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Showing posts with label education news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education news. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Micro book: Urban Jungles
Micro book: Urban Jungles: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQdoCTzDba6_I9h_H2Vx7moOQKd8KMIoeMrjiah3u2s9mKAOtwREV5uhSfF8pQo5PheCPx0qG5zy7TH/pub ==========...
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Sunday, June 23, 2024
NEET-UG 2024: 'Announce an action plan, issue daily bulletin,' ex-Infosys CFO to Education Ministry
NEET-UG 2024: 'Announce an action plan, issue daily bulletin,' ex-Infosys CFO to Education Ministry
June 23, 2024The Ministry of Education transferred the probe into irregularities in the medical entrance exam to the CBI, saying certain cases of alleged irregularities, cheating, impersonation, and malpractices had been reported. The CBI registered an FIR on Sunday
Mohandas Pai, former Chief Financial Officer at Infosys
Mohandas Pai, former Chief Financial Officer at Infosys, has appealed to the Centre to announce an action plan to safeguard the interests of 24 lakh students who took the NEET-UG examination. He also urged the Education Ministry to issue a daily bulletin of actions taken and future actions. "Students are very stressed," he said in a tweet.
The NEET examination was held on May 5 across 4,750 centres. Some students alleged irregularities after as many as 67 students scored a perfect 720, which had never happened in the NTA's history. The reports of paper leak also surfaced first in Bihar, and then Gujarat's Godhra.
Bihar's Economic Offences Unit arrested 13 people, including prime suspect Sikandar Yadavendu, in connection with the alleged paper leak. The EOU is also exploring the "possibility of conducting narco analysis and brain mapping tests" of the accused.
The Ministry of Education transferred the probe into irregularities in the medical entrance exam to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), saying certain cases of alleged irregularities, cheating, impersonation, and malpractices had been reported. The CBI registered an FIR on Sunday.
"The central government has also enacted the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, to prevent unfair means in the public examinations and to provide for matter connected therewith or incidental thereto," the ministry said.
The ministry also formed a high-level committee of experts to improve the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA). The committee will be headed by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan.
The ministry also postponed the NEET-PG entrance, the fourth entrance exam to be impacted in recent days. "We stand for transparent, tamper-free, and zero error examination. A panel has been formed on exam reforms, strict action has been taken against officials and the case has been handed over to CBI," Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.
"Students' interest will be safeguarded at any cost," he said amid protests in different parts of the country on the issue of alleged irregularities in entrance exams.
The Health Ministry announced the postponement of NEET-PG entrance, a night before the entrance exam, as a "precautionary measure" in the wake of recent allegations on the integrity of certain competitive exams.
SPOTLIGHT
NEET-PG, scheduled for Sunday, postponed amid row over irregularities in exams
NEET-PG, scheduled for Sunday, postponed amid row over irregularities in exams
June 22, 2024The Ministry of Health on Saturday said the decision has been taken as a precautionary measure to maintain the integrity of the NEET-PG Entrance Examination.
Fresh date for the entrance exam will be announced at the earliest.
In Short
- Decision due to integrity concerns in exams, says Ministry of Health
- Ministry to assess exam processes
- New exam date for NEET-PG to be announced at the earliest
The NEET-PG Entrance Examination, which was scheduled to take place tomorrow, June 23, 2024, has been postponed. This decision comes against the backdrop of recent allegations concerning the integrity of several competitive examinations in the country.
A day before, the National Board of Examination, which conducts the examination for medical students, had cautioned against people on social media groups who were offering the question paper to aspirants for a considerable sum of money.
The Ministry of Health on Saturday said the decision has been taken as a precautionary measure to maintain the integrity of the NEET-PG Entrance Examination.The ministry said it has decided to conduct a thorough assessment of the examination processes to ensure their robustness and fairness. The fresh date for the examination will be announced at the earliest.
"Ministry of Health sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused to the students. This decision has been taken in the best interests of the students and to maintain the sanctity of examination process," a statement by the ministry read.
This is the second competitive exam that has been postponed after UGC-NET was cancelled due to the exam paper being leaked on darknet. There is also an ongoing row over alleged irregularities in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate).
A day before, the National Testing Agency (NTA) had announced that the CSIR-UGC-NET exam, scheduled to take place from June 25, was postponed due to "unavoidable circumstances".
Friday, June 21, 2024
How to get your YouTube videos appear in GoogleтАЩs video carousel
How to get your YouTube videos appear in GoogleтАЩs video carousel
September 11, 202030-second summary:
- Google is giving a lot of visibility to video content through its interactive SERP section called a тАЬvideo carouselтАЭ.
- Getting your video ranked in GoogleтАЩs тАЬvideo carouselsтАЭ can drive lots of views to your channel but it will also allow you to control more elements in your target SERPs.
- Ranking in GoogleтАЩs video carousel is quite doable and doesnтАЩt require months of work or waiting. All you need is keyword research and video page optimization.
YouTube is one of the most popular social media networks out there allowing brands to get discovered by their customers. While creating a popular YouTube channel takes time and a lot of effort, it is well worth it. One piece of a puzzle many YouTube creators are missing is optimizing your videos for organic discoverability through GoogleтАЩs video carousel.
HereтАЩs a comprehensive guide that looks into all the elements that you can capture to win your spot in GoogleтАЩs top SERP real estate.
What are YouTube video carousels?
Google offers a huge deal of organic visibility to YouTube videos through so-called video carousels, that is, interactive boxes featuring videos relating to the target search query:
Source: Google as of August 2020
ThereтАЩs even more organic visibility for videos in mobile search results where videos carousels take almost the whole screen:
Source: Google as of August 2020
Whenever my video starts ranking in Google organic, it brings in lots of well-engaged views, especially as compared to other videos, even for very new/inactive channels:
Source: YouTube as of August 2020
But this strategy is not only helpful for driving views to your own channel. It is also a good way to better control your target Google SERPs.
ThereтАЩs no denying a fact that videos are highly engaging and convert well, and we are pretty sure that visuals (in this case video thumbnails) may be stealing a lot of attention from GoogleтАЩs organic results (in fact, thereтАЩs a real science behind the visual impact on consumersтАЩ behavior), so ranking your video there will help you drive more exposure for your brand.
Resources
Analytics The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
Analytics Data Analytics in Marketing
Digital Marketing The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
Digital Marketing Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
The good news, YouTube SEO takes less time than traditional SEO does. I have seen my videos ranking in Google within a week after I upload them to YouTube! So this is a pretty fast way to boost your channel views by ranking your videos in GoogleтАЩs video carousel.
Craft a detailed and factual title
Your video page title is what you type in the тАЬtitleтАЭ field when uploading your video:
For SEO purposes (which implies organic search visibility), the title of the page is the most important on-page element, so treat it with care.
Optimizing a page title is always about maintaining a fine balance: You want it to be creative and original enough to get clicks while still being able to add some searchable keywords.
You can only make your title 100 characters long max which is not much!
Here are a few suggestions for you:
- Always include a searchable keyword (hereтАЩs a quick guide on identifying one)
- If your video includes entities (names, places, events, brands, products, etc), include those in the video title
- Titles that include numbers generally get more clicks, so experiment with adding numbers to your video title
- Titles that are worded as questions may spur curiosity and get more clicks
- How-to titles always perform well for guides and instructions
Tip: Create videos around your target queries
You can go the other way around: Instead of trying to find a searchable keyword for your video idea, you can create videos around keywords you already know are popular with GoogleтАЩs users.
You can easily do that with tools like Placeit that allows you to turn text content into the video format:
Screenshot source: Placeit as of August 2020
Placeit doesnтАЩt require subscription payment, plus it offers free templates which makes it the most affordable video creation solution on the market.
The way it could work:
- Grab any article from your site that received Google traffic
- Use Google Search Console to find which search queries exactly drive clicks to your page
- Create videos around those queries (using your existing article)
Another way to find opportunities to get your video visible on GoogleтАЩs video carousel is by using Ahrefs:
- Run your domain in Ahrefs and click to тАЬOrganic keywordsтАЭ
- Click the filter called тАЬSERP featuresтАЭ and check тАЬVideosтАЭ
Here you go. There are all keywords your site is ranking for in Google and those are also search queries showing video carousels.
Source: Ahrefs as of August 2020
Ahrefs is my preferred SERP analytics tool due to its usability but of course, there are many more cool tools that can help you with this task.
Create a longer description
While for the video titles, we donтАЩt have too many characters to work with, the video description field allows more characters than enough, so take the full advantage of those.
The video description field allows creators to put up to 5000 characters. It is important to create more detailed description for your video because search engines still rely on text content to index and rank your video.
Here are a few ideas on creating a more detailed and high-ranking video description:
1. Create your script
If you are uploading a video interview, a webinar, or conference coverage, chances are you have more than enough text spoken to create a detailed description.
Fiverr is full of gigs offering you to transcribe a video and turn it into text, so it is a pretty easy way to create the text version of any video:
Source: Fiverr as of August 2020
2. Use semantic analysis
I turn to semantic analysis at any time I am writing content. It always helps me discover more topics to cover and identify more questions to answer.
Text Optimizer is an easy and effective semantic research tool that analyzes GoogleтАЩs search snippets to identify underlying concepts which will make your content more relevant to your target topic:
Source: Text Optimizer as of August 2020
I donтАЩt think I know an alternative to Text Optimizer for creating an optimized context so easily, but hereтАЩs more on semantic analysis and why it is useful.
3. Create a time-stamped video outline
DonтАЩt miss this step! YouTube allows you to add clickable timestamps that take viewers deeper into your video to where you discuss that subtopic.
HereтАЩs a detailed tutorial on creating YouTube timestamps:
- Play your video up to the point where it starts discussing a new topic
- Pause your video at the point you want to timestamp
- Type the time exactly as you see in the video player into the video description field.
Source: YouTube as of August 2020
This clickable video outline in the video description will drive people deep into the video, so you will see more engagements.
On top of that, your video may enjoy even more exposure in search, because Google sometimes grabs that outline to show right inside search results:
Source: Google as of August 2020. (Google giving extra visibility to a video by showing its clickable outline right inside search results)
Add more tags and a few hashtags
YouTube tagging is still a good way to categorize your video the right way. They help search engines to better understand what it is your video is about and rank it accordingly.
You can up to 500-character worth of tags for each of your videos, and thereтАЩs no reason saving on those characters. Feel free to use all of them.
Hashtags were introduced not so long ago, and creators still confuse the two, so to help you out, hereтАЩs a quick list of how they work and:
While tags are mostly for YouTube search rankings, hashtags appear as a visible part of the page, so they send some relevancy signals to search engines:
Source: YouTube as of August 2020. (Enter hashtags into the description area and tags in the separate тАЬTagsтАЭ field)
If you need help brainstorming more tags for your video, try Rapidtags.io which generates tags:
Source: Rapidtags.io as of August 2020
Create an eye-catching video thumbnail
A video thumbnail is what shows up in GoogleтАЩs video carousel, so it will directly impact your click-through. This makes your video thumbnail one of the major assets for your video:
Source: YouTube as of August 2020
Luckily creating an eye-catching and, more importantly, click-inviting video thumbnail is not difficult. There are tools to create one for free, as well as cool templates to come up with your own unique recognizable style:
Conclusion
YouTube video optimization strategy is very much like any SEO strategy: You need to create a lot of relevant context for search engines to be able to understand and correctly classify your video. To optimize your YouTube video page:
- Craft an attention-grabbing title which would include your target keyword
- Write a detailed, semantically optimized video description (and include clickable video outline for viewers and search engines to easily access the part they are most interested in)
- Add tags and hashtags to make your video even more findable
Finally, links play a huge part in organic visibility, so make sure to link to your videos from your own site. This includes both embedding your videos and linking to them directly.
Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.
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