Using the Cloud for Site Search

A flurry of articles have come out recently that reiterate the obvious: if your search results are not on top of the commercial search engine results pages, then no one will find you. 

What is ironic is that while most business have this knowledge in the enterprise (either in the marketing department or the interactive ad agency), that does not cycle back to their own site search.

Let me outline a typical business flow that I see every day from organizations both large and small:

1. Company hires interactive firm for web site and / or search engine optimization and search engine marketing work
2. Company (hopefully) decides which words to purchase for advertisement on commercial search engine. Many interactive ad agencies will make this strategic decision for you (not a good idea).
3. Company's marketing department has lots of team meetings with interactive ad agency for web site and advertising reports

Now let me outline the behavior of the search user:

1. End user does a search on Google (or another commercial search engine)
2. User will click on either the ad or the organic search listing
3. User will type that same word on your site search box
4. Users will see search engine results pages (SERP) that looks like it came from a math textbook (my favorite is the classic percentages of relevance)
5. User goes back to Google 

The search user in this scenario will ignore all the investment and expense of hiring the ad agency, the time and effort of your marketing team, and barely look at your web site.

The SERP is their interface to your site, and that is probably run by the IT person somewhere in your organization who has 1000 other things to do. Few interactive ad agencies think about designing the SERP, and it is shocking to see how sites lose their brand and other corporate elements on that page.

Business have to organize all things search under one umbrella: site search, search engine marketing, and search engine optimization are all interrelated and no one seems to realize that (barring a few very large web media properties). 

At Adhere, we call this "Universal Search Optimization" and our education and reports have brought smiles to many a marketing manager who had different groups for each component, moving in different directions, and racking up large bills.

Our process earns revenue by stopping the traffic bleeding from your site search by integrating the work of your interactive ad agencies and making all of your search activities coordinated and organized. 

(Hint, you can use the cloud for all three.)