Most websites have search boxes as they’re highly useful to visitors, allowing them to browse the site and get what they want. It’s important to note that the search page is not a “part” of the website and that it generates content based on the search query. Even though it’s not actually part of a website, search engines still index results pages. So optimizing them is very important as you can increase the visibility of said pages in search engines.
Search engines have to trust your website in order to rank your “website search pages.” In order to achieve this there should be a considerable number of searches taking place on the website. Big portals and eCommerce sites will gain Google’s trust easily because of the higher number of internal site searches. Below are some tips to optimize your search pages.
Tighten Up Your Internal Search
The search functionality should deliver relevant web pages/products and should strictly relate to the phrases being searched for. For example: If visitors are searching for “Search Engine Optimization,” the site should only retrieve the pages talking about “Search Engine Optimization.”
URL Format
In most cases you will see that search URLs are generated with query URLs – not exactly user friendly. Try to convert it into a friendlier URL, it’s recommended to have the following format:
http://domain.com/search/search-term/ - Recommended Search URL format.
http://domain.com/?=search-term – URL with query strings and not search engine friendly.
Page Title Format
As we all know, page titles play a vital role in SEO. Below I’ve indicated the proper title format for search pages.
"Search Term" | Company/Website Name
H1 Format
It’s best to define the H1 term of the search page by including the search term in it.
Display the Recent/Popular/Relevant Search Terms
To increase user friendliness and to make the search pages more effective, it’s advisable to display the recent/relevant/popular search terms in your site’s left/right navigation.
Also remember that search engines will not be able to crawl your search pages only until it’s linked from the website. So it’s pretty much mandatory to have a “popular search terms” widget on your website in order to rank your search pages in search engines.
How to Track Your Internal Site Search?
Check out our blog entry on tracking internal site search terms in Google Analytics. Google Analytics enables you to sort out the search terms that are being searched within your website, which can later be optimized accordingly.
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Hi Elan,
Improving internal site search results pages for user-experience is fine, however Google recommends blocking such pages through robots.txt file.
Here’s what their Webmaster Guidelines say about this topic…
“Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.”
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en&ref_topic=6002025
Also have a look at what Matt Cutts have to say about this subject…
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-results-in-search-results/
Thanks