SEOmoz, a company that provides SEO (search engine optimization) software and Internet marketing education, recently published a rather interesting blog post that tied online dating and SEO together. The take away from this article was intended for single Internet marketers, but I think all online daters could benefit from learning how SEO can make them better at online dating.

Online Dating Advice From an Internet Geek

When it comes to online dating, you’re goal is no different than it would be with Internet marketing. In Internet marketing, your goal is to convert Web traffic into paying customers. In order to have an optimal conversion rate, most Internet marketers rely on good SEO copywriting; they use keywords to that appeal to their target audience and get them to buy something. Similarly, with online dating world, your goal is to convert potential matches into actual dates. You can do this with good copywriting, or keywords that best describe you, that would appeal to your ideal match. Think about what qualities you bring to the table in a relationship and make sure to include that in your online dating profile. While Internet marketers use keywords to get their Web sites found online, you also need to use keywords that will make you stand out from all the rest.

Online dating is a numbers game (just like just about everything else in life). This means that you’ll probably send an opening message to about 10-20 matches, only half of them may respond and out of that half, you may end up on only one date. It’s pretty discouraging for men who typically copy and paste unoriginal messages in hopes that the numbers game will work in their favor. The problem with copying and pasting opening online dating messages is that it’s often times obvious. They key to opening messages is to create a generic template (so that you’re more efficient the way Internet marketers do it for email marketing) and include specific references to a person’s profile, that way you are set apart from all the other schmucks who didn’t bother to read the profile before contacting someone.

Another SEO tip that SEOmoz relates to online dating is doing your research. Now in the realm of Internet marketing, doing research is never a bad idea because you need knowledge to better identify your target audience so you can give them what they want. Knowledge, of course, can be obtained through self-education (Google University, here I come!), but the most valuable knowledge you can gain comes from market research which enables businesses to effectively market to their target audiences without wasting resources on trial and error methods. Now if you apply this concept of research to online dating, more often than not, you’ll probably be considered as a stalker. But quite honestly, I think you have a right to know if your next date is a convicted felon or a sexual offender before you go on a date with him or her. Some people actually Google their date’s names and call it a night unless something peculiar comes up in the search results. (Other’s might go so far as to check the most wanted list, but seriously, who has the time to do that?)

The author of the SEOmoz blog post about SEO and online dating recommends using a service called TinEye to check out social media profiles to make sure people are who they say are; “What people write on social media profiles and what they write on their personal blog are two very different things!”

A big component of SEO is that your content has to stay fresh. When the Google spider crawls Web pages, it favors new and fresh content over older content. Online dating profiles work kind of the same way. If you want to get found  in match searches, then you need to log on to your online dating profile at least once a day so that when potential matches are looking for you, they can easily find you at the beginning of search results instead of at the end. Most online dating sites favor fresh profiles over stale ones and will feature users who have recently logged in.

Lastly, when it comes to SEO, Internet marketing professionals often emphasize the need to do testing as it is a critical element to seeing success with online marketing. Just like a business may test how well a landing page works or a how well a Web site converts new prospects into customers, online daters need to test profile pictures that grab attention or dating headlines that actually spark interest from quality suitors. If you’re dating headline is attracting the wrong crowd, then you may want to considering testing out a new dating headline until you find one that works.

There you have it. Online dating advice from a fellow Internet Geek.

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