How Website Search Affects SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of measures aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engines to increase search traffic, conversion rate, and sales.

Carrying out SEO activities for your website results in its ranking in the Top 10 Google and Yandex search results for relevant queries. 

This raises the question: does your website even need a search tool if, with proper SEO, users can be directed to the right page right away?

Find out how website search can influence SEO and how to implement search in a way that helps to improve your website ranking. 

Avoid Duplicate Pages

Duplicate pages can have a negative impact on your website ranking. Such pages can get indexed by search engines and reduce the relevance of your promoted pages. 

Exclude such pages from search using a robots.txt file. This way, you can prevent the occurrence of duplicate pages, which can get indexed and adversely affect the ranking of your website. 

Add a Search Bar to the 404 Error Page

When users are directed to non-existent pages, there is an increased possibility of them leaving the website. To reduce the bounce rate, we recommend setting up a website search bar on your 404 error page. 

Improve Behavioral Factors

Behavioral factors are an important element contributing to a website’s search engine ranking. When users spend more time on a website, view more pages, and generate more clicks and engagement, it has a positive effect on the website ranking.

Because of that, it is important that your search functionality is as convenient and useful as possible.

• Show prompts with popular queries in the search form
• Show search prompts when the user is entering a query
• Teach your search algorithm to correct errors and find synonyms
• Add the ability to search not only by product but also by category and catalog section

Another important factor to consider is the design of your search results page. 

• Implement a product sorting feature
• Allow users to apply search filters
• Display blocks with popular and discounted items

Generate Search Engine-Friendly URLs Using Website Search

In order to achieve a high ranking for all search queries that can potentially lead users to your website, you need to create a page for each group of queries. 

It is important that you organize the structure of your website as meticulously as possible.

With website search, you can generate a large number of pages that can be included in the structure of the website to improve its visibility for low-frequency queries. 

Ideally, such pages should have search engine-friendly URLs and unique meta tags and headers. It is also important that the structure of your website includes links to these pages. This will allow the pages to be indexed by search engines and attract additional traffic. 

Zero Results Pages

Taking users to search results pages that do not contain any products can lead to an increased bounce rate, which in turn negatively affects the ranking of the website. 

We recommend that you design these pages in a way that allows users to continue engaging with your website:

• Add tips on how to find the right product
• Add links to popular categories and products
• Add a tag cloud with similar queries

Summary

Website search is not a direct SEO tool for website promotion. However, a properly designed search box and well-engineered search functionality can improve behavioral factors, which in turn will have a positive impact on your website ranking. 

Website search can facilitate navigation, help SEO specialists create additional entry points (new pages), and increase the average session duration and number of viewed pages.