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“Search.” It most often denotes the ubiquitous Web search. But if you're a Web marketer and your company has a functioning website, search should also mean something else to you: site search.

Often relegated to free or limited feature search products, site search is actually a major key to success in converting visitors to customers. It's easy to overlook the maintenance of site search, but considering that the first item new site visitors look for is an on-site search engine, now is the time to make site search a priority by employing these optimization tips.

Think like a visitor : Persuasive site architecture is necessary and profitable, but you can't rely on the often time-consuming task of drilling down through menu systems. Guided browsing is useful but it cannot replace the function of a search box that allows explicit communication of their goal. Product searches are actually the #1 activity for consumers. Whether your audience expresses trendy verbiage, such as “tan strappy cork wedges” or business critical terms like “ Web 2.0 social networking ,” your site search needs to deliver. “No results found” isn't acceptable anymore.

Use your analytics: Once you've put some effort into thinking like a visitor, the next step is to access your site analytics and your site search statistics (if accessible). For a fair assessment of your visitor's recent behavior, examine the last three months of activity. Note the top declining keywords and those that are gaining popularity. Are your visitors finding your site through a major search engine and then using the same keywords at your site? What trends, news, holidays, and advertising are impacting the keywords used in your site search box? This data is extremely important. It's the low-hanging fruit that you should optimize first. Even taking just the top ten percent of your pages, products, and ad campaign keywords can make a huge difference in your bottom line. The advice applies that it's cheaper to keep your existing traffic than constantly having to buy new traffic. Tweaking your site search results is the easiest and most cost effective way to keep and earn repeat traffic.

At the same time, check common exit points – “404error.htm” or “noresults.php” could very well be on the list.

Document your findings with an “site search optimization” spreadsheet, recording: top climbing pages, top declining pages, entry pages, exit pages, top referring keywords (incoming traffic), keywords for current events/news/advertising affecting your business (from analytics and strategically speaking) and other statistical elements that will improve your visitor's search experience.

Test drive: With your optimization list at the ready, start testing your site search engine with those keywords. Look for relevancy and whether the ranking of results fits with your business strategy. Do you need to sell more product in a particular style or category? Seasonal items, buzzworthy news, trendy products should be positioned at or near the top of results for those optimization-worthy keyphrases. Pay particular attention to the titles and descriptions of the results as well. When you see code in the title of a result or an incomplete description, record your findings in the spreadsheet.

Optimize: Organize your findings before you begin refining the search results. Rewrite page titles and descriptions, within your spreadsheet if you choose to speed up the optimization process. Consolidate your visitor keywords into a new column for inclusion on all applicable subpages. For instance, “creating buzz” might be searched for regularly by visitors but your “viral marketing via social networks” reports might not contain those exact keywords, and therefore visitors aren't fed the information they need.

One of the most important steps is to Include the ever-important jargon that your visitors use in the metadata, tags or content of the pages you're optimizing for. If your search engine allows it, you can skip the HTML changes and go straight to your search engine backend environment to modify the keywords associated with each page. This is the most efficient way to manage the ongoing optimization process.

Trend toward including more keywords relating to a given page rather than less. Tagging is becoming more popular and is a great way to increase the search optimization of your pages – the more current the keywords, the better potential for your on-site search engine to perform optimally – and for general search engines to better position your subpages.

And of course, be sure to update your error and “no results found” pages to include suggestions and links to popular pages.

Summary: General search is a productive tool to pull visitors to your website. Your site search engine is essential in converting more of that traffic to repeat visitors and customers. Thus, optimizing your site search engine is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to improve your bottom line. Time to make site search an ongoing priority.

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