Content may rule, but there are a few rules for content that need to be considered.
From a search engine perspective, there was absolutely a time when they (they being machines) did not care. In essence, blah, blah, blah, keyword. Yada, yada, yada, keyword. Da da da keyword. And there you have a winning strategy. Seriously.
But times have changed and the search engines are trying to change with it. But, and this is a big but, the search engines are trying to create a logical automated process to a fundamentally human experience.
The emergence of Web 2.0 is not about technology, it’s about the human experience. It’s not about platform or delivery. It’s about levels of engagement by the users.
A hundred Internet years ago, the Internet was going to change because it was the great equalizer where the small merchant could appear bigger than they really were and larger corporations could appear folksier than they really were. Comparison engines turned commerce into a commodity, but commerce has always been a commodity.
Google has commanded what appears to be an unassailable market lead with their comprehensive understanding of bits and bytes, but is it?
The social web appears poised to change that and a study of habituation of users is not the same thing as a user experience. It’s artifice. And as more and more rules get applied and more and more stuff gets dumped in, it’s become arduous as well.
The basic fundamental of Web 2.0 is the user. Maybe in that sense Yahoo was prescient in its purchase of Del.icio.us. Maybe that’s why Yahoo has been able to make Yahoo! Answers succeed where Google hasn’t. Perhaps in the end, it’s becoming easier to ask someone versus asking something.
Maybe not.
But the content authority is the person or people behind the thing, not necessarily the thing itself. Facile. Perhaps. Except that companies are now paying just a little more attention to it. Companies like Jyve.com, a search engine that links users directly with people who can answer their questions by live chat, phone or message.
Content rules but people rule content.
~ The SEP Guy
As posted in SEO.
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