subject: How internal site search can improve both usability and SEO [print this page] How internal site search can improve both usability and SEO
Navigation and usability are two very important factors that all webmasters should address when it comes to optimising their websites and driving more conversions. You may find that your SEO is working quite well, you figure prominently for a range of your target terms and you're driving a lot of traffic to your relatively new website. However, you've also noticed that despite your best efforts, your traffic just isn't converting into sales and you are not attracting enough customers what can you do about it? Well, luckily there are plenty of options for you; some of them include research conversion rate optimisation, multivariate testing and even heat map analysis however, the one option that we will look at in this article is internal site search and what it means for your website.
Internal site search is a feature available to all webmaster through the free web analytics tool Google Analytics. This tool will provide you with a lot of insightful information about your website, how it is performing, which pages visitors are moving to and between and how many transactions you have seen come through your website. However, one feature of Google Analytics that is often overlooked is internal site search. This function enables you to track your own internal site search bar and look at the types of queries that users are inputting to find information or products on your website. Why is this feature useful?
Internal site search can give you a better indication of user intent i.e. what users are looking for when they arrive on your website. You may feel that you already have a very good indication on what your users are looking for but you will quite often be surprised by the results. It will also give you an indication of usability including how many people choose to use the internal site search function and from what page. This will help you take actionable steps to framing your content in a way that is more suitable to the visitors who are landing on your pages and your website as a whole. Internal site search will also help you when it comes to identifying new keywords that you can potentially integrate into your targeting strategy.
