Editorial
The Gist
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Content quality matters. Regular content audits ensure your enterprise search results are relevant and up-to-date.
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Effective metadata use. Consistent metadata and tagging improve the findability of content, and it helps users easily search for the information they need through accurate filtering.
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AI-powered search enhancements. As AI continues to shape enterprise search tools, optimizing search strategy and staying ahead of AI updates is essential.
“I can’t find anything on your website.” “Your search doesn’t work.” “When I want to find something on your site, I use Google because it’s better.”
How many times have you heard similar complaints? While investing in AI-powered enterprise search tools can improve the customer search experience, it’s not a magic bullet, and success is dependent on having an enterprise search strategy. Companies need to pay attention to content, metadata and analytics, and they must have sufficient team expertise to support their strategy.
Keep Content Relevant for Effective Enterprise Search
Content is still king when it comes to search. It’s important to get rid of clutter and make sure that content (i.e., articles, images, videos and product pages) is relevant and up to date. Searching for information and seeing a volume of content from 10 years ago — even if some is still relevant — makes the searcher question whether the search is worth the time. Companies should commit to regular content audits to get ahead of this. Twice a year is a good place to start, although your industry, level of regulation and other internal factors are going to help define what is best in your company’s situation.
Regular content audits will identify existing content that still has value but needs to be updated. For example, an article written in 2021 about how to work remotely might still offer solid advice, but ongoing references to the COVID-19 pandemic are no longer important outside of a historical context. During an audit, you’ll also identify content that should be removed because it’s no longer relevant — for example, articles promoting a conference from several years ago.
Websites are not meant to be historical archives, and removing content is necessary. Still, you will want to be careful with 404 errors and their impact on SEO. Content audits are also an opportunity to review content for issues with tagging and metadata and make fixes.
Related Article: 4 Ways to Improve CX With an Outstanding Digital Content Strategy
Metadata and Tags Enhance Findability
Content of all formats -– including writing, images, documents, video and audio — should always have consistent metadata and tags applied to improve a customer’s ability to easily find content in search. Metadata should be added to templates and digital assets as part of the content creation process, so training authors to fill out these fields correctly is key. The ‘how” will vary from system to system, but clear training, publication checklists and documentation will help keep content findable in search results.
Why does metadata matter? Metadata is the information about a piece of content -– title, description, alt text, publish date, author and tags -– that paints a picture of the content. This data can be used in search to sort, filter and influence whether a piece of content is shown in search.
For example, if you have a research report in PDF format, and it does not include a clear title, many searches will only pick up the file name, which is often not descriptive. If you allow searchers to filter content by author, but an important piece of content is missing the author tag, it won’t show in the results for that author. If you want your visitors to see search results sorted by the most recent content, and a piece of content has an incorrect date, it won’t show where expected.
Organizations that produce a lot of content will benefit from a faceted taxonomy, which helps maintain structure around topics, content types, authors, publications and more. It also ensures that content creators have a list of options to choose from, which helps them avoid inconsistencies, typos and the use of multiple similar terms. Synonyms can also be tied to taxonomy metadata where there are multiple similar search phrases.
As AI-based tools continue to grow, support for adding tags easily and quickly will improve, but that does not negate the importance of training and continuously sharing best practices.
Use Search Analytics to Improve Your Enterprise Search Strategy
Still, it’s not enough to just put a quality search product on your website and make sure content is relevant, up-to-date and tagged appropriately. Regularly reviewing site search and traffic data is essential to understand and make improvements on your website. Thinking through the following questions can help you continuously improve your customer search experience:
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Are there search terms used frequently that return no results? If so, assess why and create or reframe content to address any content gaps.
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What are the most popular search terms? Regularly conduct searches to understand what users might see and to confirm that results offer value. This may involve using test accounts and VPNs for different audiences where personalization is involved. This is also an opportunity to catch any potential issues (i.e., content missing metadata or tags) introduced during site updates and adjustments.
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What are the top visited pages on your website? Cross-reference your website analytics with search analytics, and make sure that the search results users click on align with the content that receives the most traffic.
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What is the average click rank in your search? How many results does a customer skim on average before clicking? Once they select a result, do they consume the information, or do they bounce off the page? This will indicate if what they selected was valuable to them.
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How are AI tools impacting your site search? What updates are planned for your search tool, how do they impact your internal search strategy? This will allow you to keep up with changes in the landscape and make plans for any updates or changes.
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Establish a Strong Support Strategy for Enterprise Search
Setting and forgetting enterprise search won’t set your shiny new tool up for success. You also need experts to support your enterprise search strategy, make regular adjustments and keep up with the ever-changing search landscape (especially as the impact of AI continues to grow at exceptional speed). These experts should know how to execute the following tasks:
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Keep up with the latest in the enterprise search landscape, and make recommendations on how to build changes into business strategy.
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Regularly review and report on search data to improve customer experience and provide strategic insights into what customers are seeking, helping to inform business decisions.
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Provide training, checklists and best practices to educate non-experts and content creators on key steps.
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Work with development teams to implement new, valuable features on the enterprise search roadmap.
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Use data to drive and support decision-making around top content, infrequently visited content, older content, customer interests and more.
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Connect and collaborate with the SEO team, since enterprise search and SEO are intricately connected.
Related Article: Are Marketers Prepared for AI Search Disruption?
Innovations Shaping Enterprise Search Tools
It is an exciting time for enterprise search -– with frequent changes including new AI-based enhancements, improved contextual understanding of what the user wants, and the increasing ability to process copious quantities of data. We should expect to see growing accuracy and continuous efforts to integrate AI into search tools.
Even with future changes, the four recommendations assessed earlier in this article will continue to be important. These are the building blocks to help you set up the customer search experience for success.
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