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Stop the confusion: onsite search and SEO are not the same!

11 August 2021

Despite being confused for the same thing often, onsite search and SEO are two completely different things. SEO stands for search engine optimization: the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. Onsite search refers to the search engine (search bar or box) within a website and/or webshop. In laymen’s terms: Google vs your own search engine.

The confusion stems from one of the main benefits of both SEO and onsite search: they increase conversion by optimizing (CRO). For SEO this means that with an increase in traffic to a website, more visitors translates into more sales, which ultimately means more conversion. Optimized onsite search makes products and content within a website more findable and improves UX: which ultimately also creates an increase in conversion. So yes, in both cases you’re talking about a search engine and optimizing it to grow your conversion rate, but you’re talking about two different search engines & CRO processes. In laymen’s terms: Google vs your own search engine. 

Onsite search vs onsite SEO

To create even more confusion: there is also something called onsite SEO. The term, also known as on-page SEO, is the practice of optimizing elements (within content and HTML code) on a website, in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from web search engines, making ‘original’ SEO also known as off-site SEO. 

Onsite Sooqr Search: optimized by and for you

Onsite search, within a website and/or shop, is exactly what we do at Sooqr: and really, it has got nothing to do with SEO. When using an optimized onsite search engine, your visitors will find what they’re looking for within an instant. That’s what Sooqr does: we give our (and your) users ultimate speed: relevant results to a query within milliseconds, even when you have over 100K of products within your webshop.

Query results given by a Sooqr search engine are more relevant than when using a default (e-commerce platform) search engine (or one that isn’t optimized). As a webshop owner, after you’ve implemented Sooqr, you can also use it as an (extra) marketing tool, as the results to a query will come as you please: you can influence the outcome, with our extended filtering, sorting and promotional options. 

For example, you sell two types of trainers; Nike and Adidas. You’ve got a sale on Nike, so you would want this brand to rank higher within your results when visitors search for trainers, wouldn’t you?. With Sooqr you can make that happen. Visitors will always find what they are looking for – in this case, trainers- but you are in control of what they see first/on top – Nike-. You can also link everything up with your favourite Analytics tool and see extensive search statistics, that help you understand your customers’ needs better (things like zero-result queries, what are visitors searching for, but not finding, because you don’t sell it?).

Why would I need optimized onsite search?

Why would you bother with optimized onsite search such as Sooqr? From years of experience and data from our 700+ customers, we know that searching visitors find more, buy up to 5 times more, lookup more pages, stay on your website longer, have a higher order value and come back more often. Optimized site search helps make your customers happier. And also, it increases your conversion rate. One of our customers (Intersport Twinsport – type in any query to see Sooqr in action) increased their conversion rate with nearly 400% after implementing Sooqr a few years ago. Obviously, such a massive increase doesn’t happen to everyone, but it is a given that after the implementation of an optimized onsite search engine, your conversion rate and revenue will increase. On average, our customers have an increase of 50%+ in their conversion rate.

Let me try it!

If you’re interested in using Sooqr – onsite search, not SEO – signing up is easy. Simply go to signup.sooqr.com, follow the steps, and we’ll hook you up. All we need is your URL, an email address and a data feed containing your products and/or content. Also, regardless of what eCommerce platform you use, you can implement our onsite search. But if you happen to use MagentoShopware or Prestashop as your eCommerce platform, we’ve got free plugins available to get you started even faster. And we’ll throw in a bonus: you can try Sooqr Search for free, for 30 days, to see for yourself how and if it works for you.

If you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know: [email protected], or give us a ring: +31 (0)88 766 77 00 and we’ll help you out!

Thanks for reading!

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