Website navigation is very important, to help customers navigate through your website easier and find products they are looking for faster.
One of the best forms of navigation is layered navigation on product categories and general catalog search in Magento 2. They both serve the same thing, but we want to draw your attention to the catalog search.
So, in this article you will learn how to optimize the search by adding Magento search terms, defining popular search terms, and setting search synonyms.
How to Add Search Terms in Magento 2?
You might be selling the very exact thing someone is looking for, but they won't make a purchase if they aren't able to find it.
To encourage customers to buy your products you have to create the most favorable conditions for the purchase. So, you can add search terms to "guide" your customers and ensure they find what they need.
The wider the range of the search term variations the more likely customers will make a purchase.
To add Magento search terms:
1. Navigate to Marketing > SEO&Search > Search Terms.
2. Press the Add New Search Term.
3. Enter a word or a phrase you want to be used as the Search Query.
4. Choose the Store View the search term will be available on.
5. Set the Redirect URL customers will be directed to once searching for this term.
6. Enable the Display in Suggested Terms options if you want the term to be available as a suggestion when the search term has no results.
How to Configure Magento Popular Search Terms?
Search terms are the words customers use in order to find products they came to your website for.
Popular search terms, correspondingly, are the most searched words customers use in your store. They give you a great opportunity to learn what products customers like the most and add them to your store if they are missing.
Besides, popular search terms are enabled as a search engine optimization tool by default. The search terms page is indexed by web crawlers.
So, by adding popular search terms you make your website visible to search engines and improve the search engine ranking.
To configure Magento popular search terms:
1. Go to Sores > Setting > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog and find the Search Engine Optimization section.
2. Enable the Magento Popular Search Terms option.
3. Don't forget to Save Config.
How to create a synonym group in Magento 2?
Searching for some products customers usually don't use the same words you used to describe products on your website.
e.g. someone is looking for a "sofa", while you have a "couch", or for a "sweatshirt" while on your website, it is marked as a "sweat shirt".
Therefore, it is useful to have a variety of words describing the product in order to improve the effectiveness of the catalog search. Magento 2 search synonyms help you not to lose your potential customers just because they are searching for a product with some other words.
Follow these steps to create a synonym group in Magento 2:
1. Navigate to Marketing > SEO&Search > Search Synonyms and press the New Synonym Group button to create a search synonym group.
2. Set the Scope you want the synonyms to be available on.
3. Enter the Synonyms separated by a comma.
4. Select the checkbox in order to merge synonyms.
Note: if you add the same Magento 2 synonyms to different synonym groups, Magento will merge the synonyms of these 2 groups into one.
5. Save Synonym Group.
Catalog search is the basic means of catalog navigation in Magento 2. However, it is very powerful since it allows customers to find products faster and easier, just by typing a few characters.
Search terms and synonyms give you a little control over the customer search queries since they allow you to optimize the search for them.
Besides, you can also configure search recommendations and suggestions that will be displayed in search and configure the preferred search engine.
Check out this article about Catalog Search Configuration and learn more about Magento 2 catalog search and its types.