EverWeb’s Easy To Use Site Search Explained!

One of the most useful features that you will find in many websites is the ability to search the site itself to find what you are looking for. EverWeb includes this capability so that you can develop sophisticated search criteria for your site. Having in built search is a benefit to your visitors and also to you as well as it can help keep your visitor within your site! Additionally, adding search capability to your site amay also be beneficial to your SEO. In this post, we’ll be looking at the basics of search in EverWeb so that you can set up you own site to be searchable.

What You Will Need to Begin…
The only real requirement to add Search capability to your website is EverWeb version 3.5 or higher. This version of EverWeb introduced two new widgets to EverWeb:

• The Search Field Widget: This widget is the core of in-website search in EverWeb. The widget adds a customizable search bar to the page.
• The Search Results Widget: This widget can only be used when you’re using the Search Field widget and it allows you to display search results on a separate page in your site.

For this post, we’ll be looking at the Search Field widget as this is a key component of EverWeb’s site search.

Setting Up the Search Field Widget
As usual, start by drag and dropping the widget on to the page where you want it. You may just want the widget to be on the Home page, or on all pages. If you want the widget on some, or all, of your pages, we recommend that you use a Master page to do this.

After adding the widget to your page, you can define the search bar using the widget’s Widget Settings. Start ny defining the language that you want to use. There are nine to choose from: English, Dutch, French, Finish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish.

Next, decide how you want the search results to be displayed. Here you have three options: In a popup window, a dropdown menu, or “one of my pages”. If you choose the last option, the page you choose to display your search results in will require the use of the Search Results widget.

Once you have chosen your display option, complete the rest of the Widget Settings. You’ll notice that these Widget Settings are devoted to the appearance of the Search Bar. The available options make it easy for you to match the appearance of the Search Bar to your website’s design.

Choose the Pages You Want to Apply Search To
Once you’ve finished customizing the Search Field widget, it’s time to turn your attention to setting up the search criteria that you want in your site. To begin, choose the pages in your site that can be searched upon. EverWeb, by default, will set all pages to be searched. However, it’s not necessary to include all of your pages in search results. For example, you don’t need to have your “404 Page Not Found” page searchable, so you’ll want to exclude that from being searchable.

Once you have decided which pages you want to exclude from being searchable, go to each of these pages, then on the Page Settings tab of the Inspector window, go to the Site Search section and uncheck the ‘Include in Site Search’ checkbox to exclude the page.

Adding Key Words To Be Searched Upon
The final step in setting up your website search feature is to add in the keywords that visitors can search upon in each searchable page of your site.
The Search feature will use keywords and phrases from a number of different fields in the Page Settings tab. So before you begin, think about the words, or phrases, that your site’s visitors will be using. Additionally, if you’re a business, you’ll also want to include the names of the products, services and subscriptions that you sell in your site.

Make sure that the following fields have also been completed:

1. The Web Page Title: If possible, add in SEO keywords to your page title, but only if it’s appropriate!
2. The Web Page Description: As with the Web Page Title, add in SEO keywords to your page description, but only if it’s appropriate!
3. Navigation Menu Display Name: As the Navigation Menu is usually EverWeb’s built in Navigation Menu widget, it will have links in it, so think about the naming of the pages you are linking to. Again, don’t sacrifice user friendliness for the sake of SEO.

After making sure that you have completed these fields on your searchable pages, it’s time to add specific keywords in to your searchable pages. Your Home page is probably going to be the first page that you’ll want to add keywords to… Go to the Page Settings tab in the Inspector Window then scroll down to the Search Engine Optimization section. Below the Web Page Description click on the Add button to enter in your key words, or phrases, that you want to be searched upon.

Make sure that the words you include are suitable to the page and also relevant to the content of the page. Remember that adding SEO keywords or phrases is useful, but you should not put this above words or phrases that you think visitors will enter in your site.

Final Steps…
After adding search words and phrases on all of the pages that you want to be searchable, publish your website and test your search feature! Remember to review your search words periodically too to give your visitors and SEO the best search possible!

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