Custom Search - a guest post

guest post by Grace Boyle of Lijit

Search is actually a powerful tool for bloggers and publishers, online. There are many tools that can help you understand the value of a visitor's "search" for content on your site, adding to the knowledge of how well you are serving those readers.

Our company, Lijit, is sponsoring BlogPaws West and will be available to answer questions about search and how it works for you, as well as demonstrating how our tool does search. But, today, I thought I'd introduce you to how search works on a blog.

Custom Search

As a blogger, you're creating content and publishing it everywhere online - in your own blog, in other blogs , on twitter, in photos on Flickr and especially videos on YouTube. I can only speak directly to OUR search tool. We've created it to take all of your content, organizing it and making it searchable and discoverable by your readers. We actually index all of your content, including the blogroll of sites you link to and trust. The photo here is a search on the BlogPaws blog.

We're all bloggers at Lijit so we're hyper-aware of the important of look and feel. That's why we have a flexible tool and different style option to help assure the tool matches your blog's layout and theme. You can see examples of this on the Embrace Pet Insurance blog (they are also sponsoring BlogPaws West), and Animal-World, BabyAnimalz.com and on the BlogPaws blog, also.

Statistics

Bloggers need to understand and learn which content on their blog is most valuable to their readers, in order to have a truly successful blog. That's why search tools provide you with stats that uncover reader intent, and also teach you about your readers' search behvavior, your traffic, and which content is most popular. Learning about what your readers are searching for and how they spend their time on your site is gold to any blogger - it helps you understand your community!

At Lijit, we have information that reveals a variety of stats. My favorite is "Last Searches That Returned No Results" because I am usually able to write a blog post based on that search statistic. This helps give back to my readers by providing the content they were searching for, but didn't find.

Stats should be easy to understand, as well as visual. They should teach you about your readers' behavior, helping you produce focused content based on that information.

Check out this live link to our CEO, Todd Vernon's, stats page on Lijit - image on the left.

A search tool should always value the users: the blogger who are using it as a way to track stats, and the readers who use it to find content on the site. It should be open and available to give users a chance to provide feedback, information, and even kudso, if they wish to share. Search tools not only help you as a blogger, but they encourage readers to dive deeper into your content and discover what you're doing in social media. Stats help you understand how your readers use your blog.

Any questions?

For those attending the upcoming (and incredible) BlogPaws West in Denver, I'll be there with our Director of Marketing presenting a session on search, and will be available to answer any questions. We'll show you how stats work and help you sign up, if you want to. We can't wait to meet you - and your adorable pets, too!

BIO: Grace Boyle is the Publisher Services Manager at Lijit in Boulder, Colorado. She helps recruit and acquire strategic publishers to Lijit's growing network and serves as an account manager for existing publishers. Like the rest of the team, she blogs and be found on Twitter. She loves blogging, laughter, the mountains, snowboarding, horseback riding, travel and wine. She misses her Siberian husky, Dakota.