Understanding and Using Behavioral Targeting in SEO

Mass marketing techniques that were used in the twentieth century,
like many other techniques from that era, are pretty much out of
date. Reaching potential customers using television and newspaper
ads still works, but it’s not the most efficient way to advertise.
Traditional methods of advertising target a large group of people. Generally,
that means large sections of the audience that see an ad won’t be interested
in it at all. As a result of that “blanket” type of advertising, companies spend a
(relatively) large amount of money to reach a small segment of the population.
One way that advertisers have found to improve the success rates of their
advertisements is through contextual targeting. Contextual targeting is basically
the practice of placing ads in a specific medium based on the elements
surrounding the ad.

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What Is Behavioral Targeting?

In addition to contextual targeting, another method of reaching a narrower, but more qualified, group
of potential customers is demographic targeting.
For example, if you’re trying to sell a music sharing service, your main target age group might be
the 18- to 25-year-old crowd. But if you’re advertising a drug used to treat sickle cell anemia, you
can further target your advertising to 22- to 35-year-old African Americans.
As effective as demographic targeting can be, however, it’s still not the best way to reach highly qualified
leads on the Internet. What works much better is behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting is a
relative newcomer to advertising targeting. It’s the practice of serving ads to users based on their past
search behaviors and web-surfing habits. And even though behavioral targeting is fairly new, it’s getting
a lot of attention from web marketers.

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