All URLs feature a "Searchable" option that allows specific URLs to be searchable so that they can be found during front-end site searches. When a reader enters a search query and that URL qualifies, a URL promotion block will be viewable at the top of the search results.
Currently, we are limiting the number of URLs that show in a search results page to only one. This is to keep users searching for something very generic, like "news," from getting a long list of URL results. This way, the reader will get a good mix of the more relevant URL and news that qualifies. However, if a user wants to see more URLs, they can click on a link and the additional URLs are expanded.
Best Practices
- Make sure that any URLs marked as "searchable" have a good title and description. These are used in the preview card that shows on the top of the search results page.
- Mark your customer service pages as "searchable" so that users can search for "vacation stop" or "home delivery" and will find the appropriate subscription forms.
- Many sections in BLOX Classifieds are considered "virtual" and do not have a corresponding URL map entry. However, if you want some of these sections to be discovered via the new search, you can create the URLs (make sure that they match exactly with the virtual URLs) and then mark those as searchable.
- Go to your Google Analytics dashboard, and click on Behavior -> Site search. This will give you a list of the most searched site terms on your site. If one of those search terms corresponds to a URL, make sure that URL is "searchable" so it can be easily discovered on the front end.
- Across all of TownNews sites in the last 30 days, the most popular words searched are listed below. These should give you some ideas of topics that may benefit from having a searchable URL.
- Obituaries / Obituary
- Garage Sales
- Jobs
- News
- Halloween
- Crime
- Trick or Treat
- Sports
- Pets
- Volleyball
- Covid-19
How to make a URL searchable
A URL can be made searchable by enabling the Searchable option within the Page properties of a URL. This can be accomplished by navigating to the BLOX CMS menu > Settings URLs. Next, populate the correct URL (or sub-URL) and then enable Searchable within the Page properties tab.
Make sure the URL has a good title and description. Remember, the title and description are the key elements that will be searched, so make sure they are include a lot of relevant keywords.
