Knowledge Management . Conceptually, this term is surrounded by problems, but addressing this issue is not the objective of this text.

Despite my complete disagreement with the theoretical coherence of the term, one thing is certain: knowledge is probably the greatest fuel of our contemporary world. It already is today and apparently will be even more so in the future.

But first, the Connecting Project

This text is the beginning of a series of articles that I've named the Connecting Project.

To be honest, this project was developed somewhat unintentionally. A few years ago, when I discovered Library Science, I saw a very close relationship between the work of a Librarian and what I was doing in SEO .

When I started college, I began connecting everything I was learning with my daily work. So I started writing some texts about this connection I saw, with the goal of helping me solidify what I was learning.

And so the Connecting Project emerged, which will connect SEO to Library Science with articles, videos, and audios that discuss the foundations of library science and its close relationship with the work of optimizing content the internet.

Initially, I'll talk about the basics of Library Science: indexing, categorization , classification, and much more, always seeking to relate these practices to what Google does to organize information on the web and what we, SEOs, do to optimize it.

The confusion between data, information, and knowledge.

There is a common misconception, often seen in everyday language, about these three essential components of our current economy. We confuse data with information, information with knowledge, knowledge with data, and so on.

But Information Science (IS) can help us clarify our ideas and put everything in its place.

And this clarity about what data, information, and knowledge mean is not just for our intellectual enjoyment. It is important for understanding another concept, which, if well understood and applied, opens up a new world of understanding for those who work optimizing content on the web.

This concept is that of Information Flow. But we'll talk more about it in the future. In the meantime, let's turn to theory to understand some things. I promise to try to make things easier to understand.

I turn to two researchers, Davenport and Prusak (1998), to begin the search for understanding and to clarify this enormous confusion between the concepts of data, information, and knowledge. Although the authors claim that it is possible for an organization to generate knowledge (which I disagree with, since it only generates information*), we can turn to them to begin the path of discovering these concepts.

*To be clear: for me, the process is as follows: data is extracted from interaction with the physical world, and when it gains relevance, it is transformed into information. Information can be stored in record-keeping environments, external to us, human beings. Now, when we, humans, consume information and contextualize it, the phenomenon of knowledge generation can occur, which is subjective, particular, and belongs to each individual. In the exchange between human beings, only information is passed from one to another, since it is the context, which is particular to each person, that transforms information back into knowledge. Therefore, it is impossible to manage knowledge, given that it is particular to each human being.

What is data according to Information Science?

We can understand data as the fundamental element of information. They are generated through observation of the world as it is. In our world, the simple interaction of people with their environment generates data.

Think about how much data your cell phone or watch generates during a simple run at the end of the day: your heart rate, the route you ran, how many kilometers, calorie consumption calculations, and much more.

Data can be structured very easily, especially in a world where computing is ubiquitous, but by itself it has no meaning. A column of numbers in a spreadsheet means nothing if you don't know what they mean.

But a huge advantage is that we can transfer data very easily, whether between systems or between people. Of course, for this to happen we need to follow certain processes and implement some management policies.

Therefore, loose data are random and, when not subjected to analysis, do not generate information. But they are fundamental because they form the basis upon which we begin to build information. When we process the data obtained, adding relevance and purpose to them, we begin to build something beyond numbers, letters, and codes.

For Information Science, data are objects of study because of their nature, representation, storage, retrieval, analysis, and use. And here we have the first direct connection with SEO.

What does all this have to do with SEO?

When preparing a project report, we need to understand what we're dealing with. If I create a spreadsheet, give it a generic name, and hand it to my manager, what will happen?

That's why we use dashboards. That's why books like Storytelling with Data were written, to help us understand that data is only the beginning of the story we need to tell. Furthermore, we need to pay attention to the quality of data storage, how we will represent it, how we will retrieve it when necessary, and most importantly, how we will use it.

Telling a story based on the data we have is a way to show what actually happened and how the project needs to evolve to succeed. And this is closely related to SEO.

The concepts of representation, storage, and retrieval will have their own specific texts in our series. These three elements create a close connection between Library Science and SEO and will be carefully addressed by me, and we can use theories, methods, and techniques to understand these topics more deeply.

Going back to the data

In summary, when we use the correct processes to manage and analyze data, we can transform it into useful and relevant information, because, as Silva (2004) reminds us, data represent one or more meanings of a system that, in isolation, cannot convey a message or represent any knowledge.

I would add that data without proper processing is useless; it only creates storage problems and doesn't help us retrieve or generate information.

What is the definition of Information according to Information Science?

Many fields of knowledge study this topic. Social Communication analyzes it from the point of view of communication and transmission processes. Philosophy can examine it by seeking to understand its role in giving form to matter, shaping the world, whether material or the world of ideas.

But in this text, we will stick with the perspective of Information Science, which in itself already gives us plenty of room for reflection and study.

The authors go on to say that this phrase can give the false impression that understanding information is easy because we all need it, all the time, more and more. But that's not quite the case.

For me, the simplest way to go is to start by understanding what data is and, from there, understand what information is.

A common definition is that information is contextualized data transferred through human-to-human interaction, and more recently, from humans to systems and from systems to systems.

The Dictionary of Library Science and Archival Science by Murilo Bastos da Cunha and Cordélia Robalinho de Oliveira Cavalcanti defines a record as "a record of knowledge that may be necessary for a decision. The expression 'record' includes not only typographic documents, but also reprographic documents, and any others that can be stored for use." This definition focuses on the need for information, a topic I have already addressed in this text: New Proposal for Content Management on the Web .

In Information Science, the concept of information is frequently used in the sense of communicated knowledge. This concept gained relevance mainly from the end of the Second World War with the global spread of the use of computer networks . (CAPURRO; HJORLAND, 2007)

In his article “The Concept of Information in Information Science,” Carlos Alberto Ávila Araújo cites Capurro's (2003) conceptualization of information, where the author “identifies the existence, in Information Science, of three major ways of understanding information: as something physical, as something associated with a cognitive dimension, and finally, as a phenomenon of an intersubjective, social nature. The author argues that these three ways of understanding information did not manifest themselves specifically in one or another sub-area of ​​the field. Rather, they permeated the various sub-areas (hence, in his view, they constitute “paradigms”).”

According to the Brazilian Thesaurus of Information Science , information has 13 attributes, which are:

• Ambiguity
• Complexity
• Credibility
• Accuracy
• Uncertainty
• Relevance
• Precision
• Redundancy
• Relevance
• Similarity
• Overlap
• Thematic
• Validity

Information, of course, can be considered an objective reality. This is something that, through a system of symbols, can be captured, stored, represented, and retrieved by entities, or authors, with the technical and cognitive capacity to interact and extract meaning from this interaction.

What does all this have to do with SEO?

The first point I want to emphasize is about the first attribute of information: ambiguity. In the book Ontology: Ambiguity and Precision, Marcelo Schiessl and Marisa Brascher state that ambiguity is a major obstacle to information retrieval. And retrieving information is what search engines do.

Therefore, any and all work we do in SEO must target this attribute of information: ambiguity. Search engines currently act as gatekeepers . They are between our content, and people searching need the information contained within it. Understanding that algorithms have difficulty dealing with ambiguity is an important step in understanding how search engines work.

Presenting the information in your projects in a clear and objective way helps search engines understand the specifics of your content. Understanding this process helps you avoid uncertainty, making it clearer to search engines what you're talking about.

Does understanding information concepts help you optimize better? Tell me.

But this will become clearer when we discuss the flow of information in another text.

What is knowledge for Information Science?

Knowledge can be understood as valuable and meaningful information, but difficult to structure. Knowledge is the result of actions and interactions between individuals and is often tacit and difficult to transfer.

But for Information Sciences, defining knowledge is not a simple task. In my research for this text, I found material that greatly helped me understand this difficulty and follow an interesting mental path in understanding human knowledge.

I invite you to redo it with me.

The first thing I have to tell you is that the problem of dealing with knowledge is not new. Plato, in his Theory of Knowledge, said that "the entirety of human knowledge is clearly divided into two degrees: sensible knowledge, which is particular, changeable, and relative, and intellectual knowledge, which is universal, immutable, and absolute, which illuminates the first knowledge but cannot be derived from it." (Diegues, 2023)

And something I've learned is that cisgender people are intimately interested in both subjective and objective modes of thought. Subjectivity isn't something we deal with much on the web. We handle data very well, we have some skill with information and content, but when we need to talk about the subjectivity of human thought, most of us get lost.

I understood this when I wrote the article with a new proposal for content creation based on Kuhlthau's information flow . Some people in our field contacted me, curious to understand how to use these aspects in content creation. The conversations I had were very interesting.

But returning to knowledge, I want to talk about another philosopher, Karl Popper, who says that "the phenomenon of human knowledge is undoubtedly the greatest miracle of our universe." But his greatest contribution to understanding knowledge is Popper's Theory of the Three Worlds:

World 1 is the simplest and clearest to understand and needs no explanation; we deal with it all the time, feeling its influence in real time.

World 2, the psychic world of subjective knowledge, constituted by our emotions and unconscious processes, is little explored, but as I said before, its study can open up a vast field of possibilities for our area. Psychology can help us navigate this great world in a more consistent way.

World 3, the world of objective knowledge, of the products of the human mind, which is recorded in languages, arts, sciences, and technologies, is our most immediate field of action. It is the sum of Worlds 1 and 2 and is the personification of human thought, realized in the artifacts we create and spread throughout the Worlds.

Objective knowledge, which is the totality of all human thought embodied in human artifacts such as documents, music, art, and technology, is what I generically call content. And here we begin to talk about SEO.

What does all this have to do with SEO?

How can the concepts of knowledge help you optimize better? If the World of Objective Knowledge, as described by Popper, is where we unite what we humans dream, think, and idealize with the physical world, then it is our field of work.

But aren't we missing something? Where are we looking that we've forgotten about the human being who has needs, desires, and wants, and who searches to resolve their issues (whether from World 1 or World 2)?

Creating great content is more than just formatting data for a good presentation or telling a story with it, transforming it into relevant information. It's about understanding that a human being is asking the question that needs the answer you've created.

He's out there in the world, needing answers. Are we giving him the answers he needs?