On-Site Search & Redirects

This article covers two features that both do the same quiet job: making sure people always land on the right page. The first is on-site search, which lets your visitors search your website from a built-in search page. The second is redirects, which keep old links working when a web address changes. Neither takes much effort, and both make your site friendlier for visitors and search engines alike.

On-site search

Every StoutStack site comes with a built-in search page, ready to go, at the web address /search. So if your site lives at yourbusiness.mystoutstack.com, your search page is yourbusiness.mystoutstack.com/search (and the same /search works once you're on your own custom web address too). Visitors can type in a word or phrase and get back a list of matching results from across your site.

Search looks across your:

  • Pages
  • Blog posts
  • Content items: entries in any custom content you've set up, like a portfolio, menu, or team directory

It stays current on its own

You never have to build or refresh a search index by hand. Results are updated automatically whenever you publish or update something. Add a new blog post and it becomes searchable; edit a page and the new wording is reflected; unpublish something and it drops out of results. There's no manual step and nothing to switch on.

How search matches, and why clear titles help

On-site search is a keyword search: it matches what a visitor types against the titles and summaries of your content (the summary is the short excerpt you write for a page or post). It's not a fuzzy, guess-what-you-meant search engine, so the words that appear in your titles and excerpts are the words it can match.

The practical takeaway: write clear, descriptive titles and excerpts. If customers are likely to search for "gluten-free," make sure that phrase appears in the title or summary of the relevant page or post. Good, plain titles help your visitors find things. And, as a bonus, they help your Google listings too.

Make sure people can find the search page

The search page always exists, but visitors won't use it unless they can see it. Consider adding a link to /search in your site's navigation menu or footer so it's easy to reach from anywhere. A simple "Search" link is all it takes.

Redirects

A redirect sends anyone who visits an old web address straight to a new one, automatically. It's the tool you reach for whenever the address of a page changes, so that old links, bookmarks, and search results keep working instead of dumping people on a "page not found" screen.

When you need a redirect

The two most common situations:

  • You renamed a page, which changed its web address. Anyone who saved or shared the old address would otherwise hit a dead end.
  • You removed a page but there are still links pointing to it (from Google, from another website, from an old flyer or email) and you'd like those visitors to land somewhere useful instead of nowhere.

Without a redirect, both cases end in a "not found" error, which frustrates visitors and, over time, chips away at the search ranking you'd built up for that address.

What a redirect does

A redirect points an old path (the part of the address after your domain) to a new destination. When anyone (a customer or a search engine) asks for the old address, they're sent along to the new page instead. To the visitor it's seamless; they simply end up in the right place. Search engines follow the redirect too, which means the credit and inbound links attached to the old address carry over to the new one, protecting your SEO.

How to create a redirect: a worked example

Say you used to have a page at /old-services and you've since moved that content to /services. You want anyone who still clicks the old link to arrive at the new page. Here's how:

  1. In your admin, go to Site › Redirects.
  2. Create a new redirect.
  3. For the old path, enter /old-services, the address that no longer works.
  4. For the destination, enter /services, where you want people to end up.
  5. Save.

That's it. From now on, anyone visiting /old-services is quietly forwarded to /services. Redirects take effect quickly, so you can test it yourself within moments by visiting the old address.

Tips for using redirects well

  • Send people somewhere relevant. Point an old page at the closest matching new page (not just at your Home page) so visitors find what they were actually looking for.
  • Set the redirect right after you rename or remove a page, so there's never a window where the old link is broken.
  • You don't need a redirect for a brand-new page that never had a different address, only when an address has actually changed or gone away.
  • Keep a redirect in place for the long haul. Old links out on the web and in search results can keep sending people your way for years, and the redirect keeps catching them.

Used together, on-site search helps people find what's on your site today, and redirects make sure the links from your site's past still lead somewhere good, both keeping visitors happy and your SEO intact.

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