search console. I apologize. I'm old school and still call it that. I also apologize for the next slide because there's no way you're going to read it. I really, really apologize, I'm calling these slides online afterwards. So, for example, if the KPI's are to improve conversions, go back to your original paper, I said this is a bizarre. In Google Analytics, you go to behavior, site content, and landing pages, you get something looks like this. I apologize, we can't read it. There is a top bar on the top, which is up here, which has goals set up. So, if the marketing agency has set up goals for your site, and they should, you know, otherwise, they're bad for their job, you can click on the goals set. So, there's a goals set one, goals set two, goals set three, goals set four, and the comments. Now, goals set one to four are kind of like arbitrary things. So, for example, one could be like any sort of like potential lead. So, have they filled out the contact form? Have they clicked on the phone number? Things like that. One could be like some form of like further interaction. So, have they clicked on your Facebook profile? Have they clicked on your Twitter handle? Have they clicked? Have they signed up for you? Things like that. It doesn't really matter. You know, it's an arbitrary thing. You could always stick everything in goals set one, or you can swear it off. The only one that's a bit different is e-commerce, because e-commerce has like ranking dates. Anyway, you have a list of them. You have them with a couple of links at the top, which is here. And if you click on them, you can do the conversion rate to landing pages. Again, I'm really sorry you can't see it. So, for example, on this one, you need to look for pages that have a few conversions already, sort of doing some work. They're actually working. I'll see if you can increase the conversion rate. So, for example, in this one, you'd look at the home page, as a conversion rate of 3.2%, see if you can kind of increase it. So, they've won the goal set, and people still need to contact them. So, this is on my side. Similarly, to improve rankings, look at pages that are getting a lot of traffic in Google Analytics, where you go to behaviors, like speed and speed suggestions. You can also filter further. So, you can filter by organic traffic, which you should, because you don't care about paperclip traffic. Also, traffic based on the device as well. So, if you get a lot of mobile traffic or desktop traffic, you can filter by that. And then there's a link here. I don't know if you can see it. Could page be suggestions. Now, you can click on that link. Alternatively, you go to the good Google page tool and put in a URL of any page on there. You can click on that and go to Analyze, go to the same place. People pay two tools, one of the tools I use. It's kind of like our backup one. I don't have to use this, but to use wise, I'm going to explain it. Put the URL of your chosen page and click Analyze. You get to something like this. First of all, the best couple of words were shoes. So, this is my site. I know it's 65. I haven't had time to improve it. You get like a page preschool, which is this big round number of the top. Completely ignore it. It's an arbitrary number that Google's just made up. What you need to look for is to look to show that down is lab data because this gives you that real number. So, it's like, it gives you numbers for how fast things work and it's also mobile first. So, this is like over a mobile connection. So, this is like time to interact with a mobile connection in 6.6 seconds. Trying to interact with it is basically how long before you can start interacting with a site. So, how long before you can start reading it and scrolling it and things like that. One cool thing about the Google tool is you're beginning to get WordPress-focused improvements. So, for example, this is, this is again my site and it kind of says, eliminate render blocking resources. So, this advice is saying, I'm taking some of these for, can I apologize? But basically, this is like, we load things at the top of the page and we should really be loading at the bottom because we don't need it at the top. So, it comes away with that and basically says, like, you could shade a second of your load time. The cool thing about this, though, is that there's a bunch of plugins that does this for you and it doesn't lead to a specific plugin. It just lists to, like, a tag, which is useful. Finally, the click-through rate. The final KPI is simply click-through rate. This is in Google Search Console. Go to Google Search Console Performance and filter by page URL. So, you want just the home page. This is quite a laborious task to kind of look at. So, filter by page URL. Put your home page in there and also filter further. Maybe you just want to take everything that doesn't get a single click. And then you want to filter by click-through ratio ascending. So, you want the lowest click-through ratio of searches of bleeding to click through your site at the top. You'll get a list of keywords which basically go to your home page. And you kind of like go, well, maybe you get a lot of impressions for it. So, Google has associated your site with that keyword, but it's going to your home page. Maybe you can build a page that is actually dedicated to that keyword. So, for example, in this one, in this one, for example, WordPress developer freelancer. I get a couple of clicks through that and I'm down in a position 59. So, I can build, like, a page that's dedicated to that keyword and hopefully increase that. If all else fails, estimate the time and cost for each task. Right. Right, soft skills. I'd originally done this talk before and I did this talk in with Camp Brighton. It suddenly came up to me after the talk and said, really, really enjoyed your talk. However, I had a problem with this one and I was like, okay, and they explained it and I was like, yeah, it made complete sense. I still decided to keep it in but I put a caveat on the next slide. Soft skills are hard. They're really, really tough. You can't get, since Axel is on the news, it's really really difficult for people to deal with. It's something that I struggle with as well. My get-have profile is a lot more impressive than my gender profile. And it's just one of those things I struggle with. And communication and speaking to Marx is low and important skill and you will be speaking to them and it can make difficulty a good experience and a bad experience. So, rather than teach you how to speak to people, I'm going to try and teach you a few things that I hear occasionally to be easy to do or deep-master. This is, Marx isn't to build it and they will come across. This is getting bad. I used to be going to work camps and they would kind of go, there'd be talks and they'd kind of go, oh, if you just produce good content, you would lack. And whilst that is kind of true, it can be also really frustrating because it's like saying, if you run really fast in the Olympic Games, you'll win a gold medal. Yeah, it makes complete sense, but you're missing everything leading up to that point. And you cut all over in the Olympic Games. You can build the times with good content, but you just want those with experiences. So, yeah, Marx is a lot more difficult than that. Avoid micromanaging. It's annoying. I hate it. Everybody hates it. Both micromanaging yourself and micromanaging your clients. So, what do I mean by this? So, when I work with clients, I generally have at the absolute most twice daily updates, unless I'm using like a dedicated project manager tool, like a Sarna or Trello or something like that. Whereas it's a lot easier to update them on a particular task. If it's just like communicating over email, I will send an email usually at the end of the day or twice a day at the absolute most, unless it's like a bit of a rush of a project. But making a way of changes on things they need to do is all they need to be done. So, for example, when I start a project, I will ask for SFTP details, I'll ask for WordPress logins, even if the project starts in six months or six weeks time, because that way they have six weeks to get those details to me. I had this one that I recently did on the day of launch. They told me that they were going on QDC 20 minutes after they were going live. And I was like, no, you know, we're not going live then. Thanks for telling me that. So, yeah, it was just... So, yeah, make people aware of things you need before you answer the need and as soon as possible. That's quite an explain why. What do I mean by this? Well, if a request is made that you don't necessarily agree with, ask why it needs to be done rather than say, oh, it can't be done. Either one of three things will happen. Either you'll get some understanding of why it needs to be done and you can go, okay, cool, we'll add this to the workflow. They may also realize it's not a good idea, because when they start formulating it and kind of like saying, maybe you can think about it, they may go, actually, it can't be done. Or you end up in exactly the same place you were before you started. At this point, explain why it's a bad idea. Generally, in development, most things can be... unless you're working with external APIs or anything like that. Things do take time, though. So, what may be perceived to be a 10-minute job is actually can be quite substantial. I have this one recently where we were using the WordPress Post ID as an invoice number, and they were just like, well, the invoice numbers are getting ridiculously big. Can we just take three numbers of it? And it's like, you can't really do that. It's going to be a lot more difficult. And explain why they got an understanding when we kind of worked out another solution and things like that. I give this talk the other way around, so I give a talk to marketers about the thing they shouldn't say to their development team. And there's a bit in it, which is that the three worst words that a developer can say to a marketer can say to a developer is, can you just... can you just do this? The three worst words that a developer can say to a marketer is, can't you just... can't you just do this? It's very dangerous to see knowledge. I've been working WordPress now for 13, 14 years. I've been in... I've had my code put in... I'm in the credits for WordPress in two releases. I've been running this in the last 18 months. Can I use command-line interface to log into a server for your other thing? No. It's just something that I just cannot get. I've been... again, another project I had was... where somebody assumed that I knew how to do SSH the day the project was going live, and I was just like, I don't know. Unless you send me the list of the commands, I can follow instructions, but you're going to have to help me out here. And it's just really, really not helpful. So yeah, try not to assume knowledge. It's a very, very difficult skill because, you know, I'm probably not supposed to speak to to kind of work out a way of how to not come across a bit patronizing, but it's a bit of a tricky skill to do, but sometimes it may be better to be a bit more patronizing rather than assuming knowledge. Another example, because I'm racing ahead of time, I worked... I did some work for a SAS. They had a front-end built on WordPress, and they also had... the SAS was built on another system. The front-end... the pricing page was built on the SAS because they wanted to change it, and the page on the WordPress site was kind of iframed in because that's all the budget allowed at the time. I sent to the... their internal development team, as I... do you mind just sending over the copy of the theme that is currently on the site? So I can look at the iframe copy of those and make sure everything's okay, and we can do everything there. Can't we just download it from the site? And the answer is yes. The problem was that they had this weird kind of Git repository system on the server so that every single commit they had for the committed GIF created a new folder on the server of the Git commit string, which is basically like a 30... 32-character hexadecimal string, so it's 1 to 9 on that A to F. It's all like random numbers. The iframe stance, as well, was the 1st of January, 1970. So I had to find the correct Git commit for the latest commit for the main main, go into that folder, go into the WP content within that folder, find the theme directory. The theme directory had a start name, final, one, two, three, four, and then a years, and I was like, okay, it's gonna be one of these. I found it, took me two hours, and they did have to do it. So yeah. Right. Try and marketing development relationship. This is basically anticipating problems before they arise. Off to the liaison. So this is like a win-win-win situation. Benefits applied, problems Netflix quicker. Benefits you because it saves time and benefits the marketers at the agency because there's less responsibility for them. So people who you should be speaking to as a developer, probably other in-house developers, designers and hosting companies that probably good people speak to. Make sure you get the clients approval first. It may not ultimately be possible due to non-disclosure reasons. Agree to balance groups. Again, this talk is slowly becoming my therapy. But the best example I ever had was an agency who I want to work for an agency that we have a client and they have an in-house marketing thing. They would ring me 45 minutes after sending an email saying, why is the email not being answered? That was really bad because immediately I turned around and went... And I went defensive and they immediately turned aggressive. Because they were like, why hasn't it been done? And I'm like, it's not been done because we have the chance of things like that. If you agree to balance groups on the one hand, that immediately stops. And if they do stop email ringing you up, you don't need to be negative because as per our agreement I will get back to this email whenever. And also for them, less aggressive because it's like they become a bit defensive when they ring you up. If something like that happens, because they can turn around and go, look, I'm really sorry, but the server's on fire. Can you just look at it? And straight away you can kind of, you know, it's a little bit more neutral. That's the right way. I have one point of contact. Problems arise with more than one point of contact on both sides. Particularly if one of the points of contact on one side insists to use a method that hasn't been agreed. Priorities do get messed up big time if there's more than one contact on both sides. Document everything you've changed. Everything you've changed. Just document it somewhere, even if it's an email or in a repository or something like that. If you have access to these, don't mind, you can annotate things in Google Analytics. So if you put a bunch of page B improvements live, put a note saying, yeah, we put a bunch of page B improvements live, and then you can kind of say if they have an improvement on traffic or something like that. What's to do when things go wrong? Try not to be confrontational. Really, really not professional. Don't try and blame them, don't blame them, don't blame them. Use documentations for situations made and why they were done. Generally, when you write documentation before things go wrong, so it's written in a very neutral tone so it can be a good time to kind of start having. This is why this was done. You can refer back to it then I've hidden behind agreements at times, not always smart because of your sanity, if you agree to reply within one business day, do kind of wait and sit and think about something, it can make it a lot easier to deal with. Come to agreements for exit, if the worst this I think has improved over the last three years. Yeah, don't ghost be flied, ghost seems a horrible thing and I've seen a lot of odd agreements. Ghosts come back, you know, I've had clients come back after four months, or not necessarily with me, but it went, yeah it was me, but it was an accident, they came back to me, it was just like, you know, kind of thing and you have to kind of deal with it. No one on my side, no? So what do you do when things go right? Because things generally do go right. If you enjoy working in the marketing agency, recommend them. So I have three SEO agencies, a freelancer, one that deals with bigger budgets to do full-scale marketing and one that's kind of in the middle. If you enjoy working with them, you know, if you enjoy working with them, chances are you've got like a rapport already, can be useful for them to do. Keep an eye on the team on LinkedIn, that's really, really handy. Did some odd things a bit like a merry-go-round so everybody kind of works for each other, especially for people who enjoy working with even if you just have to press one button now and just kind of go, yeah, congratulations, you've got a new job, congrats, congrats, and it's great. Because it keeps you in their mind so that if they have a workforce problem, they'll come to you. Another really quick example, I used to work for a big travel agency, multinational, they had a massive team of travel bloggers, all those travel bloggers, well, most of those travel bloggers now have their own travel blog, they've all dealt on work, yes, they've done all their work, that's great. And if you become really, really friendly with them, ask them for your opinions on your own site, they'll have a coffee and beer. It can be 200, 300 pounds a day, with these people, and a beer's a lot cheaper. So, yeah, that's really, really handy tip for how. So, good for a while, thank you very much, and I'll have you just like a few questions. Thank you. I actually want to know something. Okay. Have you got a horror story that you can share when things have gone very bad? What happened to yourself or someone you know? Have you got a horror story to share? The QVC one, it was a client's year on QVC, that was something that went bad, so that was a project I got brought in at a later stage, but it was almost, so the basis, they wanted to switch it over. It was just going live on the guide, they told us earlier on QVC, quarter to 12, and we were just like, this isn't going to happen. And it was really, really bad, and half of it is because of that. Not for only the one point of contact, it was because I was getting emails, it was like a persona, or on how to deal with it, and then I was getting emails, I was being copied into emails, that I shouldn't have been copying into emails, because there was like Coggett Mannequin scenes and things like that. So, yeah, that was, that's probably a horror story, that was fairly recently. I can't go on with that. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking now, I mean, that's probably the worst kind of work I've done for quite some time. I'm getting better at filtering, so I keep, yeah, I keep. Any of you have any questions you want to ask? Any advice on choosing the likes of agencies to work with, or any recommendations that you would like to work with? Okay, warning signs. Anybody who guarantees first aid driver teams? No, they can't. I would recommend, sorry, where are you, where are you based in Glasgow, or? Yeah. Okay. I would, I don't know if it's something I heard, but it's probably like a market in New York, somewhere in back there. Like, I mean, Manchester, we've got Manchester here, and there's a couple in London, there's one in Dublin. I think one of the main ones in Glasgow is Craig Campbell. Yeah. Yeah, no Craig Campbell. Craig Campbell is one down in Glasgow. Yeah. But go too long for these moves up, because generally what I find is that a lot of marketers who kind of are a little bit open, a little bit like, I'm happy to share what I know, like very well, it's a really, really useful, you know, and there will be some that will just kind of, no, I know everything, I want to keep hold of it and not share it. The ones that are a little bit more open and more than happy to go and speak to you and everything. I was, I can recommend some in Manchester, but unfortunately like a lot of mine in Manchester, London, and things like that, so the people that I'm trying to know. Try to check in, go to meetup.com. Yeah. And check there, type in SEO and search in Glasgow. You never know what you can find. Yeah. Or maybe you can get to the track. If you do that, try and find one that has quite a lot of members, because people will just set it up and find something that's right there. I was just wondering what things you've applied to your own site from working with marketers, things you've learned, you've been able to improve your own. Okay. So things I'd like to learn. I, one of the, so one of my thinking buddies is a Facebook, it's like a Facebook like paid social expert. And he has taught me, like for example, a lot of it when I started was everything was under my name. You can set up a Facebook business account, which is really, really handy because you can get away with a few more naughty things. So I got my Facebook account banned from paid social. So it was like, I can't have my side of thing. If I basically, they said, Facebook's a relatively, it's like, we don't want any more of your money. You know, kind of thing. So I managed to get it done. Sorry about that. But I managed to restore it by creating a business account. I, other things I've learned, a lot of the Google Analytics, I've learned by, you know, showing them my Google Analytics and kind of going, right, what would you recommend? Things like campaign building or things like that. It's kind of like a useful thing to do. It's a little bit of JavaScript, but it's anybody, you know, just three lines of JavaScript in companies and stuff like that. Yeah. I think we've got, yeah, we've got, I want a few more questions that we're going to ask. We've been very, we've learned about our upgrade tips. Okay. So if I'm starting a new company, what should be my start-up budget for digital marketing or something? Or to be even, even more clear, what will I get if I have a budget of 1,000 pounds for a start-up? What can I expect to get? Will people even talk to me or they will just ignore my email or what would happen? So the free answer I know, I think, that's like the, like, so basically, you shouldn't really be running something for six months, like in digital marketing and things. I think they do work. I think the minimum kind of, I think it's about 300 a month. And that's enough. It depends on what you do. So if you're talking kind of like a small area, that should, you know, you probably don't need, as long as you kind of optimize for that local area, that could just be enough. So something like if you're talking, you know, our studios in Glasgow, for example, chances are, you know, if you go to the local, you get, you know, the automated keywords and things like that. Chances are you'll probably be somewhere, and then you can begin to kind of go right where we go from here. So it may be like a bit longer process. And I think my three notes have been don't quote me on this, but I think it's like 300 a month you kind of start on. That's just, so that is just like a technical SEO and a bit of what you're thinking. I could be wrong. I have one more question. If anyone has any more questions. I don't know if you could annotate to any of them, but how do you do it? Can you say anything to say on that? It's a... Right. That was on. He definitely gave you to do it. Do I want to show? I'll talk to me after, and I'll probably just kind of... Anybody else as well is like, when's the next break? Is it now? No. Okay. Next break, I'm happy to stay here and just kind of show or something. Or would you go and sit out there because I need to kind of click through. I could be completely wrong with that, but if anyone wants to kind of do that, I'm more than happy to go about like 10 minutes just to sit out and have a click through. Now's a good time because you have coffee break, you have about 20 minutes, 15 minutes, so relax, chill, get a drink, and you can be back in whatever you want to go to. Just before quarter past three, I'm going to get to the next section. So, thank you, B, thank you very much. Thank you.