Personalization: Is SEO Obsolete?

This is the situation

Let’s say your website has a high rank on Google - say #3 for your keyword. Your SEO consultant calls you and says “Great news! You’re #3″. You do a search and confirm this. Then your overseas business manager calls and says “the website is nowhere to be found - weren’t you going to do some SEO?”. You do a search and find your website is still #3. What’s going on?

There are many factors which can affect your search engine ranking. By now, most marketers know that on-page text, number of links, amount of content, anchor text, etc. can affect where your website ends up in the endless shuffle of search engine results. But lately, something different been happening.

The web is becoming increasingly personlized. And we’re not talking about the occasional website using a cookie to throw a “Hello {name}” on your homepage; for most businesses this is simply not targeted enough any more. Now the content, the ads, the suggestions and cross-selling are all targeted as much as possible to visitor behaviour and perceived preferences. This means that marketers are presenting messages to the people most likely to be interested. The net effect of which is happier marketers (more targeted offers), and happier visitors (less irrelevant offers).

Search engines also have marketers on staff, and they have been catching on to the trend, if not actually participating on the frontier. You only have to look at the absolutely dazzling array of new search engine services to see the trend towards personalization in action. Google brings us Gmail, Blogger, Google Home Page, Calendar, Google Desktop, and perhaps most ubiquitously, Personalized Search. For its’ part, Yahoo brings us My Yahoo, Yahoo Subscriptions, MyWeb and Y!Q. Even MSN - a relative newcomer to search marketing - has been offering demographic targeting since even before it’s official launch earlier this year.

The Big Test: Pay-Per-Click Location Targeting

For years, search marketers have been able to narrow pay-per-click ad distribution by the location of the target market. Google AdWords, for example, allows you to target an ad by country, state, city, and even distance from a specific location (such as “show my ad to searchers within 20 miles of my shop”). This has been quite successful, and has led to paid ads appearing in Google Local and Google Earth. Marketers also appreciate the ability to focus the ads on the actual market, eliminating irrelevant ad traffic, and being able to pay more to target the people who are most likely to purchase. Again, everyone is happy, and Local Search in general becomes a thriving industry.

Now… why not target the natural, organic results the same way? Searchers from New York looking for “shoes” can see websites for businesses with a shop in Manhattan, and searchers for “shoes” in California can see websites which have a shop on Rodeo Drive. Think of it from a search engines’ point of view: the more targeted the results are for each visitor, the happier the visitor, the stronger the search engine’s brand, and the better off the investors are. Personalization is search engine ambrosia.

More and more, search results are targeted to the individual performing the search. What this means is, with personalized search enabled, if you perform a search for “shoes” today, the results you get could be filled with discount stores and designer high heels across North America. If you then perform a search for “dallas shopping”, “dallas shops” and “texas stores”, then your next search for “shoes” - identical to the first search - could feature shoe stores in Dallas, TX.

Organic Location Targeting

There is one development, however, that is sending a mild chill (or thrill, depending on your outlook) through the wider search marketing community. Put plainly, Google appears to be presenting different search engine results depending on the location of the visitor even when personalized search is not enabled, and even when the search is conducted on the global google.com website. Let’s say that again: By default, Google is presenting different natural, organic results based on the visitors’ IP address and/or search history - regardless of user preference. The patent for personalized search results was filed by Google last year.

This means that a company which ranks well in the US may appear nowhere in the top listings in Canada - despite the fact that the company serves the entire market.

The most interesting thing about this is that by employing this strategy, Google may actually be presenting less relevant results to it’s searchers. If a visitor is seeking to buy “shoes” online, they may be presented with a list of retailers nearby that offer shoes, instead of the site just across the border that offers exactly the shoes the searcher was looking for, and can ship them faster, for less cost. Granted, there does tend to be a higher shipping cost associated with cross border shopping, but some customers care much more about getting “just the right thing”.

When you think about it, personalized search does at first seem a bit counter-intuitivive, it is, after all, called the “world wide web”. The fact of the matter is, however, that Local Search is a hot area that is generating quite a bit of excitement. Google is ahead of the pack in launching this strategy for it’s searchers.

The Future of Search

What defines a “search engine result”? How many people have to see that result before it becomes “reliable”? Before you can say that “THIS is your ranking”? These are questions that the SEO industry is going to have to deal with over the next year or so.

As search becomes more personalized, the skills required to manage effective search marketing campaigns will become more complex. There is a great opportunity here for innovative, forward-looking search marketers. After all, marketing campaigns tend to be more effective with more advanced targeting techniques. One thing for certain is that as search marketing continues to evolve, successful marketers must remain open to change and new strategies. Those who do will continue to succeed.