How to Use SearchWP to Improve Search in WordPress? A Complete Guide

If you’re running a big WordPress website or blog, then having a search functionality makes it easy for your users to find what they’re looking for. But in many cases, you’ll notice that the search is not up to the mark. To increase its efficacy of the default search engine provided by WordPress, you need to use a plugin, which is SearchWP. It allows you to optimize the search result algorithm, which in turn returns the most relevant results.

In this article, learn how you can improve search results in WordPress using SearchWP.

Using SearchWP on WordPress: A Step‐by‐Step Guide

To get started using SearchWP for you WordPress website, you need to install and activate it. Therefore, head over to the plugin directory and search for ‘SearchWP.’ Click on the first plugin that shows us (assuming its the right SearchWP plugin) and click on ‘Install’.

It’s a paid plugin. So you need to sign up for a plan. Once you do that, you’ll get a license key. Grab this key and copy to the clipboard.

Then head over to Settings > SearchWP and then open the License menu. Provide the license key in the ‘License’ box and then tap on ‘Activate.’ This will activate the plugin on your website. Once one, follow these steps to improve the search results:

• Inside SearchWP, open the Engines menu
• You’ll notice items like posts, pages, media, among other things. Click on any of it to increase its relevance in the search results. Adjust the ‘Applicable Attribute Relevance’ slider for each of these. For example, if you want to the title of a blog post higher than others, then click on posts and set the ‘Title’ slider to the maximum.
• Click on Save Changes once you’re done with the changes

If your WordPress website has multiple categories, you may want to allow users to search by category instead. For that, you have to add a category drop down to the search bar. This option is available inside SearchWP plugin. Similarly, you’ll find a lot of search customization options. But proceed only when you’re clear about the objective.

You can always reverse these changes but make sure you know what you’ve tweaked.

So that’s how you improve search results for your WordPress website using SearchWP.