How To Create Content For Great Search Experiences

Having a high-performance on-site search and insight tool like HawkSearch is essential to providing your website visitors with meaningful and personalized search experiences. It is interesting to note that the foundation of HawkSearch’s powerful capabilities is not just the advanced technology built into it, but also the content that lives on your site.

The topic of content has been popular in many web industry seminars during the past few years, but when it comes to creating content that allows visitors to successfully search your website, we will define it in this way. “Content is information that an internal search engine can access and index that will be the basis on which the goals of both visitors and online companies can be accomplished.”

Why Is Content So Important?

There are many reasons why effective content is essential to providing HawkSearch what it needs to operate at top performance, including:

•Without content, your internal search engine has nothing to do.

•Quality content is the foundation of creating great user journeys.

•The old adage “garbage in garbage out” also applies to search results.

•The foundation of everything a successful internal search engine can do rests on having quality content to access and deliver to the site visitor.

How To Create Great Search Content - Best Practices

The methods to create effective search content will vary, based upon the type of website your company operates. For this blog, we will focus primarily on the most popular types of sites – Ecommerce & Information Based.  

Ecommerce Sites

When a visitor is looking to purchase something from a website, they usually search for details about the products they want to buy. In light of this, search content for ecommerce sites should be:

•Data driven.

•Contain non-fluffy descriptions.

•Able to provide relevant details about products.  

For B2C sellers, examples of the above could be size, color, fit, brand and fabric. B2B content should contain technical details such as wattage, amps, capacity and other important information. Also, be sure to keep your description data consistent, by not interchanging such terms as “Black” vs. “BLK” or “Large’ vs. “LRG” etc. HawkSearch has tools to overcome these inconsistencies, but clean content is always a solid foundation from which to work.

Information Heavy Sites

Information based websites are utilized by organizations such as associations, hospitals, libraries etc. When it comes to creating effective search content for these types of sites, the criteria is a bit different than their ecommerce counterparts.

Informational search content performs best when it:

•Utilizes keywords that best describes information, classes or events.

•Has pertinent headers or titles.

•Uses dates & other important details.  

In conclusion, it is clear that the content that lives on your website plays a crucial role in accomplishing the search goals of both users and companies. HawkSearch is well known for providing meaningful search experiences, no matter what kind of site you are operating. By fueling HawkSearch with search friendly content, you will be well on your way to building an even larger following of happy, loyal visitors! Happy Searching!