Aside from creating captivating content, you need to encourage your visitors to spend more time on your site. One way to do this is by adding a search box on your blog so they can look up other topics you may have posted about.
There are a zillion search widgets out there, so why use Lijit’s ?
1. A Lijit search widget captures ALL the content you create online from your blog to your Facebook page to what you’ve been stumbling, digging and tweeting. You’re constantly creating your own little publishing empire of content and Lijit helps your readers find and search it.
2. Lijit gives you detailed statistics who’s searching what so you can better understand your readers and visitors.
3. The Lijit widget is easy to use and FREE. And they finally allow you to put all your blogs’ widgets on one account instead of separate accounts. Unfortunately, this was done after I set up all my personal accounts, but with the Mom Central blogs – all of them are easily accessible under one login.
4. It’s customizable. You can change the colors, width and what the search box shows on your blog on the fly. This means if you change your blog’s column size and want to make your Lijit widget bigger, you change it in your Lijit account and don’t have to repost the code to update it.
5. Lijit works easily with all the major blogging platforms as a widget - you just add it and move it to wear you want it on your sidebar. However, you can place their HTML code on your sidebar too if you wish.
6. Using a Lijit widget allows you to monetize your search page with Google Adsense. The Lijit Ad Network is currently running a closed beta program, but if you would like to participate click here.
7. You can embed your search results on a page on your blog instead of having results “pop up.” How to do this is covered on the Lijit blog at Embed search results on your blog!
8. By displaying search terms on your Lijit widget badge in your sidebar, you encourage readers to search on topics they hadn’t previously thought about looking up. Again, this encourages them to stay awhile and read more posts.
9. Lijit’s search results are reader friendly. Not only are your blog’s visitors finding relevant search results from your blog and your content, but also your network (anyone in your blog rolls and any sites you add) as well as the whole of the Internet. Look how helpful you are and you didn’t even have to get out of your chair.
10. Lijit is a cool company. If you’ve gone to blogging or tech conferences you’ve probably met Tara or Micha or seen them talk. Lijit supports and is active in the blogging community, so it feels great to give the love back by using their search widget.
Love this post! Thanks for sharing the many reasons to use Lijit...and I'm honored to have made it on the list. We appreciate our users, especially when they do such a great job of explaining why Lijit is awesome.
Not sure if you know, but we're currently running a Lijit storytelling contest and this would be a perfect entry. You just need to leave a comment on our blog post (http://www.lijit.com/blog/2009/07/17/a-lijit-storytelling-contest/) with a link to this post and you're in the running to win a Kindle!
Thanks again.
Posted by: Tara Anderson | 08/04/2009 at 01:20 PM