Internal Search Results Appear in Google SERPS

[WayneRooney]

My friend is running an ecommerce store selling apparels. How can we make internal search results to appear in Google SERPS and rank them?

For example: the query is "peplum dress". You type the query into the internal search box and it returns a set of results. In this case, it's product listing.

How can we optimize and rank it so it appears in Google SERP? Do we do it the traditional way in terms of links?

Say URL is: http://www.asos.com/search/peplum-top?q=peplum+top&r=2

And we build links to it? Some of you may ask why not create a dedicated page for this, the reason being we'd have too many categories if we were to create one for each.

Thoughts?

[ChadC]

Yes. Think of it like another page on your website, and optimize it in the same way. Make sure that it is a useful page, and that it has all the on page elements in place. The biggest issues is going to be duplicate content so, use some programming magic to make sure that you are not creating duplicate content. Then build some internal and external links to it. Just keep taking steps to optimize it in the right way and someday it might rank for you!

[KeriMorgret]

Keep in mind that Google generally does not want to include search results in their search results.

[WayneRooney]

Thank you for responding Keri.

So what do you think is the best to tackle this problem? Create dedicated unique page for all those terms and optimize it the way we do all the time?

Thanks

[JaneCopland]

Hi Edmond,

If you are going to use "search results" pages as good landing pages, they need to be made useful and high-quality enough that Google has no problem ranking them.

To keep using ASOS as an example, this URL ranks very well in the UK for [black dresses]: http://www.asos.com/Women/Dresses/Little-Black-Dresses/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=9419

Using the site's internal search, this page appears if I search asos.com itself for [black dresses]: http://www.asos.com/search/black-dresses?hrd=1&q=black+dresses

There is little difference in the pages, but one sits beneath a folder structure, is linked to, includes a description and has a slightly better optimised title tag. But most importantly, the search results page is excluded via the site's robots.txt whilst the similar landing page is not - http://www.asos.com/robots.txt

For sites without the authority of Asos, I'd say you'd need slightly more than Asos' short black dress description, but in truth this is a search result page by any other name that has been made into a well-ranked landing page.

You see the same thing as you go down the SERP, e.g. http://www.debenhams.com/women/dresses/little-black-dresses versus http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Navigate?langId=-1&storeId=10701&catalogId=10001&txt=black+dresses

I hope this helps.