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.
#13587
New Horizons in Scholarly Communication
A service of the Librarians Association of the University of California, New Horizons in Scholarly Communication highlights trends affecting the process of creating, disseminating, retrieving, and using information for instruction and research at the university level. We began by identifying sources covering all aspects of scholarly communication which are of concern to faculty, instructors, researchers, students, and staff.
Jaffe, Lee. Librarians Association of the UC (2002). Academic>Publishing>Research
#14624
The author offers advice on choosing the most appropriate search engine, as well as a list of tips for using search engines.
Archee, Raymond K. Intercom (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#27515
No Quick Fixes Where Search Engine Optimization is Concerned
There are simply no quick fixes regarding search engine optimization. Adding META tags on your site neither a quick fix nor a slow fix. It won't fix anything and it won't have any effect on your search engine traffic.
Whalen, Jill. High Rankings Advisor (2006). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization
#29072
Obtaining Reprints--The Effects of Self-Addressed Return Labels 
This article compares the response rates for obtaining journal reprints from colleagues when the requests are made using postcards with or without a self-addressed return label. Higher response rates were obtained from the cards with the self-addressed return labels, and more women responded than did men, but these differences were not statistically significant.
Hartley, James. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Research>Collaboration>Gender
#24011
Of Robots and a New Search Engine
On July 1995, shortly after the EEI Web site opened, it began to be accessed by a computer named scooter.pa-x.dec.com . At first I thought that someone at Digital Equipment Corporation had an extraordinary interest in editorial subjects, but it soon became clear that Scooter was a robot, a computer program set up to retrieve Web pages. In some months, Scooter accessed more of our pages than any other visitor. I was curious, but since it wasn't doing any harm, I never investigated it. On December 15, 1995, the AltaVista Web site opened, and we finally got to see what Scooter had been up to.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Design>Web Design>Search
#26495
Online SEO Information: Trick or Treat?
People come to SEO from other disciplines, such as development and design. Many think there are some magic tags you stick in pages to make them fly up search engines' results pages. They ask me about coding: can search engines read it, and where's the best place to put this or that tag for better ranking? They appear at a loss when I explain coding's just not that important, as long as a crawler can get to the pages and parse the text out of them.
Grehan, Mike. ClickZ (2005). Design>Web Design>Search
#24154
Page Cloaking - To Cloak or Not to Cloak
Page cloaking can broadly be defined as a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. There are two primary reasons that people use page cloaking.
Roy, Sumantra. 1stSearchRanking (2003). Design>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Search
#27607
The Page Title and Meta Description
Never underestimate the importance of the page title and meta description - they're used by both search engines and people to judge your website.
Usborne, Nick. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization
#21226
Panel Discussion: STC-Sponsored Research in Progress 
This panel discussion reports on technical communication research in progress that is being sponsored by the STC. The research topics include an assessment of intentional learning techniques applied in an online environment, rhetorical study of the writing of a 19th century woman scientist, and a survey of the teaching of research methods in technical communication graduate programs. The researchers use both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Sanders, Scott P. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Research>TC
#23245
Pay-Per-Click: Buying Your Way In
The Pay-per-click search industry is booming! Find out how you too can get involved in this low-cost high-return form of advertising.
Kohler, Ed. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Search
#14206
People Search Once, Maybe Twice
Lately, we've been focused on the effectiveness of Search. When looking for content, users often end up using the search engine. In a recent study, we observed that users only found their target content 34% of the time with Search (less than with categories). We wanted to know why.
User Interface Engineering (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#23037
Perspectives on Information Retrieval 
This report provides a new look at the business and technology dynamics driving the move to a new generation of search in the enterprise.
Delphi Group (2002). Articles>Information Design>Search
#31128
What bugs me is not the results of the major search engines, but the results of internal web site searches.
Rockley Group, The (2008). Design>Web Design>Search>Usability
#29090
The Peter Effect in Early Experimental Education Research
One of the signatures of scientific writing is its ability to present the claims of science as if they were "untouched by human hands." In the early years of experimental education, researchers achieved this by adopting a citational practice that led to the sedimentation of their cardinal method, the analysis of variance, and their standard for statistical significance, 0.05. This essentially divorces their statistical framework from its historical conditions of production. Researchers suppressed their own agency through the use of passive voice and nominalization. With their own agency out of the way, they imbued the methods, results, and presentational devices themselves with the active agency of the situation through the use of personification. Such a depiction creates the impression that the researchers and audience stand on equal epistemic ground as interested witnesses to the autonomous activity of a third party, the method, which churns out the brute facts of science.
Little, Joseph. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Research>Statistics>Education
#27028
Planning for User Research Success
Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective.
Szuc, Daniel and Gerry Gaffney. Apogee (2005). Articles>Usability>Research
#26633
Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#21227
Practitioners: What Research Should STC Fund to Help You at Work?
This panel discussion is an open forum moderated by the STC Research Grants Committee; its goal is to elicit and discuss suggestions from STC members for research areas and topics the STC should sponsor. The input will help guide the members of the Research Grants Committee as they decide which research proposals to approve during the next year.
Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Research>TC
#30437
Problems and Joys of Reading Research Papers for Practitioner Purposes
Discusses reasons that practitioners read research papers and the obstacles that they face when reading research papers. Jarrett provides several examples and suggestions for improving the accessibility of research papers for practitioners. Her suggestions include writing clear titles, ensuring that the abstract states the study population and limitations of the study, and ensuring that the conclusions are written clearly. She also discusses her criteria for determining whether or not a research paper is relevant to her work.
Jarrett, Caroline. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research>Writing
#29670
Problems in Navigating Online Help: Clues from User Search Patterns
We examined qualitative data from participants' comments about difficulties they encountered in using the help systems in three versions of a popular programming language. Users' main problems were not knowing which help systems were available or being unfamiliar with them, determining when and how to use the help system, framing the search question, applying the initial search target to the help hierarchy, moving laterally to another topic, and switching between declarative and procedural topics. The lessons learned from these responses should assist help system designers and authors in supporting users' search patterns. In this paper, we will examine qualitative data from users' comments. The lessons learned from these responses should assist help system designers and authors in supporting users' search patterns.
Krull, Robert and Angela Eaton. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Documentation>Help>Search
#26525
Program Models for Supporting Faculty and Student Research
Presentations about how to facilitate student and faculty research in higher education academic programs.
Yeats, Dave, Miles A. Kimball and Robert Waller, Nancy Allen, Kathleen Gygi and Russell Willerton. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Management>Research
#27287
Promoting Access to Public Research Data for Scientific, Economic, and Social Development
Access to and sharing of data are essential for the conduct and advancement of science. This article argues that publicly funded research data should be openly available to the maximum extent possible. To seize upon advancements of cyberinfrastructure and the explosion of data in a range of scientific disciplines, this access to and sharing of publicly funded data must be advanced within an international framework, beyond technological solutions. The authors, members of an OECD Follow-up Group, present their research findings, based closely on their report to OECD, on key issues in data access, as well as operating principles and management aspects necessary to successful data access regimes.
Arzberger, P., P. Schroeder, A. Beaulieu, G. Bowker, K. Casey, L. Laaksonen, D. Moorman, P. Uhlir and P. Wouters. Data Science Journal (2004). Articles>Publishing>Research>Scientific Communication
#24508
Protecting the Voices of Our Research: Appropriately Verifying Qualitative Data
Although discussion of composition research methods over the last 10 years has culminated in Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) guidelines, these guidelines do not include procedures for verifying qualitative data. Such procedures would entail having a third party check to some degree that the researcher spent the time claimed at the site and that the subjects did what was described and said what was quoted in the published research. This commentary reviews federal policies on research misconduct and government and professional association responses to data faking, noting the additional danger of incompetent investigations of research misconduct. Arguing that the discipline should take appropriate measures to verify qualitative data, I recommend a two-tiered approach.
Cross, Geoffrey A. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2004). Articles>Research>Methods
#30744
Quality Control in Scholarly Publishing on the Web
As scholars and researchers, we are often called upon to separate the high-quality materials from the bad. What are the methods by which quality control is established and what are the indicators that allow a user to recognize the good materials?
Arms, William Y. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2002). Articles>Publishing>Research>Online
#22496
Query By Attention: Visually Searchable Information Maps
This paper explores how the design of information spaces might be grounded in knowledge of human visual processing, notably what kinds of visual selection are most efficient. Information maps spatially array graphical symbols representing items of information and their attributes. Ideally, their users should be able to do query by attention: answer questions about the information quickly by controlling visual attention (i.e., through spatial selection and visual search), instead of manipulating an interface. I propose a preliminary method for designing visually searchable maps based on experimental results about what kinds of visual search are easy. The hope is that the resulting maps will better employ the perceptual capabilities of their viewers when they search. An example information map of recent movies illustrates the approach.
Foltz, Mark and Randall Davis. MIT (2001). Design>Information Design>Search>Visual Rhetoric
#28053
The Real Costs of "Free" Search Site Services
When owners of the big money tree use their excess profits to subsidize unrelated services, independent software vendors (ISVs) are driven out of business. Although such behavior got Microsoft into trouble in the past, ISVs shouldn't expect relief from search-engine-sponsored software from the U.S. Justice Department or the European Commission any time soon. These government agencies are notoriously behind the times, as proven by the fact that they attacked Microsoft only after it had won the browser war by cutting off Netscape's air supply.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Search
