Are you ignoring that little Search bar at the top of your eCommerce page? Because you shouldn’t be. That little application is too powerful to ignore and can do more than just show visitors what’s in your inventory. It can save you money, improve your search ranking and increase your sales – all while making your customers’ shopping experience easier and more convenient. In this blog we’ll cover the four ways to improve your SEO using Magento’s Search Terms report.
What Customers Want
The Magento Search Term Report is a list of search terms and how often they have been used on your site. The search terms come from when your site visitors directly type keyword phrases in the search box for products on your site. The Magento Search Term Report is thus a very effective and accurate tool when it comes to understanding what customers want from your business and what they likely will search for on the public search engines like Google. The most popular and frequent terms on your search report can become the backbone of your SEO strategy. By building an SEO strategy around the most frequently used terms on your Search Term Report, you can be assured that you’re not wasting resources on keywords aren’t relevant to your business. Paying attention to the Search Terms Report is also an opportunity to adjust your offerings and inventory. If visitors are continually searching your website for a product or service you do not offer, perhaps it’s time to add it to your product catalog.
Zero Results
If there is a disconnect between ‘what you think your customers want from your business’ and ‘what your customers actually want from your business’ the Search Terms Report will shine a light on it. Compare the results for your Search Terms Report with your SEO keywords. If you’re including keywords in your SEO that no one is searching for on your site, this gives you the opportunity to adjust your keyword strategy and perhaps even your inventory.
Synonyms
A simple but effective way to improve your catalogue search is to include alternate terms that a customer may use to describe an item in your inventory. You don’t want to lose out on the sale of a ‘dish’ when your item is listed as a ‘plate’. The Search Terms Report will show you any synonyms that customers may be using to search your site for products. This wider range of terms provided by the Search Terms Report will allow you to direct a much broader range of terms to the same landing page. Meaning that your ‘plate’ product page will show up in searches for ‘bowl’, ‘dish’, ‘cup’, ‘platter’ and more.
Misspellings
To err is human and checking the spelling of any Search inquiries will more than confirm that statement. But misspellings can also be used to improve your SEO. Using your Search Terms Report you can easily capture common misspellings that visitors are typing into your Search and use them to redirect visitors to the appropriate page. For example, if you sell silverware and you see that many visitors to your site are misspelling the word ‘knives’ and are instead searching for ‘knifes’ or ‘nives’ you can include theses misspelled terms in your list of synonyms for ‘knives’. This will allow for visitors using misspelled searches to be directed towards the pages and products they were initially searching for. Better yet, we recommend using a search technology like Elastic Search that automatically factors in most of the common misspellings. But even with a search technology like Elastic Search that auto corrects for typos, it’s a good idea to check for misspellings.
To learn more about how to maximize the knowledge and business that be cultivated through the Magento Search Terms report, reach out to one of our certified Magento developers at 513-469-7042 or fill out our contact page and a team member will be in touch with you shortly.