iMark Interactive

Have you ever been on a site where the site search was not performing up to your expectations?  Was it frustrating trying to find everything that you were looking for because the software was just not good or just under performing?  Have you looked at the site search functionality on your website lately?

One of the top reasons visitors leave sites is due to a bad site search function or no site search at all.  These days in Ecommerce, every site needs to have some search functionality in order to survive.  Most shopping cart software providers already offer a site search function built in when you purchase the cart.  While this is better than not having one at all, most of them are far below where they should be in order to be effective.  Most people visiting sites are most likely going to use your site search one.  If it is not good or doesn’t provide accurate results, then you can expect to lose that visitor and the chance to make them into a customer.  Site Search is important, so everyone with a website needs to take it seriously.

If your site search is under performing, think about replacing it with another software package, or at least bulk it up with more features.  The best site search platforms out there offer multiple ways to filter results, which in turn results in a higher conversion rate.  If you do not have the technical expertise to manipulate your site search function yourself, then think about outsourcing the code development, or at least check out Site Search Providers.  One of the best in the industry is SLI Systems.  They provide a great package that can integrate into your site to make it look seamless.  Their software gets rave reviews from other ecommerce retailers that use it because it provides the function it was intended to do, search your site!  They have so many ways to perform searches as well as maximize your site searches for SEO benefit.  Not only will you get a better search platform and most likely more conversions, but also the added benefit of SEO on your site search terms that customers are using.  A few other services that are worth mentioning are the new Google Site Search function.  Everyone knows that Google knows searching, and you can get it without any google logos to brand it as your own.  Celebros is another good service along with Omniture Site Search.  A company called Nextopia is a good place to look if you are just in Ecommerce because that is what their site search is geared toward.  They are probably the most cost effective in the ecommerce site search space, but might not be what you need.

Upgrading to a new site search platform can and most likely will be expensive, but you have to think about the future and how many more transactions you could bring in due to a more advanced and accurate site search function.  Most retailers do not realize how much their site search affects their sales or goals, but they have a heavy influence.  Most 3rd party site search platforms provide some quality analytics that can help you know which terms are performing and which are not.  This allows you to make better choices on which items you can feature or work on SEO in order to increase natural rankings.  If you are on the fence as to what might help your site conversion, check out upgrading your site search functionality and you will be pleasantly surprised.

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You take the time to build and market your website, and put all the necessary work into it to make it great, but do you monitor it?  Most people that we talk to say that they look at it regularly to make sure that it is working, but what about when you are asleep and out of the office.  There are so many opportunities out there for your website to go down without you knowing it.  The way of getting around this issue is so easy, but many webmasters and businesses do not use it.  The service is called Website and Server Monitoring.

This type of service is offered by many companies now, and is a key part of succeeding online with your website.  No matter if you are in retail or the service industry, if your website is down, it affects you and your business.  Website monitoring companies check on your website 24/7 to make sure that it is up and running.  You can elect for them to check certain actions to make sure that they are working like form submissions and link checks to make sure they are proper.  It is a valuable service that many companies look over because it is an added expense.  Companies such as Alertbot, Keynote, and SiteupTime are easy companies to start working with and can assist you in monitoring your website.  These companies will also monitor your server for an additional cost, which makes sure your scripts are working properly and your server is not getting over-run.

The services that these companies provide do cost money, but it depends on how large your website it.  If you have a small ecommerce website, some services are under $20 per month.  If you have an enterprise website, it can cost up to $1000 per month.  SiteUpTime offers free website monitoring, but it only checks every 30 minutes and checks a small fraction of items on your website to see if they are working.  While this is not ideal, it is better than not monitoring your website at all.  This will give you a real look into seeing if your website has functional and performance problems.  If you or your company are not utilizing website monitoring services, you may want to look into it as it is very important, but often overlooked.

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Anyone that has a website knows that meta tags should be utilized on every page that is on public domain.  Meta tags are a useful tool to let visitors and search engines know what your page is about and the information on it.  The three meta tags that are usually updated are the Title, Description, and Keyword tags.  Most webmasters update all the meta tags according to each page, but some are now going in another direction.  We are going to provide insight into the importance of the Keyword meta tag.

For quite some time, the main search engines have no longer given any weight into the keyword meta tag due in part because of webmaster keyword stuffing this tag.  Most of the keywords in the tag did not match up with the topic of the page, so it will reduced in importance.  Reduced to almost nothing.  Google has stated numerous times that the keyword meta tag is not used in their search algorithm.  The other engines still look at the tag, but most give it little to no weight in their algorithm, but since Google has over 60% of the market share, it is important to look at what they are doing.

While we still tell most new webmasters to include the keyword tag because it is a good practice to be able to keep up with all three tags, we tend to tell seasoned webmasters a different story.  Reason being, we have found that the only thing the keyword tag is good for is competition spying.  Most competitors of yours can use your keyword tag to see what keywords you are going after on each page.  This can help them discover good keywords to compete with you directly in natural and paid search.  Don’t get us wrong, this can be good as well for you if your competitors use them, so you can see what keywords they are using and trying to optimize for.

While the importance of the keyword meta tag has decreased to almost nothing over the years in the eyes of the big search engines, it can still be useful for keyword gathering and competitive analysis.  If you are a new webmaster, try and use the keyword meta tag in order to get versed in adding new keywords for each page that you have on your site.  Try not to duplicate the keywords on different pages and keep them unique.  So in the end, if you site is large and you have a very competitive environment, don’t use keyword tags, but if your site is small, then keep placing them in there.

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