Web Consultancy UK

Wow!  I’m thinking to myself.  That adverts just guessed my age.  How clever.  And it’s telling me I need an IPhone.  Next stop the Apple Shop!

OK, so that’s probably not what what the average punter thinks when they see this advert on their Facebook profile.  And in many ways it’s akin to those dreadful “It’s 12.39am, and you’ve just won a prize” pop ups you see on the kind of website you wouldn’t let your children visit.  But it does provide me with an excellent example of behavioural targeting, and demonstrates aptly how social networks provide a quality platform for the advertiser to utilise some pretty advanced technology, all at a very reasonable price.

Let’s break this advert down into two chunks.  Chunk number one is my age.  Facebook knows I’m thirty, and is quite happy to let the advertiser send this particular advert to anyone of that age.  No doubt the advertiser has a multitude of variations of this advert, each geared around a different year of birth.  Number two chunk is based around my interests.  I’m a big technology geek, and when I signed up to Facebook, I was happy to tell them this.  I could have equally have told them I was into golf, tropical fish, or porcelain figures of the late, great  Sir Winston Churchill.  The point is…  they know!

Facebook.  Youtube.  Myspace.  LinkedIn.  Bebo.  They all know.

And that, frankly, is great.

It’s great because I only get exposed to adverts that I’m genuinely interested in (ok, so I don’t want an iPhone.  I’ve already got a HTC Touch HD which I love like my own child, but I’m sure one day soon they’ll know that too).  And it’s also great because as an advertiser, I’m guaranteeing myself more bang for my buck, ensuring that my paid per click advert is only getting clicked by a customer who genuinely falls within my target audience range.

Home town.  Education.  Salary.  Job title.  Relationship status (this is my particular favourite - change your status from “in a relationship” to “single” and watch the wealth of lonely hearts adverts pop up).  We’re all quite happy to tell the social network powers that be about every aspect of our lives.  And they in turn, are quite happy to act as information brokers, pawning out our info to the highest bidders.

So what are you waiting for?  As a successful website owner, you should be taking advantage of this freely given information.  Setting up targeted advertising campaigns has never been so easy.  Not even Google are this accurate.  Never have you had the opportunity before to intimately understand your customer before you’ve even met them.  For every product, there is a customer.  And for every customer, there’s an advert waiting to be clicked.

Now, anybody got any Winston Churchill miniatures?

Now, I’ve got to be honest here.  I meant to attend the PPC seminars, I really did.  But frankly, I spend at least an hour per day running PPC campaigns, and if I don’t know it all by now, I should be shot.  So, let’s pretend I did attend all the PPC seminars like a good little boy, in which case, this is what I learnt.

Even mother Google cocks up now and again.  Fair play to Dan Cobley, Marketing Director for Google UK for holding his hands up and admitting this.  You’ probably suffered from, or at least heard of the GMail outage that hit Google on Tuesday.

Now, what wasn’t interesting was the cock up itself (we all make mistakes). What was interesting was Google’s competitors, and their PPC response to the situation.  Within minutes of GMail going off line, your search for “GMail failure” would have brought up a flood of email provider adverts boasting reliability, zero downtime and the like.  That’s what’s so great about PPC.  You can respond, literally, in seconds, to millions of people if you want (and you have the budget).  In today’s economic climate, PPC isn’t going to be about throwing large amounts of money at a campaign - it’s about using your smarts to make that campaign work efficently, and in ways your competition hasn’t thought of.

There was a lot of talk about Google insights at the show.  Now, I’ve been using this tool for a few months now, and it really is a wonderful thing.  In essence, it allows you to compare search behaviour on Google (so basically the whole web then) on up to five key terms, all the way back to 2006.  It also highlights terms that are rising in popularity and terms that are ‘breaking out’.  I.e. brand new search terms.

Go on, have a play - it really is quite fun!

So, I’m not the kind to plagarise anothers analogy (lol - blatently this isn’t true.  I’m in marketing after all!), but  just yesterday I read a rather neat one from Tanya Goodwin (Chief Exec at Tamar.com).  She compared PPC and SEO to the difference between a Volvo and a Bugatti Veyron.  One being fast, results driven, and expensive, the other being a slower, but more reliable long term investment.

Now, in a time of economic crisis - which would you rather invest in?

If you answered “Bugatti”, then I’d recomend you flip straight through to my Pay Per Click page.  But if you’re thinking in the same way as most of the other businesses I met at last weeks TFM&A show, you’re thinking that the smart money’s heading down to your local Volvo dealer.

So what is it about SEO that is so appealing to budget marketers?  Well, obviously, it can be a lot cheaper, but this isn’t a golden rule.  If your business serves a niche market, or has a reasonably unique product, you can sponsor relevant key terms at a relatively low cost.  However, the moment you stop paying the piper, the music dies, and you’re left wondering what the long term effects are (hopefully you’ve capitalised on your investment to build on a regular customer base though, so it might not all be bad).

SEO doesn’t work like that.  Initial investment in a well optimised website will pay dividends well beyond the pipers final notes play out.  Admittedly, Google changes it’s algorithms regularly, and a well optimised website is a regularly updated website - but, in the SME world where competition generally isn’t that high, your initial 2k - 5k investment (I give this figure as an example of what you might expect to pay a medium sized agency, not as an example of what I charge for the service) in a considered, content rich and well structured website should see you through a good couple of years.

Also, and this is where I find the anaology starts to run dry, SEO is fun.  No, seriously, this isn’t just my inner geek speaking.  I’m going to talk about quite a few tips for SEO in this blog, and I’m going to suggest as many as possible that can be done either on a low budget, or for free.  And oddly enough, this isn’t just extremely satisfying.  it really can be quite enjoyable too!

For those really looking to capitalise on SEO within a tight budget, one of the most effective ways to achieve a high page ranking is to create yourself a profile within those SEO holy of holys - A social network.

Wow - “what’s a social network?” I hear you say  (If you did really say that then at this point I’m afraid I’m going to have to politely ask you to leave through the back door).  Seriously though, a more sensible question might be “How can I use a social network to leverage my SEO?”.  This would be a good question!

Social networks such as Facebook or Myspace have very high page rankings due to their enormous popularity.  However, you can’t levarage that popularity until you build yourself a profile, and populate it with relevant and interesting content that will appeal to your customers.  Now, this is easy to do if you’re selling an exciting product with lots of advocates (think Nike or the Olympics), but how do you drum up interest if you’re selling car parts, or soap?

Here’s the cincher - be interesting.  And be yourself.  People don’t go onto a social network to build relationships with products, they want to build relationships with other people.  Be a person, update your profile regularly with interesting stories, articles and opinions, and make sure you sign up all your friends.  The more relationships you build, the more people you’ll have linking into your profile sending you valuable link equity.  And so long as you have plenty of outgoing links to your own website built into your profile, this equity is only heading to one place - your product!

Oh, and did I mention that you can do all this for free?

There’s going to be plenty more top credit crunching SEO tips from me in the next few weeks - so stay tuned.

Andrew

P.S.  For a more indepth view on SEO and social networks, click here