Is your content searchable?

We all know “search” was one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century.

With so much data out there, more being created every second and the amount exponentially growing, one will never be able to find what they need by having to remember where to get it or by asking people – like in the pre-internet days of libraries.

Search is the only way.

The other thing to bear in mind is that everything is content. Not just a website or a blog, or a document on some server.

Your email, tweet, to do list – it’s all content.

And the more content you have, the more you need to make it “search ready”.

Search is indeed powerful and can do amazing things, but you have to help it  a little.

If your content is not created with search in mind, it will be much harder to find later, if not entirely impossible.

The problem is the sheer number of words, images and other variables that search has to deal with.

Looking for a single word or for a combination of 3-4 words, even if quite specific, will often yield too many results for a human to be able to use within a reasonable time frame (usually under a minute).

So search engines use various algorithms to try and understand context, count the number of times the word you’re looking for appears in the available content, how early in the content it appears, if it’s in the title of the page, document or email subject and so on.

So for you to be able to find your own creations quicker and more efficiently – in fact find them full stop! – you need to do some simple and quick admin/house work as you create said content.

Here is a short list of some simple tricks to make your content easy to find.

The more you do this, the more it will pay dividends later. Since you will generate a huge amount of content, doing this later is just not an option.

Don’t kid yourself thinking you’ll be able to come back to this content later to add better naming or tags, etc. That time will never come.

1. Name files using this simple system, like combining 2-4 levels of categorisation in the name.
   Such as 1) company, project or personal 2) department or project module 3) content name / subject and 4) version (documents often go through many revisions and often you desperately need to go back to version 1 but without versioning, you won’t be able to).For example, for your trekking holiday to Cuba packing list, call it something like:personal-cub_2016-packing_list-v1.docOr for your work office move plan:

   acme_ltd-office_move-plan-v1.doc 

   Same goes for images, diagrams, and so on.

2. Use short but metadata rich email subjects, website or blog page names or tracking systems ticket subject – such as Jira, YouTrack, Trello, etc.Don’t just send emails with titles like “catch up” or “that company”. Put a subject that has a short summary of the main point of the email.Using the previous examples, here are some good email subjects:”cuba trip packing list“,  “office movers details” and “search algorithm speed up” are all good, to the point website page titles or email subjects.

3. Avoid using common words which add little to conveying the meaning of what you’re saying in file names, document names and other similar titles.Words such as “meeting”, “discuss”, “create” can be dropped without any loss of meaning – just leave the words critical to the subject such as “cuba trip“, “office move“, “new user button” and so on.

   Using extra words means extra time, ambiguity and many other issues your content will face when being processed.

4. Use tags and categoriesWhen storing documents, emails or other pieces of content in various systems, tag them or sort into folders so they’re easier to find later – if you can’t think of the specific name or word to search for them by.

   The latter, by the way, is a common problem I face very often and having categories and folders to go into and just browse often is the difference between finding a vital contact name or not fining at all.

   This is especially valid for images and videos, which often don’t have some word you can just search for.

   Google, FaceBook  and Apple and other search engines are in early stages of image searching, where you can type a word and it will try and find images which contain objects related to that word but it’s not 100% successful just yet.

If you found this useful or have tricks of your own to better manage content please leave a comment!