This article is based on a presentation about the value of Behavioral Targeting for SEM, delivered at SphinnCon 2010. I discussed how to target users coming from search traffic in a very subtle yet powerful way.
Using behavioral targeting is especially interesting when it comes to SEO. Sometimes websites that provide a broad range of products do not have a SEO landing page for each service, category or product. This means that users that looked for one specific product or area can land on the homepage and get lost with all the choices available. Through Behavioral Targeting it is possible to use part of the homepage to provide a customized experience based on search terms, tailoring the user search (which is a strong indicator of intent) to a special offer.
Below I use two examples to illustrate how a very simple targeting strategy can bring significant results to a company. I will focus on the SEO success or failure to deliver what the visitor expected to find on the website.
Let's start with an enterprise that is failing to provide what users are looking for on their website.
Suppose I am looking for an anti virus to my PC. Naturally, I would start with a simple search on Google "anti virus". McAfee is well positioned on the first page and I would probably click on the search result to check the website. As we can see below, when I get to the website, nothing speaks to me about anti virus. For some reason, McAfee chose to use a categorization based on the user type, and not on the software they provide, which means I can't find the search term I typed on Google even once on my landing page.
Let's say I surf around and decide not to buy the anti virus and leave the website. In two or three days I read more about the subject and understand that I actually need a firewall and an anti virus. Again, my first thought would be to search for "firewall" on Google. Ops, I can see McAfee again! That is a good sign ('maybe this company has what I am looking for') and I would probably click through and visit their website again. And here is the page I get:
Failure! McAfee knows that I came before, looking for an anti virus, and they know I am now looking for a firewall, so why aren't they using this info to target me? They could just add a small dynamic banner on the homepage that contains offers based on search terms, with a default promotion for other sources of traffic. Very simple, as we shall see next.
Suppose I am looking for Auto Insurance (and I live in the USA). If I start my search looking for "Auto Insurance", among the first few results I will find on Google is Progressive. If I click through, I will get the following page:
However, if I am the Harley Davidson type of person, that is interested only on motorcycles, I would probably be looking for "Motorcycle Insurance". Well, for this search Progressive is not ranked very well (4th page as of now). But if I do get to their snippet and decide to click through, I will get a very pleasant surprise:
Success! As we can see above, users looking for auto insurance get a picture of a girl holding an auto insurance and a prominent car in the icons below the girl; but when I look for Motorcycle insurance I get motorcycles instead or cars. A very simple technique that certainly has a great effect on User Experience. And this is not as difficult as it appears...
I have written in the past that Behavioral Targeting is Easier Than You Think. And I really mean it; the examples above show that very simple Targeting campaigns can have a significant impact on visitors' experience. With a little bit of thought and any tool, a good analyst can make wonders. Which brings us to the most important factor needed to succeed with Behavioral Targeting: Brain Power.
If you have never tried anything related to targeting visitors, there are easy ways to do it. You can just implement Google Analytics (which is free) and integrate it with BTBuckets (which is also free) and start creating a customized experience for each website visitor.
We would love to learn from your experience, so share your thoughts on the comments!
Daniel Waisberg is the Founder & Editor of Online Behavior. He is also the Principal at Conversion Journey, a consultancy that provides insights on improving the performance of websites. Daniel is also a member of the Advisory Council of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. You can find him on Google+ or Twitter.
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This is exactly how to use this targeting technology, non intrusive smooth suggestions. Very nice examples.
Nice article, but I'm a bit confused.
The title says:
Using Behavioral Targeting to Optimize *SEO* Traffic
The first line says:
This article discusses the value of Behavioral Targeting for *SEM*
Is that a typo or did I miss something?
Ophir
It is not exactly a typo... but I have edited the initial paragraph to be more accurate.
The article is based on a presentation about Behavioral Targeting for SEM, in which I also discussed SEO (a subset of SEM). Funny that Akin Arikan just posted about it: Since when does SEM no longer include SEO???
Thanks for calling my attention to this inaccuracy.
Would you say it is appropriate at times to allow deeper site content to function as the more appropriate landing page for a search term set instead of a multi-targeted homepage?
For example, some our largest sub genres of product are represented in their own "storefront" underneath the homepage. These often function as the landing page for core product-type searches done by people interested that kind of product. These storefront pages often rank very well and invariably become homepages for those clicking through from SERPs for the relevant terms.
Thoughts?
Nate
That's an excellent question Nate.
In fact, I believe there is no right/wrong answer here. There is a clear advantage of having a landing page for each organic keyword which is exactly what the customer is looking for. However, that is sometimes very hard to manage and achieve, and if you divide your force too much you might lose rankings. So I think sometimes it is better to target less pages and use behavioral targeting to provide the right message to customers based on their search terms.
When to use which? That should be decided on a case by case basis.
Thanks for your balancing comment.
I ask because often recommendations like the one you've made in this post require the involvement of IT/development staff or approval of management (e.g. to install btbuckets or to adjust the homepage adspace).
Since I work for a company that has outgrown our development staff (and is hypervigilant about new installations) I often feel bound by the limitations of their availability and/or willingness to support opportunities like this.
However, we have been given a functional CMS and building effective SEO content is possible, so the sub-page approach is pretty much where we sit.
Still good to see what's possible. I appreciate the effective examples.
Nate