As i mentioned in my previous post , that I have been reading extensively about search engine marketing , and also watching various videos – one of the best videos i saw was a seminar by Avinash Kaushik – the from Google Analytics team . The full session was full of various insights on quite a few topics such data analysis , creating a data driven culture in a organization, checking ones web site’s bounce rate, and internal site search analysis and visitor intent . I spent the whole of sunday afternoon watching the videos , which were as i said before fascinating and insightful.
I have decided to using Web Analytics to the most , as possible .
And to start with that , I have have been toying with the idea of using either Google Site Search , which has the free and paid versions or creating our own custom internal search.

The pro’s of using Google’s Site Search is that
:

1. It is a tool from Google , internet’s leading search engine
2. Integrates snugly with Google Analytics, thus all reports are available under one account
3. It has a free version – even though with limited capacity

The cons of using Google site search are :

1. The free version would be displaying competitive ads on search results pages , thus one might have to think of using the paid version, which is around 100 USD
2. The tool might be limited for customization , inside your own site

The base idea is to get an idea as to what does your visitor search for once they have arrived inside your site – the data is required for “Keyword research” and “to find visitor intent” . Now since this can be achieved by using a internal search , I would like to try it out on our own first . If this fails , or after trying it on our ( which is at no extra cost), i might then try out by paying Google , to see the difference . Whats more , if I am not wrong , a internal site search , not made by Google , can also plug into to Google Analytics .
We have almost 68 pages inside the web design website , which is not obvious from the homepage … yet , because of our link building and search engine optimization efforts, many people come into the website using various keywords … or already come without any web links – just by word of mouth and try to locate what they came for . If he is web savy , he might navigate to the page he wants or might even choose to use the sitemap … but if he is lost , the internal search will allow him to find anything he wants at any time ( without using messy dropdown menus ). Furthermore, in the videos i mentioned above … a lot was discussed about a websites / pages – bounce rate . I feel many times this bounce rate is caused by a person not being able to find what he thought there is … with a internal search he would now be able to locate pages or try something new . And this way maybe the bounce rate could be minimized .
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Tags: avinash kaushik, bounce rate, google, internal search, site search