Congratulations! You?ve Gotten Visitors To Your Site! Now, Can They Find What Theyre Looking For?

As search engine marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time trying to get targeted traffic to our site. But, once those visitors get to our site, can they find what they're looking for? If not, guess what? We've lost a customer.

Think about it this way. How many times have you found a site through a major search engine or directory, only to visit the site and not be able to find what you're looking for anywhere on the site? What do you do next? You go back to the search engine and click on the next site. That site has lost a customer: you.

Helping your visitors find what they're looking for on your site can cover a great many areas, such as navigation, user interface issues, and the lack of a clear "call to action."

But one way around many of those issues is to offer an onsite search engine, so that once visitors hit your site, they can easily find exactly what they're looking for.

The really neat thing about onsite search engines is that many of them are FREE. Yes, you read right: free. Of course, that also means that you may have ads in your search results, which may or may not present problems for you. However, even if you choose to purchase an onsite engine, the cost is generally not expensive.

What should you look for in an onsite search engine?

• Good customer support. If you begin to have problems with the engine, you want to be able to get help in fixing it.

• Reports that let you know what people are searching for once they reach your site. Just think of the GOLD this will tell you! If you don't have a page that covers a particular topic, make one!

• Ease in setting up the engine. This may or may not be an issue to you, but if you're like me, you want something that is simple to set up and maintain.

• An extensive "help" section at the site that will walk you through setting up the engine and answer any questions you might have.

• The ability to keep the engine out of certain areas of your site that you don't want spidered and available through the search, such as employee areas, password-protected member areas, etc.

• The ability to spider password-protected areas so that your member areas can have their own onsite search.

• The ability to customize search results pages.

• The capability to request re-indexing whenever you update the site, or even to schedule re-indexing on a regular basis.

In my training material and resource library at the Academy, I had an onsite search engine for a long time. Then, the company folded. Until recently, I hadn't set up another onsite engine, because the one onsite engine that I really wanted to use didn't index password-protected areas. So, I "patiently" waited for the onsite engine, FreeFind, to add this to their list of features. When they recently did, I jumped on it, and now both of my online training programs have excellent onsite search engines through FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com).

But why did FreeFind stand out among the others, and why was it so important to me to wait until they could index password- protected areas? FreeFind offers some features that I couldn't find on other onsite search engines, features that would help me tremendously with my work.

For example:

• FreeFind will automatically create a What's New page, after you've any changes to the site. Just think of how much help that will be for me with my training material? Between my two programs (beginning and advanced), I have over 1000 resource pages to update every single month, and I've been creating the "What's New" page by hand. Now, it's automatically created for me.

• FreeFind is the only onsite search engine that enables your visitors to find the page they're looking for, then keeps an eye on it for any changes. Their ChangeDetection (tm) monitoring system lets your users monitor a page for content changes, then notifies them when the page is changed. If you set up this engine on your own site, it will build traffic by turning casual, one- time visitors into repeat and loyal visitors who return again and again to look at changes made to the page that are of particular interest to them.

• FreeFind will automatically create a Site Map of your site. This Site Map is an alphabetical listing of the pages on your site. The Site Map will be even more valuable to you if you have a regular, non-password protected site, because it will give the Web search engines a page of links to spider.

• FreeFind will search across several domains. So, if your company has numerous domains, your onsite search engine will cover each of those domains, without having to set up separate engines.

In Conclusion

Look closely at your site. Is it time to add an onsite search engine? Is it time to make sure visitors can find exactly what they're looking for when they land on your site? Are you losing customers who get lost and can't find what they want?

FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com) is an excellent onsite search engine that met my exact needs. However, to be fair, and because this article isn't meant to be an advertisement for FreeFind, here are some other onsite engines that you may want to consider. Look closely at their features, and find the one that works best for you.

Other Onsite Search Engines

Atomz: http://www.atomz.com

PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com

SiteLevel.com: http://www.sitelevel.com/

FusionBot.com: http://www.fusionbot.com

A listing of numerous onsite search tools: http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy's training site to learn more about their online search engine marketing training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com) software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Email: RobinN@acws.com

---

10 Important Web Design Tips: SEO Friendly Website

A website should firstly be searched out by visitors before... Read More

To Flash, or Not to Flash

When considering whether or not to incorporate Flash into your... Read More

Use Exclusive Content - When Reprint Articles Dont Do Enough

There is no doubt that reprint articles can serve lots... Read More

Learn the Truth about Your Web Design Company by Its Portfolio

When you start building your online business and search for... Read More

Mini Site or Content-based Web Site?

Are you in a dilemma whether to create a mini... Read More

An Ideal Home Business Home Page

From my personal experience of around two year as home... Read More

Sales Versus Customer Oriented Websites

Should Generating Revenue From A Website Be The Prime Motivator?... Read More

Web Coach Tip: The Single Most Important and CRUCIAL Element of Your Web Site

Here's the single most important part of your website: YOUR... Read More

Creating Your First Website

Building your first website can be very frustrating. It looks... Read More

Free Website Design Tips

In this article I will give a few tips of... Read More

The Secrets to Successfully Learning Basic HTML

If you'd like to create/maintain a website, having some HTML... Read More

Web Site Turn Ons

When you develop a sales brochure, you have a mental... Read More

Building Web Sites Using Web Templates

Gone are the days when you had to rely on... Read More

Custom Website Design - 3 Must Have Tools

Creating your own website can be fun and easy, as... Read More

Website Design Firm

Website design firms come in all shapes and sizes.When choosing... Read More

Quality Graphics for your Web Site

For most people graphic design does not come easy. Unfortunately... Read More

Tableless Web Designs: Why I Switched

Since I made the switch 6 months ago to a... Read More

Give Your Website A Chance

I often wonder how serious people are when it comes... Read More

20 Tips to Creating a Profitable Website

As an online Entrepreneur you require a successful website.One that... Read More

How to Double Your Online Sales Without Spending Another Dime on Advertising

Learning how to convert visitors to your web site into... Read More

Does Your Homepage Work?

All websites have a homepage. It is the most important... Read More

Is Your Site Too Slow? Why Image Optimization Is Critical

Graphics are fun, but if you put in too many... Read More

Why You Should Hire a Professional Website Designer

Your web site should always adhere to standards!A professional web... Read More

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes

As a webmaster, you want to keep your visitors content... Read More

Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU!

We will take a look at why your visitors may... Read More

Online Advertising: 10 Tricky Secrets To Keep Visitors Glued To Your Website And Increase Sales

It is common sense.The more time people spend at your... Read More

Website Design Considerations

Q: Should I build and maintain my business Web site... Read More

Do You Own Your Web Site Design?

Your web site has been up for a few months... Read More

7 Reasons Why Using CSS is a Must

CSS is a new option for website designers that have... Read More

Top Ten Fonts for Website Design

The top ten fonts for website design might change in... Read More

Owning Your Own Web Site Is A Must

Owning your own website is a must if you are... Read More

Great E-Cover Creation in 5 Steps

There are several graphic software packages available to help you... Read More

How Does Your Website Measure Up?

Does your website make a good first impression? Is the... Read More