Technical Writing in the Digital Age: Difference between revisions

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→‎Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Technical Writing in the Digital Age

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 ==Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Technical Writing in the Digital Age==
-SEO refers to the practice of optimizing online content to enhance its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), making it a crucial skill for digital writers.<ref>https://grlucas.net/grl/CompFAQ/Digital_Writing/SEO</ref>
+SEO refers to the practice of optimizing online content to enhance its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), making it a crucial skill for digital writers.<ref name=":3">Lucas, Gerald R. (2023). ''Search Engine Optimization: Strategies and Best Practices for Effective Online Visibility.'' GRLucas.net. Retrieved: https://grlucas.net/grl/CompFAQ/Digital_Writing/SEO</ref> To optimize content for SEO means to have the goal of SEO in mind at the time of designing, creating, and writing a web page for publication. Using keywords and alt-text are two examples of optimizing content for SEO. <ref name=":6">Barr, Chris. (2010). ''Yahoo! Style Guide.'' New York: St. Martin's.</ref>
+=== Using Keywords ===
+Keywords are the words that search engines crawl a website for and index as the page's most important words. Based on other pages using the same keywords, the website is added into the search engine results pages from best matches to worse matches. Depending on where the website falls in that scale based on the specific keywords being searched by a user, influences where the website pops up in the associated search results.<ref name=":6" /> To optimize a website's keywords, you should begin with researching keywords on your own website and ensure that you have an XML [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps sitemap] so search engine's such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google Google] can crawl your web pages for updated information. In addition to using keywords, updating a page's metadata information can also help with showing up on SERPs. Using title and header tags as well as meta descriptions for content also helps optimize a website's ratings in SERPs.<ref name=":3" />
+=== Using Alt-Text ===
+Alt-Text (alternative text), or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_attribute Alt Attributes], is a practice that increases the usability and accessibility of a web page for users. Alt-Text is often used for visual elements that cannot be displayed in a different format but still provides description of the element for screen readers or users that may have a disability. Alt-Text also improves a website's SEO as a form of content optimization.<ref name=":3" />
+=== Social Media Presence ===
+Sharing content from a website across different social media platforms is another way to create SEO optimization. This technique can help with being seen as legitimate and improves visibility of the website overall. Additionally it can drive traffic and enables back-linking to occur when other websites have the ability to also link to the website.<ref name=":3" />
 ==Digital Documentation ==
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 ====Multimedia====
-Digital documents can incorporate multimedia elements like images, audio, video, and interactive content, enhancing engagement through visual and auditory elements. Multiple media formats work best when sharing new, complicated ideas.{{sfn|Carroll|2010|p=36}}
+Digital documents can incorporate multimedia elements like images, audio, video, and interactive content, enhancing engagement through visual and auditory elements. Multiple media formats work best when sharing new, complicated ideas.{{sfn|Carroll|2010|p=36}} Increasing multimodality on a website improves engagement, usability, and accessibility. This can improve the impact of the website's standings in SERPs.<ref name=":5" />
 ====Version Control====