Internal site search is very important. The users who use your keyword search to find products are generally more focused and know what they want - so are more likely to make a purchase. They generally have a higher conversion rate than users who just browse through the categories.
This is why it's important to optimise your search results so that the correct products appear first for the appropriate keywords. The following explains how products, brands, categories and pages are ranked in the search results and how you can make changes to product positioning.
Click here on link to watch the video
What is displayed in the search results?
At the top of the search results page, there will be a list of Brands and Categories relevant to the keywords entered. Below this will be the Products relevant to the keywords.
Search as you type Dropdown
When you are typing in the search keywords, once you have entered your 3rd character of a word, a dropdown will appear suggesting search terms for Products, Brands and Categories. If you click on anything in the dropdown, it will automatically bring you into that product, brand or category.
How does the Search Algorithm work for PRODUCTS?
When you enter a phrase to search on, it can be made up of 1 or more words that you want to search on.
Each product is allowed up to 50 keywords related to that product and each keyword is given a rating of how relevant it is to that product. The following is the hierarchy of importance a keyword gets - with the rows in this table sorted by highest rating first:
Product Code | If a user enters a product code, we assume they know exactly the product they want |
Version Product Code | If a user enters a product code for a version of the product, similar to above |
Product Bar Code | Similarly if the user is searching on bar codes |
Version Bar Code | Similarly if the user is searching on bar codes for versions of the product |
Brand | The brand of the product is given the most importance as when a user searches on a brand, we only want products for that brand to appear |
Keywords | If you want to apply additional keywords to a product, we assume that you want this product to appear first ahead of other products for this keyword |
Product Title |
Next are the keywords in the product title. NOTE: We give the keywords at the start of the title a slightly higher rating than the keywords at the end of the title. |
Short Description below the price |
See image below which shows where this short description is - it's called "This is the SHORT DESCRIPTION below the price" in the image NOTE: We give the keywords at the start of the description a slightly higher rating than the keywords at the end of the description. |
Short Description below the add to basket button |
See image below which shows where this short description is - it's called "This is the SHORT DESCRIPTION below the add to basket button" in the image NOTE: We give the keywords at the start of the description a slightly higher rating than the keywords at the end of the description. |
Rating |
If more than 1 product has the exact same "points total" from the above hierarchy list, then we sort those products by RATING descending |
The following image shows where the keywords are on the product page:
How does the Search Algorithm work for BRANDS?
For brands, the following is the hierarchy table
Keywords | If you want to apply additional keywords to a brand, we assume that you want this brand to appear first ahead of other brands for this keyword |
Brand Title |
Next are the keywords in the brand title. NOTE: We give the keywords at the start of the title a slightly higher rating than the keywords at the end of the title. |
How does the Search Algorithm work for CATEGORIES?
For product categories, the following is the hierarchy table
Keywords | If you want to apply additional keywords to a category, we assume that you want this category to appear first ahead of other categories for this keyword |
Category Title |
Next are the keywords in the category title. NOTE: We give the keywords at the start of the title a slightly higher rating than the keywords at the end of the title. |
Parent Category Title |
Next are the keywords in the parent category title. |
How does the Search Algorithm work for FREE TEXT PAGES?
If you add free text pages as categories (i.e. untick the SHOW PRODUCT LIST checkbox), they will still appear under Categories / Pages using the Categories algorithm above. So, for example, if you have a page in your footer called Store Locations which also include your opening hours, and if you enter Opening Hours under the keywords for that page, the user will be prompted to click on Store Locations when they search on the words "Opening Hours".
How do I edit KEYWORDS?
To edit keywords, take the following steps:
- Log in as web admin
- To update keywords for Products, click on Catalogue - Products and Update beside the product you want to update, and click on the Product Management & SEO tab. You can enter the keywords separated by commas under the INTERNAL SEARCH Keywords textbox.
- To update keywords for Brands or Categories, just click on the SEO link in the list view of brands/categories - and you will see the INTERNAL SEARCH Keywords textbox.
- NOTE that the INTERNAL SEARCH Keywords textbox used to also be used for SEO and was outputted as a keywords meta tag in the header - but Google stopped using this for ranking websites as it was being abused. However, keep in mind that this same field may someday again be used for SEO as well in the future if things change again.
How caching works with KEYWORDS table
We have a complex algorithm that goes through the products, brands and categories and links them up with our analytics tables to generate a keywords table. This table is regenerated once a day after midnight but if you want to regenerate it manually, take the following steps:
- Log on as web admin
- Click on Settings - Clear Keywords Cache
- Then do a keyword search on the website straight away (ideally search for a keyword which is part of the changes you made)
- The keywords table will rebuild itself within a few seconds (the first search after clearing the cache will be slow as it has to rebuild the table as part of the first search)
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