Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
#19984
The Emergence and Evolution of a Research Project 
Research never goes exactly according to plan; nor should we expect it to because research is a rhetorically situated activity. This paper illustrates this truism by providing a brief summary of the author’s experiences in designing, proposing, re-designing, and carrying out an investigation into electronic editing using both quantitative survey and qualitative methods.
Dayton, David. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Research>Rhetoric
#29200
Emergent Genres in Young Disciplines: The Case of Ethnological Science 
Although the rhetoric of relatively stable scientific disciplines has been studied extensively, less attention has been paid to discourse formation in young disciplines. The author extends recent theories of genre and disciplinary discourse in a close rhetorical analysis of early papers in ethnological science. Practitioners apply extant rhetorical resources to new disciplinary problems as they learn to identify themselves as participants in a collective project. The young discipline 'learns' its discourse from its practitioners.
Henze, Brent R. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Research>Scientific Communication>Ethnicity
#24837
Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms
Google's cache offers users a copy of your website with their search terms highlighted. You can do the same thing and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — whether they're coming from an external search engine or your own site search — by making their search terms easy to spot.
Suda, Brian and Matt Riggott. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#29568
Scholarly communication through Open Access (OA) journals has become a global phenomenon. This article reports on a study that measures the value of OA journals based on citation counts (ISI's Journal Impact Factor). It compares three highly ranked commercial electronic journals to five OA electronic journals. The non-OA journals are MIS Quarterly, Journal of American Medication Informatics Association, and Annual Review of Information Science and Technology; the five OA journals are Ariadne, D-Lib Magazine, First Monday, Information Research, and Information Technology and Disabilities. The criteria are established by ten major databases: Thompson's ISI, American Psychological Association's PsycInfo, Latin American and Canadian Health Science's LILCS, National Medical Library's MEDLINE, Scientific Electronic Library's SciELO, The IOWA Guide, CSA's LISA, EBSCO's LISTA, H.W. Wilson's Library Literature and Information Science, and R.R. Bowker's Ulrich International Periodical Directory. These basic criteria are categorized under 11 broad issues: availability, authority and review policy, scope and coverage, exhaustiveness of articles, page format, availability of hyperlinks, currency, updating policy, search facility, and other miscellaneous issues. Ten years' growth of Library and Information Science (LIS) OA journals has been measured by counting articles manually. During the last ten years the highest number of articles was published by First Monday, followed by D-Lib Magazine and Ariadne; the average number of articles per issue reported in Ariadne ranks first.
Mukherjee, Bhaskar. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research>Assessment
#28543
Evaluating Online Sources: A Tutorial by Roger Munger
This tutorial presents a brief overview of the reasons to evaluate information you find on the Internet, offers guidelines to assist you in the process, and helps you assess the information found on sample Web pages. Although the principles presented here apply to all kinds of information found on the Internet, the primary focus is on sites from organizations and companies-sites that you will likely visit while conducting research-rather than on personal Web sites.
Munger, Roger H. Bedford-St. Martin's (2007). Articles>Research>Online>Assessment
#10763
Evaluating Sources of Information
We live in an information age. The quantity of information available is so staggeringly huge that we cannot know everything about a subject. For example, it's estimated that anyone attempting to research what's known about depression would have to read over 100,000 studies on the subject. And there's the problem of trying to decide which studies have produced reliable results.
#25125
Technical writers enhance their career development and move faster through career transitions when they expand beyond the writing of didactic text to publish in journals and magazines. Additional attempts to write and publish creative and nonfiction pieces further develop their careers in any genre of communications.
Ball, Valerie M. STC Region 7 Proceedings (2002). Articles>Publishing>Research
#27783
Extracting Pearls from Other People's Brains: The Art of Interviewing
Perhaps one of the bigger challenges faced by white paper writers is coming up with good content. The default course of action is to do a Google search. While this approach can yield valuable information, the best pearls reside inside someone else's head.
Stelzner, Michael A. WhitePaperSource (2006). Articles>Interviewing>Research>White Papers
#31092
What is the biggest problem I face almost every time a client hires me to do something about a web project going awry? They don't know a thing about their users. They don't have a clue, whatsoever. Unbelievable but true!
Lafreniere, Daniel. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Research>Usability
#23888
Faceted Metadata for Image Search and Browsing
The authors present a new method of image searching based on conceptual descriptors. This method differs from the traditional methods of image searching that are based on keywords and visual similarity.
Hearst, Marti, Kevin Li, Kirsten Swearingen and Ka-Ping Yee. University of California Berkeley (2003). Design>Information Design>Search>Metadata
#23099
Faceted Metadata for Image Search and Browsing
The authors present a new method of image searching based on conceptual descriptors. This method differs from the traditional methods of image searching that are based on keywords and visual similarity.
Hearst, Marti, Kevin Li, Kirsten Swearingen and Ka-Ping Yee. University of California Berkeley (2003). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Search
#23100
All About Facets & Controlled Vocabularies
The authors present a comprehensive overview of faceted classifications and controlled vocabularies.
Fast, Karl, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Search>Controlled Vocabulary
#23117
Facilitating Data Exploration with Query Previews: A Study of User Performance and Preference
Current networked and local data exploration systems that use command languages (e.g. SQL), menus, or form fillin interfaces do not give users an indication of the distribution of data in their databases. This often leads users to waste time, posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Query previews are a novel visual approach for browsing and querying networked or local databases. Query previews supply users with data distribution information for selected attributes of a database, and give continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Subsequent refinements might be necessary to narrow the search sufficiently. Because there is a risk that query previews are an additional step, leading to a more complex and slow search process, we ran a within subjects empirical study with 12 subjects who used interfaces with and without query previews and with no network delays. Even with this small number of subjects and minimized network delays we found statistically significant differences showing that query previews could speed up performance 1.6 to 2.1 times and lead to higher subjective satisfaction.
Tanin, Egemen, Amnon Lotem, Ihab Haddadin, Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant and Laura Slaughter. SHORE (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability>Search
#30095
Faculty are strongly interested in issues related to scholarly communication.a Faculty generally conform to conventional behavior in scholarly publication, albeit with significant beachheads on several fronts. Faculty attitudes are changing on a number of fronts, with a few signs of imminent change in behaviors. The current tenure and promotion system impedes changes in faculty behavior. On important issues in scholarly communication, faculty attitudes vary inconsistently by rank, except in general depth of knowledge and on issues related to tenure and promotion. Faculty tend to see scholarly communication problems as affecting others, but not themselves. The disconnect between attitude and behavior is acute with regard to copyright. University policies mandating change are likely to stir intense debate. Scholars are aware of alternative forms of dissemination but are concerned about preserving their current publishing outlet.
University of California Berkeley (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research
#23034
Findability refers to the quality of being locatable or navigable. At the item level, we can evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate. At the system level, we can analyze how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval. This website is a selective, seriously incomplete, and perpetually evolving collection of links to people, software, organizations, and content related to findability.
#24696
Finding Out Who Likes What: A Research Tool Kit for Technical Communicators
As new technologies revolutionize our communication options, technical communicators must be increasingly accountable for the outcomes of our products and messages. Research in the behavioral and cognitive sciences has provided many data tools that can be very useful to technical communicators. Techniques such as simple descriptive statistics, the Delphi method, trained observers, chi-square analysis, and aptitude/treatment interaction analysis can help technical communicators discover and document the impact of your messages by revealing what you did right, who says so, and who disagrees.
Ausburn, Lynna J. and Floyd B. Ausburn. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Research>Writing>Technical Writing
#31573
Five Rules for Communication between Machines and People
The Human Research Institute has conducted extensive studies of the proper form of Machine-Human Interaction (MHI). Most of our work has been summarized in our technical report series and was presented at the last global MHI symposium. This report summarizes the key findings in nontechnical language, intended for wider distribution than just the specialized designer machines.
Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Research
#25339
Florida Update One Year Later - The Year Google Grew Up
The Florida Update effected more than site rankings in the SEO industry. Jim Hedger looks at Google one year later after the disaster.
Hedger, Jim. Search-This (2004). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization
#28134
Fluctuations in Document Accessibility: A Case Study of Five Search Engines
This paper presents an empirical investigation of the stability of five search engines, namely Altavista, Google, Hotbot, Scirus and Bioweb, carried out over two different time periods with different search queries selected from 'LC List of Subject Headings' with a closer examination of the URLs and their contents. The three different fluctuations identified, one of them being significant, show that Hotbot is prone to result fluctuations while Scirus is inclined to indexing fluctuations, and Bioweb is the most stable.
Shafi, S.M. and Rafiq Ahmad Rather. International Journal for Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Web Design>Search
#24476
Focus Group on Technical Communication Research: An Academic Perspective
'Research' is defined as a systematic, though fluid, process for uncovering or generating knowledge. Its, forms include basic research, formal research, and scholarship. No one form is better than the others with the kind of information needed determining the process required. The investigative model presented describes research in terms of the processes and products involved. Echoing Kuhn, they believe that an interest is not a true discipline until it gives rise to its own set of questions--beyond those of its base discipline--and publishes answers to those questions in its own journals.
Allen, Jo and Sherry G. Southard. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Research
#31589
This month's column is a quiz. I'll set up some scenarios, you choose which research approach you think is best. At the end, I'll defend why I think my own answers are right!
Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2000). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys
#29206
The Founding of ATTW and its Journal
The founding editor of The Technical Writing Teacher and a founding member of ATTW, recalls key moments in the history of ATTW and its journal, and the people who shaped the organization in its early years.
Cunningham, Donald H. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Research>Publishing>History
#26710
Four Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings
Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a web site that needs more traffic. If your web site doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then it will be hard to find.
Pires, Halstatt. Ezine Articles (2005). Articles>Web Design>Search
#24153
When it comes to framed sites and the effect that the use of frames by a site has on its search engine ranking, there are two schools of thought. Some people say that framed sites, if done properly, have no problems in getting good rankings in the search engines. Others claim that if search engine optimization is important to you, never use frames. In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Roy, Sumantra. 1stSearchRanking (2003). Design>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization
#31017
From a Business and Science Search Firm
Discusses some principles of managing an information search firm and their similarities to managing corporate libraries. Compares information search firms to other professional service firms. Describes the evolution of one small business and science information search firm. Gives insights into managing customer service and client relationships, quality control and processes, risk taking and professional growth. Touches on David Maister's theory of the quality experience and Michael Gerber's idea of the role of the entrepreneur vs the technician in small start-up businesses.
Lesky, Cynthia. Business Information Review (2008). Articles>Content Management>Knowledge Management>Search
