SEO Lesson 8 Keyword Optimizing Header Tags H1 – H6 on Each Webpage by Tidyrank

SEO Lesson 8 Keyword Optimizing Header Tags H1 – H6 on Each Webpage by Tidyrank
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One of the concerns about algorithms is the way that certain information can be privileged over other information due to its position in search rankings, and the bias that can be introduced by only showing search engine users links to content that is similar to content they’ve previously looked at.  This video shows some of the mechanisms behind how that happens.

SEO Lesson 7 Using keywords in the title of the webpage to improve your rankings and click through r

SEO Lesson 7 Using keywords in the title of the webpage to improve your rankings and click through r
via YouTube

One of the concerns about algorithms is the way that certain information can be privileged over other information due to its position in search rankings, and the bias that can be introduced by only showing search engine users links to content that is similar to content they’ve previously looked at.  This video shows some of the mechanisms behind how that happens.

Comments on Nigel’s EDC Lifestream Blog

I really enjoyed this Nigel. It is really fascinating that people share very personal and (presumably) honest stories about themselves with total strangers, potentially numbering thousands. This balanced by those who are masking prior knowledge/experience for strategic purposes certainly makes an intriguing basis for research.
Clare

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TWEET: Adchoices from the advertiser’s perspective

A rather telling quote from the opening of this blogged article reads “The good news for advertisers is that [the Adchoices] icon is fairly small and unobtrusive; most consumers don’t even notice it.”  However, the closing remarks are more positive from both a consumer and advertiser perspective.  “I’d love to see Google go the extra mile and offer additional information to advertisers.  Sharing information gleaned from muted ads could be a game changer for PPC advertisers. […] Analyzing the results from this would allow advertisers to understand whether their ads simply aren’t resonating with their audience, or if they are too repetitive. Armed with this information, they will know when they need to create fresh ads or adjust their ad delivery settings.”  This feels like a good example of how analytics can be used to drive improvements, although it appears in this case that the data isn’t being made available to those who could make the best use of it.

Incidentally, in a moment of pure serendipity, while tweeting the above I noticed a link to follow my nephew’s partner on Twitter – algorithms in action!

 

Week 7 Lifestream Summary

Last week I was desperately short of time and I’m still catching up with some of the secondary readings and videos from the Community Cultures block, as well as trying to find some time to engage with my fellow student’s end of block artefacts.

The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

My main take-out from last week was definitely an appreciation for how much can be gained from observing an online community from within and the similarities between this and participant observation in the the ‘real world’ where the “researcher engaged in participant observation tries to learn what life is like for an ‘insider’ while remaining, inevitably, an ‘outsider’.” (Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide).

I also spent some time thinking about my work role and the Learning Community I manage, how much I’m the instigator of the ‘cultural norms’ (Kozinets, R.V. 2010) that exist within its discussion forums, how many of these ‘norms’ I’ve created for my own convenience and how much of this is simply an attempt to lead by example.

I was relieved to receive some positive feedback from Jeremy on my ethnography write up, as I was concerned that some of it was wide of the mark in terms of the way it should be presented.   Many description of ethnography call for ‘rich’ or ‘thick’ narrative; telling the story from arrival and first contact to becoming embedded in the community’s culture.  With so little community to comment on this was always going to be a difficult task.  However, I think the finished artefact ticks many of the boxes in this description of ‘How to do ethnography ‘Nursing Research Using Ethnography: Qualitative Designs and Methods in Nursing’

“An ethnographic report includes clear and thick description of research methodology, including of people who participated in the study and the experiences and processes observed during the study.” […] “The researchers prejudices and biases are also highlighted.”

References:

Mack, N. et al (2005) Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide, Family Health International

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online.

De Chesnay, M (2015), Nursing Research Using Ethnography: Qualitative Designs and Methods in Nursing, Chapter 5, Springer Publishing Company, LLC

Block 1 visual artefact

This is a piece I wrote to explain the rationale behind my visual artefact to be published on a project site created by Michael Sean Gallagher & James Lamb…

I created this visual artefact to summarise learning from ‘Cybercultures’ block of the Education and Digital Cultures course, which forms part of the MSc in Digital Education.

The key themes that emerged from these studies were:

  • sentience
  • almost human
  • memory
  • divisions between technology and humanness
  • the preservation of the authentic human
  • the utopia and dystopia of technological intervention
  • enhancement
  • centring of the desiring human subject

The visual artefact was my attempt at representing as many of these themes as I could, and to hint at points raised in some of the academic discussion on the subject of cyberculture.

The scene outside the window is a response to this quote from Miller, V. 2011

“Most people’s first introduction to the cyborg is within popular media –and particularly science fiction – where the notion of the cyborg has almost always taken on a threatening quality”

I wanted to highlight the fact that this representation of cyborgs as evil is not a recent phenomenon and you will see that there are images from several generations, starting with the tripods (which are not strictly cyborgs as they do not have a human form) and the more recent ‘Terminator’.

As Miller points out, cyborgs are also sometimes portrayed as helpful in popular media:

“At the same time, more benign cyborgs in popular media, such as The Six Million Dollar Man or Robcop, portray cyborgs as helpful, as opposed to threatening, but still with a sense of pathos associated with the denigrated human”

With thin in mind I included some of the more recent movie characters such as WALL-E, Jonny 5 and Big Hero 6.  All of these stretch the cyborg definition a little but they each have characteristics we would recognise as intrinsically human.

In the foreground I am sat at a workstation surrounded by a plethora of devices that are all connected to the ‘cloud’ and, on one way or another, to my body, either directly, such as the headset and the Fitbit, visually through the array of screens, or aurally through devices such as the Echo Dot.  This represents a quote from Haraway, (1991)

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are all cyborgs.  The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics.  The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality…”

The circuitry that can be seen through my shirt is intended to indicate that we are perhaps becoming cyborgs ‘by stealth’, that it is creeping up on us from behind.  Whether you see this a spreading infection or an enhancement will, perhaps, depend on your point of view.  As you can see from the image it is causing me some discomfort, which alludes to my own thoughts on the matter, particularly with devices such as the Echo Dot and their ‘big brother is always listening’ connotations.

Lastly, through the screen array I wanted to show what Miller refers to as ‘technological embodiment’; multiple virtual representations of me facilitated by the computer mediated communication routes we use for the course, such as blog comments and Twitter, though my work Academy and through my social life represented as a Facebook page and the Fitbit, which represents me on ‘Runkeeper’.

Quoting Richardson (2007), Miller writes:

“Mobile media technologies, and tele-technologies more generally, are therefore not simply prosthesis or augmentations of our sensorium, but tools which impact upon our bodily limits, shifting the variable boundaries of embodiment, and altering our sense of having a body: they educe altered ‘involvements’ of the soma.”

In the text Miller refers to Richardson proposed that:

“Our engagement with screens at a perceptual and phenomenological level is, of course, deeply embedded in an assorted history of image technologies and collective media-body interfaces”

The eight screens are also the type of array used by stock and commodities traders to view, often automated, transactions and trends. This was intended as a nod to the third block of the course ‘Algorithmic Cultures’.

References:

Miller, V. (2011) Chapter 9: The Body and Information Technology, in Understanding Digital Culture. London: Sage.

Haraway, D. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181, quoted in Miller, V. (2011)

Richardson, I. (2007), Mobile Phone Cultures, Edited by Gerard Goggin, Routledge, 13 Sep, 2013, also quoted in Miller, V. (2011)

Comments on Nigel’s EDC Lifestream Blog

Nigel, this is brilliant! Your visual artefact is so rich in detail and I’m in awe of your ability to pack meaning into it. I really like the (ethernet, perhaps?) cable, not plugged into anything, and with an obvious kink in it: a sign of being slightly removed, not quite connected, perhaps?

I’m also interested in your decision to put a union jack on the keyboard when – as you say above – lots of people were posting in Spanish and possibly using an online translation site. Does that mean that within the image are the course leaders’ expectations as well as what you found in the reality? Or is it that what appeared on the screen was Spanish, but what was put into the text was in English? And if so, can I infer that you’re thinking of the computer in this particular experience as having a fairly instrumental role – a means to an end, rather than integral to the experience?

-Helen

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Comments on Nigel’s EDC Lifestream Blog

Really great detail here Nigel, and some really interesting outcomes.

‘I appreciate that this is what Kozinets refers to as a ‘Survey approach’ and only certain aspects of it might be considered ‘Netnography’ .

Yes, good to acknowledge this. I think, from the way you describe your experiences, that this approach derived from your initial participant observation (which found little in the way of forum interaction), so it is certainly not unrelated.

I think it is also interesting to reflect here on what constitute authentic ‘community’ participation online. Given we might consider ‘data traces’ of whatever form ‘as community’, one could consider this perfectly legitimate ethnography in some aspects. Forum discourse is not all of the community?

‘Even thought there was no requirement to do so, some learners started posting in Spanish and others then followed suit.  As this was right at the start of the course it’s reasonable to assume that most learners had not learned to do this from the course content and I suspect many were using an online translation site.’

Fascinating statement of expertise, isn’t it? Something not uncommon in MOOCs in my experience. You might find Helen Murphy’s micro-ethnography interesting in that respect.

‘In general the learners who were following the most other learners also had the most followers, possibly indicating a social convention where learners feel pressured to follow someone who is following them.’

Indeed, really interesting, as a gesture. I wonder if there is an assumption that people will ‘know’ – that they can easily see somewhere – the people that have not followed them back, and that that might be a community faux pas? Hmm should have said that in Spanish, shouldn’t I?

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