Quantcast as an SEO Tool

The US based website analytics provider Quantcast offers a free service to track your traffic and that of competitors. The main benefit as advertised by the website itself, is the demographics and socio-economic background analysis that is provided as part of the stats.

Traffic going through to your website is measured and recorded by certain variables and criteria, building up profiles of the people most likely to use your site and convert as well.

Most of this sort of data would be paid for with other services, and there are certainly advantages to knowing the background to your browsers.

As an SEO tool we see little advantage in this kind of knowledge, because although you want to convert better for the traffic you receive, it’s difficult to prevent non-converters hitting your website.

Part of modern SEO and general website marketing campaigns include extensive use of content, meaning long tail keyphrases will inevitably catch traffic you would not expect to convert.

By using blog and articles as part of your wider SEO efforts, you will hopefully perform well for your targeted keywords; but there will also be a segment of your traffic which will never convert.

This post is a great example, as if we were found by someone searching for “Quantcast SEO tool benefits”, then we would be unlikely to convert that traffic to a sale.

The benefits would come further down the line in off-page marketing we feel. Having collected profiles of users who do convert, target the places those users would frequent. Younger male users- gaming sites. Middle aged female browsers target Women’s ezines etc.

Quantcast seems likely to appeal to the small to medium sized e-retailer, giving a free service which would in time point towards a statistical overview of the type of visitor that does and doesn’t convert. It will also help reduce the amount of marketing spend in certain places, maybe there’s a listing you have in the wrong place with regards to their type of visitors.