Google is pretty good at showing relevant content based on your search query. But sometimes you need something so specific that a general keyword phrase doesn’t really work for you, especially if you’re a marketer looking for a particular piece of content.
This is where a site search comes in handy.
A site search is done in a search engine and allows you to search a domain – not the entire Internet – for a term.
Read the following sections to learn more about why website searches are helpful and how to perform them.
Here’s how to search a website using google
- Go to Google.com.
- Enter site: www.website.com with your search term in the search field.
- Refine your search.
Google search within a website using Site Search
1. Go to Google.com.
2. Enter site: www.website.com with your search term in the search field.
Make sure you consider the domain and subdomain when doing a site search. For example, if I search for the term “SEO” on www.hubspot.com and www.blog.hubspot.com/marketing, I get two different results.
The former will show results that include all subdomains, while the latter will only show results that are related to the blog subdomain.
The same goes for the path: www.hubspot.com/about returns different results than www.hubspot.com/pricing.
With that in mind, it’s important to know where to look for your search term.
3. Refine your search.
For example, in Step 2, I searched our blog for a broad topic: SEO. Various subtopics came up, ranging from SEO blogging strategies to tips from SEO experts.
From there I can filter my results by subject or even by date.
In the example below, I’ve added “2021” to my search time to refine my results and get more up-to-date data.
Site Search Best Practices
When it comes to a site search, a good rule of thumb is to start wide and narrow down gradually.
This makes it easier to find what you are looking for and avoids narrowing down too early. For example, let’s say you want to search a competitor’s website for SEO-related content.
Start by researching SEO to see the range of subtopics it cover. From there, you can dive into each sub-topic and check which ones they cover more and which ones less.
This method will help you come up with ideas for your own content and get competitive on the SERP.
Say you’re on the other end – you have a website and you want to make it easier for your visitors to find websites.
Site searches are very important, especially in e-commerce, as they help consumers find the products they are interested in.
In that case, here are a few tips:
- Categorize your content in the backend to make the search results more precise.
- Use autocomplete and autocorrect to help visitors type in the search box.
- If the query does not return any results, offer supply-related queries that the user may be interested in or forward them elsewhere.
- Optimize the terms on your website to reflect the language of your target customers. For example, let’s say you sell baby products and your core audience is in the UK. Your website would likely use the term “crib” instead of “crib”.
How Site: Search Can Make Your Life As A Marketer Easier
There are many use cases for this tool, but here are the most common.
- Find data – I like to use data to support and strengthen my content. With a site search, I can quickly find a statistic that I read in an article weeks or months earlier. I can do a search on our own blog or other websites I visit, such as eMarketer.
- Search for new topic ideas – For example, let’s say you want to come up with an article idea and check that your point of view has never been covered on your website before. You can do a site search and read all the articles on the subject. If you’re a freelance writer, you can also take this approach before proposing a story to a publisher to make sure it’s original and in line with their content strategy.
- Surface-related content to be linked – If you want to link to content within your own content, a site search is a great way to come back up or even find new content that you didn’t know existed.
- behavior Competitive analysis – Reviewing your competitors’ content plays a huge role in developing your content strategy. A site search can help you see how your competitors are covering certain topics, from the point of view to the length and usage of the media.