Despite being often confused for the same thing, on-site search and SEO are two completely different things. SEO stands for search engine optimisation: the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. On-site search refers to the search engine (search bar or box) within a website and/or webshop. In layman’s terms: Google vs your own search engine.
The confusion stems from one of the main benefits of both SEO and on-site search: they increase conversion by optimising (CRO). For SEO, this means that with increased traffic to a website, more visitors translate into more sales, ultimately leading to more conversions.
Optimised on-site search makes products and content on a website more findable and improves UX, ultimately increasing conversions. So yes, in both cases you’re talking about a search engine and optimising it to grow your conversion rate, but you’re talking about two different search engines & CRO processes. In layman’s terms: Google vs your own search engine.
On-site search vs on-site SEO
To create even more confusion, there is also something called on-site SEO. The term, also known as on-page SEO, is the practice of optimising elements (within content and HTML code) on a website to rank higher and attract more relevant traffic from web search engines, making ‘original’ SEO, also known as off-site SEO.
On-site search, optimised by and for you
On-site search within a website and/or shop is exactly what we do, and, really, it has nothing to do with SEO. When using an optimised on-site search engine, your visitors will find what they’re looking for instantly. We give our (and your) users ultimate speed: relevant results for a query within milliseconds, even with over 100K products in your webshop.
Query results from our search engine are more relevant than those from a default (e-commerce platform) search engine (or one that isn’t optimised). As a webshop owner, once you’ve implemented on-site search, you can also use it as an (extra) marketing tool, as the results of a query will appear as you please: you can influence the outcome with our extended filtering, sorting, and promotional options.
For example, you sell two types of trainers: Nike and Adidas. You’ve got a sale on Nike, so you would want this brand to rank higher within your results when visitors search for trainers, wouldn’t you? With personalised recommendations, you can make that happen. Visitors will always find what they are looking for – in this case, trainers – but you are in control of what they see first/on top – Nike. You can also link everything up with your favourite Analytics tool and see extensive search statistics, which help you understand your customers’ needs better (things like zero-result queries, what visitors are searching for, but not finding, because you don’t sell it?).
Why would I need optimised on-site search?
Why would you bother with optimised on-site search? From years of experience and data from our 700+ customers, we know that searching visitors find more, buy up to 5 times more, visit more pages, stay on your website longer, have a higher order value, and come back more often. Optimised site search helps make your customers happier.
It also increases your conversion rate. One of our customers (Intersport Twinsport – type in any query to see it in action) increased their conversion rate by nearly 400% after implementing our solution a few years ago. Obviously, such a massive increase doesn’t happen to everyone, but it is a given that after the implementation of an optimised on-site search engine, your conversion rate and revenue will increase. On average, our customers see a 50%+ increase in their conversion rate.
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Curious about what search optimisation and our software can add to your business? Book a demo and get inspired!
