Digital @ MC

Thoughts, ideas, opinions and news from the Digital Team at Marie Curie.

[digitalteammc]

Best beginner resources for learning SEO

SEO Basics

The basics and background reading for learning SEO

Moz’s (Formaly SeoMoz) Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Its been read over a million times as stated on the front page, at the very least you’ll know as much as the competition

The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an in-depth tutorial on how search engines work. This guide covers the fundamental strategies that make your websites search engine–friendly. Download your copy of the world’s most-read guide on SEO!

Moz is also a good tool to start your SEO with.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

From 2010 so read with this in mind, but its good to get an insight into what Google thinks of SEO

This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it’d be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites’ interaction with both users and search engines. Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.

Quick Sprout’s Guide to SEO

Infographic styled ebook from the co creator of Kissmetrics, Quickegg  – Neil Patel

the most extensive and detailed guide of advanced SEO techniques that exists today. This resource is piled to the top with tactile, immediately actionable things you can do to your website, to improve rankings, performance and traffic........READ MORE

[digitalteammc]

The Digital team sure know how to host a Blooming Great Tea Party! There’s still time for yours, a great way to raise money (and very yummy all at the same time...) https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/get-involved/organise-activity/blooming-great-tea-party 

[digitalteammc]

6 month birthday (surely an excuse for cake?)

Hi. I’m Fi - I’m Senior Digital Channels Manager at Marie Curie. In short, I lead the development of the Marie Curie website, working with our (super-awesome) scrum team to deliver new website features and fixes every two weeks. 

But enough about me...Today I wanted to mark an important point in the life of the Marie Curie website. Just over six months ago, we delivered a new website for Marie Curie. We went from this: 

To this: 

Our biggest changes included a new content management system (giving our content team much more flexibility), new look and feel, responsive design and a much improved navigation. Not to mention lots of new content and enhanced user experience.   Six months on feels like a good time to reflect. It’s been pretty non-stop since our December launch. We’ve delivered many a new feature in this time, and more importantly learnt a lot about what we released on day one. 

Analysis and insight has been key - as well as feedback from our stakeholders. Some of the things we thought would work, didn’t. Others worked better than expected. It’s always important to remember that we’re building things based on assumption - it’s not until we get these features out there that we truly know how our users will interact with them. That’s why it’s so important to keep testing, adapting and learning all the time.  Some key lessons the last six months has taught me? 

Make sure you think about your analytics and SEO requirements when you’re creating new features - the last thing you want to do is get stuff out there and not be able to measure it. 

Challenge yourself to be strict when you’re prioritising - although it’s hard, it’s not always about who’s shouting the loudest 

Make sure give people plenty of visibility of what you’re doing. Digital shouldn’t be the ‘cool kids in the corner’ - people will be much happier to wait for a new website feature if they know all the other things you might be working on 

Don’t try and take on too much at once - you end up with a stressed team and could compromise quality (back to point number 2!) 

No matter how hectic things get, or when things go wrong, don’t forget how much you’ve achieved. 

So happy six month birthday website. And I’ll have your slice of cake for you don’t worry :-) 

[digitalteammc]

Looking for a system that helps your SEO team better prioritize tasks while making individual team members more efficient at their jobs? Agile methodology can do both and does not require much in the way of training.

So Agile was the big thing of the last few years, now as we all know its now LEAN ( soon to be my trademarked LaGILE (LEAN + AGILE :))

SEO naturally aligns itself to the agile methodology, being used to quick changes, adjusting on the fly and iterative/incremental

[digitalteammc]

Content marketing has gone way beyond buzzword status and is now a core part of almost any well-known brand’s marketing strategy.

Just had a watch of some of these - really reminds you about how important and effective good content can be. We’re keen to look at how we can start to better integrate our content across all of our digital channels - it’s so important that content doesn’t live in silo. 

[digitalteammc]

Why you should care about second screening - JustGiving blog

Picture yourself as a fly on the wall at Chez Hazle on any given evening. Whilst you may wish to hone in on her terrible choice of television viewing (invariably something reality-show based), Claire encourages you to focus instead on her second screen activity. For all the wonderment that causes my jaw to be permanently …

If you’ve not read our Head of Digital’s latest blog post on Just Giving....well then you really should! It’s all about focussing on the user and their journey across a multitude of digital channels...  

[digitalteammc]

Do you know what you trust or where you place that trust? A cautionary tale (but one that is made up).......

[digitalteammc]

Email is a useful communication tool that is all too often abused. Become part of a solution rather than the problem.

[digitalteammc]

what-happens-when - An attempt to answer the age old interview question "What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?"

This is one of my favorite interview questions for a web developer. Searching Google is something we now take for granted, but it  actually relies on a huge amount of technology. This is an comprehensice look at each of those parts.

N.B. If a candidate ever answered the question with this much detail then 1. The interview would overrun and 2. I’d suspect that they’d used Google to find the answer (which is no bad thing mind)

[digitalteammc]

Again. And then again. If we keep asking why all the way to the beginning of the thread, we might come to understand how it is that this is the way we do things around here. And then realize that...

The key to digital disruption*?

(*I said disruption there just for Fiona, our Product Owner. She likes buzzwords.)

[digitalteammc]

Scott Hanselman on Programming, User Experience, The Zen of Computers and Life in General

Working in London, we are lucky enough to have a vibrant city right out of our window where there is a huge community of knowledge sharing groups covering just about any topic you can imagine. Shameless plug - I run one  

That means it’s pretty difficult to be a ‘dark matter developer’, but they are still out there. Doing a great job.

[digitalteammc]

A guide to DEVELOPER SPEAK. Although these type of things play to the unfair developer stereotypes, they do highlight that often we don’t say exactly what we mean. I definitely meant that.

[digitalteammc]

17 great tips on "work smarter not harder" from Dan Pink's bestseller "Free Agent Nation."

“Barking up the wrong tree” is a great blog by Eric Barker containing a load of research based productivity advice. Useful.

[digitalteammc]

Resource 1. a : a source of supply or support : an available means —usually used in plural b: a natural source of wealth or revenue —often used in plural c: a natural feature or phenomenon that enh...

Treat your people like people; people. I’ve always found the term resource used in this context abhorrent. If you ever hear me use it like this, you have my permission to slap me across the face with a wet kipper.

[digitalteammc]

I couldn’t agree more with this post. The best developers, or colleagues for that matter are always the ones that understand the wider context and have skills that extend on both sides of their role...

[digitalteammc]

MC & DAM XXX (aka Turkey)

Our friends at DAM digital decided to take the Digital team out on a date a few weeks back which was very nice of them.

All good first dates involve Bowling, beige food and a good level of friendly competition. Some people though can take things a little seriously..........

Here is a picture of our very own Rachel recording the fact that she was crowned the Marie Curie champion. Not that she was proud or anything.

[digitalteammc]

This week’s meme

A great example of the internet working in a way that nobody intended are meme’s. These viral pockets of creativity and energy spread with such speed and generate engagement levels that would make even the most ambitious marketing manager envious.

Introducing #HipstaCop

http://www.irishexaminer.com/examviral/fun-times/the-hipster-cop-who-went-viral-on-twitter-just-got-his-own-comic-strip-330387.html

And the incredibly cartoon...

http://pchipsta.tumblr.com/