Impact factor matters but other factors are equally important. Other key factors, in my view, are whether the journal is recognised in a reputable list (ISI or Scopus), follows a peer-review process and can deliver your work to the right target audience

Strength of editorial board and whether the paper is a good fit for the journal. Look at what has been published in the recent past over the tenure of the current editorial board. Of course, we all want to publish in high impact factor journals. But in may cases the acceptance rate for those journals is in the single digits so a lot of good papers don't get published in a high impact journal. By the way "high" is subjective. For example, the Journal of Mathematical Economics may not have an impact factor as high as say the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organizations. Yet in the specialty are of economic theory it carries a lot of weight, and it publishes more technical papers than JEBO. Since the people writing for JME are small, the papers may not be cited as much as say a more general audience JEBO paper. So again, if the journal is a specialist field journal it can have a relatively low impact factor but still carry a lot of weigh if it has a strong editorial board and reputable people publish there.

Very cogent argument!! Thank you Dr. Charles-Cadogan. I also appreciates the concise argument put forward by Dr. Jones. From the two point of views, these are the essential factors to consider (in no hierarchy order):

 Indexing (ISI, Scopus,etc.); standard peer-reviewing process; target audience; strength of editorial board; impact factor; and scholars publishing in such journal............

Still counting! Can anyone re-arrange these factors in order of importance?