Compelling Visual Content - Top 10 Key Search Factors

Top 10 Key Search Factors in 2007

There is a great discussion going on over at SearchEngineWatch about the "Top 10 Key Search Factors in 2007."

The initial proposed list looks like this (with my comments after the topic):

1. Content - As we've mentioned before Content is King. However, with so many social networks (digg, reddit, etc) you have got to be on your toes to provide "new and interesting" topics.
2. Key Word Selection - If you don't know what keywords your users are looking for, then you will not be found. Simple as that.
3. Site Architecture - If they can't find your content (or find it again once they come to your site, you've just lost a potential customer.)
4. Rich Media - With the explosion of video mashups and YouTube, this one might take off. However, I'm still not confident that it will drive sales compared to just wasting people's time.
5. Web 2.0 -Getting more people involved in any given project has a couple of effects. First you can quickly build a following and interest in any given topic. Second, with more "open architecture" you can cross sell your product into other existing technologies and gain notoriety even faster than ever.
6. Accessibility - This has been a topic for a number of years now, but still hasn't really seen the attention that it needs to really succeed as of yet.
7. Inbound Links - Linking is Queen. What can I say, PageRank rules.
   
8. Relevancy - I clarify this by saying specialization. More and more people are using specific websites for specific searches. Associate with a group that has like desires, customers, and is mutually beneficial and become the "know-it-alls" about that topic.
9. Popularity - I hate to say that this one will necessarily fade until social sites create a better way so people don't game the system. (Remember the issues Digg had with so called popularity)?
10. Constant Improvement - Refine, repair, review, repeat.
    

Things that I see as being influential in 2007 as far as search goes are the following:

• RSS - With IE 7 supporting RSS, I see RSS feeds becoming an even larger part of keeping people and search engines up to date with new information. This also gives the users the opportunity to chose the way they want content displayed (larger fonts, easier to read color schemes, less noise, etc)
  
• Micro-formats - This one might just jump into the ring. As more and more sites support these simple standards information will flow more freely between diverse applications. If the search engines started backing these different micro-formats (like they did with sitemaps) more and more applications would be built to track and share the information.
• Tagging - Tagging has the possibility to become as large as linking. People telling people what something is about and liking it enough to go out of their way to say so.

I would add that I think that more and more "in-page rich media" browsing (courteousy of the mainstreaming of AJAX) will happen as people realize the benefits and as the search engines find better ways to index AJAX content.

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"Top 10 Key Search Factors in 2007"

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