top online advertising programs for advertisers and affiliates

Imagine knowing exactly where your users' interests lie. The topics they prefer, their favorite stores; the tv shows they like best or the brands that give them a buzz. Such information is marketing gold, allowing you to fine-tune advertising as well as the kind of content your visitors like best.

But short of asking outright through onsite questionnaires (rarely a good idea because it's far too obvious) surely it's almost impossible to access such detailed information?

In fact, it's easier than you might ever imagine. And the only thing you'll need is plenty of copy and a way to track page stats.

The key to gaining your user profile lies, quite simply, in a systematic and logical use of links.

Any tightly structured website should already have the architecture in place to provide accurate user profiles, but in reality many sites are more much organic, having evolved gradually over time. This is particularly the case amongst publishers who start sites as marketing tools, then build them up as time goes by.

So let's take a look at how logical linking can supply you with some extraordinary insights.

Imagine, for example, that you're running a sports fansite. It includes info on a wide range of sports, and you've certainly noticed that, according to your stats, some pages are more popular than others.

No surprise there, of course, but since your content tends to be mixed, it's unclear exactly what appeals. What you really want is a much more definitive picture of your visitors' interests.

In this case, we're going to start by creating something this site seriously lacks: a set of links to pages covering individual sports. The links won't be placed inside copy, because users tend to click as they read; instead, we'll present them as a kind of mini nav-bar, after, say, a feature article.

Grouped together like this, our visitors are essentially presented with a choice between activities. Let's say for the moment that these are football, baseball, golf, tennis and swimming (the list clearly isn't exhaustive, but we'll add extra options at a later stage).

In reality, it's very likely that your own site already includes such navigational breakdown into clear sub-categories and if so, that's great. But whether they're in place or you have to create them specifically, these links form the first branch of what we'll call a 'targeting tree'.

We'll return to our sports site, where the aim now is to track page impressions for a week or so to find out which of the newly created pages receive most attention. Golf proves extremely popular, which means it's a sport that particularly interests many of our visitors. A good start, and armed with this information, we're going to expand our targeting tree to discover more about just what form this interest takes.

We'll run some front page content - a short feature on golf - and at the end of it provide a further series of links. This time the options will be narrower: golf courses, golf equipment, golfing techniques.

Again, we'll watch those page impressions to see if any kind of favorite emerges. And it does - golf equipment. Which means that in two pretty simple steps we've discovered that a fair percentage of our readers have an interest in golf, and especially golfing accessories.

It really is that simple. And all we're doing is treating successive links as increasingly refined market 'segments' to build up a pretty accurate picture of what makes our users tick.

So now we decide to expand the targeting tree to find out if any type of equipment is of particular interest. After a quick search in Google to find suitable categories, we come up with golf clubs, golf bags and golf shoes. Will there be any clear winners? We'll have to wait for those page impressions to find out....

if it all sounds very obvious, well of course it is, but simple methods are often the best, as well as the most overlooked. Do you consciously utilize your linking and content in this way? you'd be surprised how many have never given it a thought.

Of course, for a more systematic approach you can set up an entire targeting tree in advance rather than stages. Plan it out first, just as you would with a standard website, and make sure the links from content page to content page branch out into those increasingly segmented divisions.

With the information you've gained, you can then begin to target your advertising much more efficiently. Add some smargeting techniques, too, by using ad formats that are most appropriate for the job in hand. If, for example, golfing shoes emerged as a high interest segment in our final test, a mini-mall of pictured products would probably prove more attractive than a text ad.

Finally, if you're worried about all the extra content the targeting tree technique involves, it's not usually a problem. Remember that You can find free articles on pretty much any topic. and that your targeting tree content doesn't necessarily need to become a permanent part of your site.

So next time you want to know something like what kind of vacation your visitors prefer; where they're likely to stay and even how they'll be traveling, make sure they start climbing a targeting tree. Watching the route they take will help you get to the top, too.

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