A website search (or site search ) allows you to find specific topics or keywords on a particular website.
There are several ways to search for content on a site. But the tactic you choose will depend on the reason for your search.
Why search for keywords on a website?
A website search can help you find accurate shop information on any website – yours, your competitors’, or anyone else’s.
For example, it can help:
- Find a specific quote or statistic: Look for data or quotes you read weeks, months, or years ago
- Look for specific mentions: Look for mentions that need to be changed. Such as seasonal offers, promotions, location updates, etc.
- Discover new ideas: Find topics and keywords you haven’t covered yet
- Track performance: Check which pages are ranking for certain keywords
- Find backlink opportunities: Look for relevant sites to include in your outreach strategy
- Analyze the competition: Study their content to see how they cover certain topics
How to search for keywords on a website
There are several ways to search for keywords on a website, including:
- Using Ctrl+F in HTML
- Use Google Search Operators
- Using the website search function
- Use keyword-specific tools
Let’s go step by step.
1. Use CTRL+F in HTML
Let’s start with how to find keywords on a page.
If you’re in marketing, chances are you’ll have to look for something in a page’s source code at some point. Image alt text, meta descriptions, header tags, etc.
To do this type of search on the site, you need
- Install or open Chrome.
- Visit the website.
- Right-click on the selected page.
- Choose “View page source”
- Hold Ctrl+F.
- Type your keyword and press enter.
Let’s say you want to find the meta description of a page. Start by opening Chrome and visiting the page.
Then right-click anywhere on the blank page and select ” View Page Source .
When viewing the page source code, hold down Ctrl+F (Command+F on Mac). A search bar will appear.
Type the keyword you want to find and press enter.
In this case, let’s search for “description”.
The command will highlight every occurrence of “description” in the page’s source code.
So:
Note : This tactic will only search the current page you are on. Not the entire website.
2. Use Google Search Operators
Google search operators are special characters and commands that extend the capabilities of regular text searches on Google.
In this case, to get more granular results.
You can use search operators to limit your search to a specific website. In three easy steps:
- Open Google
- Type “site:” and then your website domain (for example, “site:www.semrush.com”).
- Type the keyword after the domain (for example, “site:www.semrush.com SEO audit”)
So:
You can also put any keyword in quotes to force Google to match it exactly.
Let’s search the Semrush website for “Google Business Profile”. Here’s what a Google search for that site returns:
The results only show pages on semrush.com that include the phrase “Google Business Profile.”
Note: Keep the domain and subdomain in mind when using search operators.
For example, if you search for “backlinks” on semrush.com and developer.semrush.com, you will get different results.
Here are the results for “backlinks” on semrush.com.
And here are the results for “backlinks” on developer.semrush.com. Very different.
The first shows results that include all subdomains, while the second only shows results for the developer’s subdomain.
The same goes for the path, or what comes after the “.com” part of the URL.
For example, the search “site:semrush.com/blog/” will return different results than “site:semrush.com/academy/”.
Keep this in mind when refining your site search.
For a list of all Google search operators, read our ultimate guide to Google search commands .
3. Use the website search function
Websites often have their own search bars.
And you can use them to search the site study a master’s degree in mba and marketing for a specific keyword. All you have to do is
- Find the search bar
- Use your keyword
- Press search/enter
So:
This method is by far the easiest. But not all websites offer this feature.
If they do, they may not have their search bar configured in the most optimal way.
For example, their search function can only retrieve matches on the page title or URL. So you end up with a short list of relevant results.
4. Use keyword tools
You may not always know the exact keyword or topic you’re looking for. But you know where you want to search.
This often happens when you’re b2b reviews looking at your competition or searching for new content ideas.
In this case, what you need is a keyword tool.
Semrush’s Organic Research tool can quickly give you a list of all the organic keywords a site is ranking for.
Start by entering your domain and clicking ” Search “.