Hello, everyone, and welcome to the session why on-site search is the best investment you'll make in twenty twenty two. A bold claim, so hear me out. This session is designed to explore the relationship between SEO, SEM, and on-site search. And I'll strive to uncover how you can get more out of your investments in in audience acquisition within paid and organic by optimizing the experience on the properties you own. We're talking about, a multiplier on top of your search strategies. And my name is Steven Rahal. I lead platform product marketing for a company called Coveo, and I'll be your guide. I'll be answering questions in the live chat, q and a during the presentation. So let's just jump in. Let me start with just a quick story that I think is indicative of how we buy today. And, as a product marketer, I spent a little time on the weekend helping a seller in our organization prep for a presentation. The customer had an inquiry. They own a technology that uses AI and automating elements of their service and support delivery, and they wanted to help understand the capabilities they own and how they compared to what they would get access to when purchasing Coveo. Really, what it was all about was helping them buy. Right? It was not about convincing, but about educating and producing and providing content that could help that customer reduce some of the complexity, understand some of the difference in between exactly what they owned and and what they were purchasing. And content has become our primary tool, that we use to create a dialogue with our prospects to cultivate relationships with our customers online. And that content must be relevant. It must be valuable. It must be interactive to win their attention and draw them into a conversation. Really, content's always been the best way to do marketing, and making your company the expert in your niche via content is is essentially really the way to go. And there's numerous examples of this. I'm sure you can all think of a few, right top of hand. And here's a great example. It's it's Wistia, a video hosting platform for b two b marketers. What they've done, they've created a a content hub on their website with original video series and podcast. They've created a a blog that dives deep into a range of different topics, building their authority, building trust in them as a brand, and their expertise helps sell their technology. And you can discover that expertise organically. They can boost that expertise and and share that content via paid. It's a great example of of how we market today. And what's happening is it's causing an increase in customer acquisition costs across the board because, acquisition costs are are increasing both for b two b and b two c companies due to competition and and every brand really becoming content creators, creating ebooks, creating white papers, creating video content, paid advertisements. And while b to b customer acquisition costs are are slightly higher, both are up roughly about sixty percent, over a recent five year period. The World Health Organization even defines what we're going through right now as an infodemic. Right? There's an overabundance of information, some of it accurate, some of it not, but it makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources. It makes it difficult to find reliable guidance when you need it. And changes to Google and Facebook, the the paid marketing game is is going to get even more challenging. And even another interesting trend is emerging in around content strategy. Not only we're seeing the growth in content marketing, but we're seeing, especially in financial services and technology, we're seeing, the act of acquiring media companies in communities. It's it's exploding. You've got HubSpot purchasing the hustle. You've got Stripe, the payments technology company buying indie hackers. You have Robinhood in financial services buying Barca snacks. And it's a particular interest to those industries with customers who have a lifetime value that that is high. So you see it in technology. You see it in software as a service. You see it sports and gaming. You see it in financial services. Instead of renting an audience, it's about owning or or building a direct relationship with your audience in order to be able to lower the cost of acquisition. And, really, it's born out of the challenge. And the problem that marketing is is becoming expensive, and we need to seek ways to be able to unlock some of the value from our investments in in content creation and in traffic generation. And that's really what we're talking about today. We're talking about, the power of of search and the power of on-site search. Site search is it's complimentary. Right? It's complimentary to search engine optimization, to search engine marketing. It shares a common goal around findability. But, really, what it's what it's about is you can use site search to actually get more value from your investments in in organic and paid. And I think on-site search is is really an undervalued, underutilized, and under resourced tactic in search. But when done well, it can be it can help you, be more efficient in acquisition. It can help you be more effective in in creating value for your customer. And so if SEO and SEM are getting people to your sites, how can you optimize that experience when they arrive? How can you make sure that, you're not turning people off by failing to deliver the the compelling search and navigation experience on your website, on your mobile applications? And when you do it, it penalizes you in in really two ways. It drives your customer acquisition higher, but it also impacts your your organic performance. And it really doesn't matter, what search engine you use. You might be using the search that's native to your platform, your content management system. So it's embedded features and capabilities within that system. You might be collaborating with your technical teams, with your IT teams to use an open open source technology like solar or elastic, and that has your technology teams customizing and and building the search applications. Or you could be using something like Coveo, which is more of a a best of breed search platform. Really, the the opportunities in site search are are twofold. One is on the informational side, and one is on the experiential side. So when we talk about informational, we're talking about keyword research and optimization and content creation. When we talk about the experiential side, it's about browsing search and navigation. It's about how you consume content and ultimately how how you convert. And that's what we're talking about today is how can you get more from your investments, in search, through a more effective site search strategies. And let's let's focus first on the informational side and and how people search. And so the goal of a of a search engine is is obviously to return the best results for your query. And understanding the language is is crucial to return the best results. Every SEO marketer understands this. Right? You understand how people search is is often different from the information that people write, about solutions, the the content they create around a brand. And so how do you understand that more more deeply? And search is really a great feedback mechanism. When you think about site search in your web properties today, your search box, is it's kind of a field study in in language. It's, an open window on on user intent. So the words that people use to search can give you powerful insight into into what they want. So, I mean, search at at its core, it's about trying to the best of of your abilities, to your knowledge, to guess the intents, of a human. It's about the mental state of the user. It's about the task or goal that a user wants to accomplish. And so we know that search engines, whether it's public search or or site search, creates an index of data by ingesting all the text, relevant to your products, to your documents, to your website. When users perform a search against an engine, they provide their intent, their query that they're looking for. And so basic search engines, are performing keyword search, basic site search engines. They're matching words in the query with the words in your documents or your products. On top of that basic keyword search, you have platforms that might gather a wide array of signals, and they utilize those to to tune relevancy. And so that insights that that can come from the search box is is extremely powerful. We know that keyword research remains one of the most kind of fundamental SEO tasks. SEO managers crave keyword data, and guess what? Site search can give some much needed insight to enrich keyword research to help shape your SEO strategy. So in this example, right, my my search career here is Nike tennis shoes. It tells me not only about my interests, but also of my my brand's allegiance, to Nike and, what it says, but also what it doesn't say. You could see the potential, especially with Nike, if you're a tennis fan at all. You know that Nike has sub brands for, different tennis professionals, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Rafael Nadal all have, lines within Nike. And so, again, from that query, what you say, what you don't say can tell you a lot. And by analyzing how and what visitors are are searching for via your internal search tool, you can update your keyword strategies for organic search. You can even alter your site structure to present demo searched, on topics first. And further to that, if existing customers are looking for specific information that you don't yet have available, you can create new site pages. You can create new content, whether it's blogs or ebooks or case studies that are all targeted to them. And and so let me give you a few direct customer examples of being able to use site search data and and the impact of it. And so the first is is from a a large North American telecommunications company, one of one of the most recognizable brands, around the world, and their SEO team, invests in in tools to understand where their customers are getting stuck. What are they focusing on? How are they engaging? And they take those insights back to their teams. They take it back to their content strategy teams. They take it back to, their web strategy and UX teams in the overall design of the states. People are getting stuck here. They're engaging with content a versus content b. And, really, when when speaking to them, they had one of the more enlightening statements around the value of the search boxes. The idea that people don't lie to your to their search box. It's it's like your pastor or your priest or your or your parents. Right? It's people are very forthcoming when they enter a search query, and it can become one of those greatest resources you have for customer experience. It can help you identify null searches or zero result searches so you can identify gaps in your content. With this particular brand, they are able to reduce, those zero result searches by by ninety five percent. One of the interesting stories about their experience as well is, multiple touch points. So multiple web properties for multiple brands, both websites, but also mobile applications and, introducing site search to their mobile app and optimizing it. One of the most popular searches was for account number, which they didn't have a way to surface within the mobile app. And so, again, being able to enhance site search, investing in site search can not only provide you insights around the language of your customers and and how they, how they think and and and what they're looking for, what they're seeking out, but it can also improve and help you optimize the experiences that you're creating within your own properties themselves. And one of the best practices in in in their case is that they're intermingling marketing and support content, in in one web experience and being able to, learn from that, learn from the insights that are pulled from the search Barca is extremely powerful. Another quick example is, from a North American jeweler. They, serve both direct to consumer, as well as, a b to b side with with wholesale. And, again, they've had an impact a significant impact around optimizing search and recommendations as part of their web experience. But I think one of the most interesting stories for them, again, is is a data driven story and how you're using the data from your site search box, the queries that your users are entering. How can you use that to improve your business? And a great example where they almost discontinued a product until they use their search data. And so they had a product that was doing great in the wholesale channel, not so much on the retail side. And it wasn't until they dug into, the search query data that they discovered that it was the most searched for, product by consumers. But the challenge was within, their retail store environment is that it was never in stock. And so the the challenge was not lack of interest. It was more on the merchandising and product supply side. And so, again, the idea here is that site search can be a great tool, a great informational tool, to help you not only improve your search engine optimization, your search marketing, but that can also be extremely effective, in improving and enhancing your business as a whole. And so when we look at some of the the KPIs for site search analytics and and, again, what insights can can you derive from this data? And so one is around keyword insights. Again, use keywords and queries to gain insight into your audience. Right? So how can you use these indicators to understand intent, and speak the language of your customers so you can hone your content and and increase conversions? Another key metric that that we talked about quickly was the whole idea of no results or or zero results searches and identifying those. So can you look at the top searches that yield no results or no clicks and use that insight to fill the gaps in your content strategy and deliver answers to your audience. It it can also feed your your keyword research processes. And so we know that uncovering query coverage oversights can be, an effective tactic to use. Right? If you can integrate your data, by placing paid query and organic query coverage metrics side by side, you can create areas for paid search expansion or opportunities for, optimization of organic search. And when you bring in your site search metrics as well, you're you're gonna get additional insight, into how your customers are thinking. You can also join web analytics and search analytics data to understand journeys. You know, people follow different paths to find information. And so how can you use search analytics to help you pinpoint website navigation or site structure issues? Correcting these issues, customers can get the content they need the most, and it it can enhance the experience for them. So I think depending on the brand, you can have up to fifty percent of your visits to your digital properties can start with a search. Again, very, very brand and very industry, specific, but some people know exactly what they want. The search box is the primary way they use the web. To them, search is navigation. Some people wanna explore a site before they decide what action to take. But no matter how perfect your site hierarchy and navigation is, some users won't understand it or they won't wanna learn it. And so being able to optimize, your site search experiences can be a powerful lever, for for your websites. And so that's the informational side. How can you use site search data, to improve your return on investment? There's also the experiential side. And so search as experience optimization tool, and we know that the buying process is complex no matter what your business is, what it's focused on, b to b or b to c. We know there's a complicated web of of touch points that differs person to person. We know that the journey is not linear consumers loop, essentially. And this model is specifically from Google around the purchase process, and there's there's a lot of different models that exist. But in this model, it's consumers looping between exploring and evaluating the options available to them until they're ready to purchase. And so Google calls this, the messy middle. Right? It's that space where you've got an abundance of information, and unlimited choice, and, you're trying to come to the right decision. And so a search engine is is again, it's the most used and the most useful touch point throughout a journey, but a brand's own site, or mobile application is a key asset that that should be leveraged. And when you think about the value of site search, it can really ensure that both, both your content and the user experience is is optimized so that people can get to the right information, that they're looking for. And so across multiple categories, websites or apps among the stickiest touch point for you for the journey can be a brand's own site and app. And so how do you think about enhancing that experience? And so when we think about site search and the experience, beyond your web properties, we think about four major intents with digital experiences. As users, as visitors to web property, We want to to do something to complete a task. We wanna know. We wanna learn. We wanna, obtain, expertise and information. We want insights to be able to go to a location. How do we how do we get that quickly? Or ultimately, we wanna we wanna purchase. We wanna buy. And so when we think about our investments in site search and what we're doing from an experience standpoint, it's being able to invest in a way that helps to deliver on the four major intents of of a visitor. And so our goal is provide them with the information there and the reassurance they need to make a decision. It's it's it's very easy nowadays. One click away. Your competitors are one click away. It's easy to go elsewhere. And so, how can we, look at site engagement and conversion and enhance this through the search experience? And so let's look at that first intent, the the to do, the how to intent. It's all about how to content. Right? It's thinking about what your clients are asking to do and and creating content around those processes. And so there's really an opportunity here, when you think about your web properties and thinking about enhancing the search experience, about unifying your marketing and support content in in one unified index. And not only does this streamline access for customers, but it also can be huge boon for organic traffic. And and I think about just customers and and, levels of customer awareness. And so you've got at the top end, you've got the most aware customers. These are your your brand loyalists. At the bottom, you have customers that are unaware. They don't realize that they even have a problem yet. And so for customers that are that are problem aware, they they know they have a problem, but maybe they don't know, what solutions exist. Your how to content, is great to attract organic traffic. They know they have a problem, but they don't know solutions exist. They're searching for that problem. How can they find, how can they find information that can help them and aid them? And, again, when you when you think about unifying your content, you not only enhance the customer experience, but you can also enhance, the, experience of discovering and finding your brand. The second intent is is to know. The intent is is all about expertise in education. And so I think the the pandemic, of course, has made us even more reliant on looking information up online in a lot of ways. And so when we think about optimizing our our site search experience for education, again, it's it's not only the core search box on your web properties, but it's also thinking about more intuitive interfaces that let your buyers browse content based on interests. And so when you think about modern search technologies today, personalization encompasses kind of various ways to customize content, and it gives you the ability to deliver content that buyers see as as relevant and valuable. So, as as marketers, you need solutions that can present data driven content recommendations, and and modern search can can do that. You can use AI to progressively refine recommendations, and make it easy to be able to navigate, to this information. So thinking about optimizing for education, it's about being able to create greater findability in in your content hubs, in your learning centers, but also being able to better orchestrate journeys by recommending content, recommending the next best piece of content as a part of the overall experience. The third incentives are really around to go to find. This intent is about connecting kind of your offline and your offline channels your online and your offline. Sorry. It helps visitors find you and your products and services, and it's kind of a a core part of a functional web presence. So when we think about optimizing the site search experience, we're optimizing for how to content. We're optimizing for educational content, but we're also optimizing for, being able to find a location. And, again, a frequent scenario on mobile devices, whether you're a retail organization or or in health care health care provider, making it easier to locate a physician or a pharmacy in this case or health service, finder apps are critical. And so when we're thinking about optimizing experiences, when we're thinking about investments in site search, we're thinking about multiple different use cases that are kinda critical part of the web experiences that you create today. The fourth intent when you're when you're visiting a site is, is to buy. It's to purchase. And it's about driving the ultimate marketing goal of of purchasing your products. And so we know that ecommerce, obviously, the the growth in the last year has has been significant. In in twenty twenty, worldwide retail ecommerce grew almost twenty eight percent, year over year. And, if you look at some studies from econsultancy, up to thirty percent of ecommerce visitors use internal site search. So when you're thinking about optimizing the site search or investing in the site search experience, particularly when you have a commerce, angle to what you're offering, it can be a powerful lever, especially based on the increased level of purchase intent from searchers. In an ecommerce context, they're known to convert up to five to six x higher. And so how do you how do you optimize the the experience not only for for finding products, but that whole purchase process. And so when you go to a product listing page and you're able to recommend similar products or you're going through the cart conversion process, how can you impact average order value, by providing cart recommendations as part of that purchase process. So encouraging visitors to be able to add to their cart. And so, again, site search and the visitor, when a visitor is visiting your website, four major intents, four major actions or goals that they have that they're seeking to complete. Site search can be a powerful mechanism that can enhance each of those intents or each of those goals. And so behind that behind the four intents, that that any visitor might have, you've got a kind of key set of capabilities, insight search that can influence experience. And they can together, they can increase the customer's engagement in time on-site by reducing zero results pages. They can increase recall. And so one way you can accomplish this is by is by handling synonyms automatically, right, ensuring that your customers don't have to enter industry terms, or or language specific to a brand to be able to find relevant results or relevant content. You can leverage powerful typo correction, understand the term a user, most likely meant to enter. And this is particularly important when you're thinking about the site search experience because screens have gotten smaller. Now between fifteen to twenty five percent of searches will feature at least one misspelled character. And so how do you when you're investing in site search, when you're optimizing that experience, being cognizant of some of the challenges associated with, with how people are searching on your sites today. Another is just embracing type ahead suggestions. So, where a list of potential query options can see what a person would likely be looking for. So this is not only helpful, particularly on a mobile device, but it also reduces how hard ish, a buyer has to think. Offering options taps into their ability to recognize a term if offered to them rather than have to think up the correct combination of words for a search query. There may be industry terms that they're unfamiliar with. This is a great way to be able to speed up the search process for users, helps them avoid misspellings, and ensures that searches return the right product results or the right content results. And so, all examples of some of the capabilities when you're looking at enhancing the site search experience, what kind of impact they can have on, the overall web web experience itself. One of the the last areas is around personalization. Being able to personalize search results is increasingly important, just based on the nature of of queries. A large portion of them, can be can be generic, meaning they can benefit from personalization. But personalization isn't isn't easy for a lot of brands. Right? A lot of brands, you're not authenticating into a site. For many brands, your your visitors to your web properties aren't habitual. They're, the visits happen maybe less than less than twice a year, and and oftentimes, that's for seventy to ninety five percent of users. And so all this means that the data available for personalization is is fairly limited. And so brands should differ consider when you're enhancing search, look for modern, search technologies that can deliver personalization even with few data points. What we're seeing today with with benchmarking benchmarking, when you think about your own site search capabilities today, look at some of the figures. Just twenty nine percent of on-site search engines are able to handle even a single misspelled character in a query. Sixty one percent offer no support for synonyms. Eighty two percent of, sites are offering type ahead query suggestions, which is great, but thirty six percent of those are offering suggestions that are not helpful or do more harm than good. And so part of the opportunity when you're thinking about and kind of evaluating your site search today, what capabilities are available, how you're implementing it, These are some of the capabilities that can really enhance the experience as well. And so, really, the theme here is great site search can positively impact the the customer experience from the path to purchase even through the entire lifetime of a customer. So whether you're thinking about your website or multiple brand websites that exist as a part of your experience, whether you're thinking about, a commerce element, a shopping cart element to, to your experiences, even if you're thinking about support and service, being able to enhance site search can have a positive impact on, metrics across those different areas, whether it's in website, increasing your search and visit success rates, increasing the average time spent on-site, and the amount of content that is consumed, when a visitor is is engaging, being able to impact the the shopping experience, the purchase process. Right? Your your average revenue per visit, being able to increase your average order value is, again, is a part of that shopping experience. Or on the service side, being able to enhance self-service success rates, so impacting customer satisfaction, overall customer effort. And so when you think about when you think about site search and optimizing experiences, the more that you implement kind of a consistent approach to search across all the touch points that exist, the better the overall experience can be. And it's it's this is really born out of a a foundational belief for for us at Coveo is that we're no longer in the digital economy. We're very much in an experience economy, and what people expect of digital experiences has, in fact, changed for good. It's it's digital leaders. It's the experience that you have, shopping on Amazon that's raising the bar for all. And it's not enough just to put your content or your products online. It's not enough just to to drive traffic to, your own properties. To compete, you need to deliver experiences that are that are centered on the person, that that are personalized to the individual, that are, cohesive across all touch points, and conversational in that they they understand natural language, and that they're continuously improving. Part of the, the value of great site search is being able to learn from each experience and and being able to continue to tailor that experience. And so if you're just optimizing your content for organic and paid traffic, you're missing a key part of the equation, with with site search that converts it. Site search can play an instrumental role in helping you compete, with your, with the leaders in digital experience. And and, really, for us, that's worth investing that's worth investing in. Thanks again.