If you have been reading the various internet marketing blogs, you may have seen references to a growing trend for sites: having everything that a visitor needs for your niche right on your site. Once this is accomplished, they will have no need to go anywhere else. Do they need information on a specific topic? (Then use Wordpress as your CMS to post away). Do they want to have their own say in a forum?(Then integrate bbpress into your Wordpress blog). Do they need to know where to go for more information? (a blogroll or a links page, but maybe...a search engine on your own site?).

I have been slowly but surely converting my site into a one stop shop, so visitors will not need to leave. My site has come along way in the past few months, and I am about to launch an offline/online campaign to help promote it (I had to delay this to have time to work on the site). There is still work to be done (I am not looking for perfection, but I do want the elements to be working correctly). The last big part was having a search engine on my own site, where I can control the search to provide better results.

Until yesterday, my quest was taking me towards Zillow's API, which produced results that our visitors would like. I am still really impressed with Zillow for offering this to us, but I decided upon a different route because I felt that the consumer may need more than a search for homes. If I was clever enough, I guess I could have played with Zillow's codes to obtain my goal, but I found that all of my needs could be satisfied by Google. I created a search engine which produces results on my site, the way I want, and it is monetized with little effort. It was done through my Adsense account, where there is an option for a search engine.

Here are the steps (after much trial and error), so you can create this on your own search site:

1. You need to have the Adsense account. This was fairly easy to obtain.

2. Create a page where your results will appear. I went to my blog, viewed the source code in my browser, copied it onto my editor (notepadd++), I deleted all of the information that I did not want, which left me with a header and navigation buttons, I uploaded the page to my website's public html folder through my FTP client (Filezilla), and then I checked that it was there and looking good, while saving the URL of the page.

3. I logged onto my Adsense account, and followed the instruction for setting up the search engine. It was a quick and easy process, but here are some things to have at hand: websites where you want the search to be conducted; the html codes for colors to integrate the search engine's look with your site; and that exact URL for the results page. If you make a mistake, you can go back and change it on the Manage Ads section.

4. There will be two sets of code to copy and paste. One is for the search box, which I placed in my Sidebar.php (under the theme editor, remember to update file). The second was pasted onto my results page, which I had to upload again replacing the first one.

5. Done. Take it for a test drive to see the results. Oh well, I still do not position number one in the search results :).

I have my real estate mash-up site. I am going to continue playing with it, but at this point, I have the basic structure that I wanted for my goal of having what the customer needs in one place. If your curious about this process, you can go to my blog and read the posts in the Art of Business section. Any question, just e-mail me; otherwise, I wish you well with your own clients.

Your Houston Home Inspector,

Frank Schulte-Ladbeck