The Search Marketing No One Talks About

Search has been around a long time–since 1995–and even Google has been around since 1998. You would think that by now that we would all be doing every kind of search marketing there is. And most of us think that we are. But most of us are wrong.

I am sure that you are working on organic search, which most folks like to call Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. And everyone knows about paid search, so I suspect that those marketers for whom it works are using it. And there are smaller offshoots of search, such as local search and app store optimization that some companies need.

But most of the clients I work with need website search, on-site search, or whatever you want to call the search that the site itself controls. And very few companies really do it well.

Here is what I hear, when I ask about website search:

• What is that? This is not a great answer, but at least it is an honest one. The fact that I regularly hear that answer is my proof that this is the most hidden of all search marketing techniques.
  
• We don’t have a website search.
  
• The IT team handles that. Well, sure they do. And they handle your content management system and your web servers, but you don’t have them in charge of the content that shows up on the site. They shouldn’t be in charge of the search results, either, because they legitimately do not know which marketing messages are the right ones to show.
  
• No one uses it. Maybe that is because it is godawful. What other part of your site is something that no one uses and you are OK that it just sits there costing you money? (Not just the money to run it, but the money you are losing because people don’t use it to find the information that gets them closer to buying from you.)
  
• It’s terrible, but there’s nothing we can do. This is the saddest answer, because there is plenty that a marketer can do, but most marketers haven’t tried to find out. I work with companies every day to improve their website search, so it is not only possible, but a lot easier than people expect.

If you are already working very hard on SEO and maybe on paid search to get new visitors to come to your site, why aren’t you working equally hard on your website search?

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