Increase Conversions Without Spending Money: Google’s Website Optimizer
Testing your website’s landing pages is one way to increase conversions without spending more on advertising. Certain design and page elements can improve conversion rates by 100% or more over time!
Basic Intro to using Google’s Website Optimizer to test your website
To get started with Website Optimizer, first log into your Google AdWords account. Click on “Website Optimizer, just below the tabs at the top:
You’ll be shown a table with a list of your current experiments. Experiments are the separate tests that you are running, for example one landing page versus another. Since it’s your first time, you’ll click on “Create An Experiment”.
Two Types of Tests:
A/B Experiment
If you’re new to Website Optimizer, A/B Testing will be your first task. It’s less complicated than Multivariate Testing, and you don’t have to have a ton of traffic for it to be effective. A/B Testing allows you to test two entirely different landing pages against each other. This is useful if you’re planning on redesigning your site, for example, and you’re not sure whether a blue background or a red background gets the best results. Or if you’d like to know if more people sign up for your service if the form is on the right side or on the left, the A/B test is a great way to find out. It’s also a good way to prove to your boss that things are working. The Optimizer will give you a report of the results from each landing page you do.
A/B Testing doesn’t mean you only get two options, either. You can test several variations against each other. If you’re not getting much traffic, though, you’ll probably want to limit your testing options in order to see quantifiable results faster.
To run an A/B experiment, click “Create.” You’ll continue on to a checklist with the following items:
1.
Choose the page you would like to test
Examples of potential test pages could be your homepage or a product detail page.
2.
Create and publish different versions of your test page at unique URLs so that Website Optimizer can randomly display different versions to your users. These URLs could be bookmarked by your users, so after your experiment finishes, you may want to keep these URLs valid.
3.
This is an existing page on your website that users reach after they’ve completed a successful conversion. For example, this might be the page displayed after a user completes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or fills out a contact form.
Once you’ve completed the steps, click “Continue.” You’ll be asked to name your experiment and then identify where your pages are. You’ll need to have already uploaded your variations to your server.
If your pages aren’t on the web, Website Optimizer will say it cannot find them, and you’ll need to check the URL or make sure you have uploaded them correctly. When you’re ready, click “Continue.”
You’ll be asked who will install the Javascript tags that identify your test and conversion pages. We’ll assume that you are doing this:
Continue, and you’ll be given little javascript code snippets to paste into your pages. Whenever it says to paste the code at the beginning of your page, make sure to paste it right after the <body> tag, not before. Whenever it says to paste the code at the end of your page, make sure to paste it right before the </body> tag.
Now, upload your pages with the script in them and click “Validate:”
If the pages don’t validate, check to make sure they uploaded correctly. Sometimes you need to wait a minute for it to recognize the new pages.
Voila! You’re done setting up the experiment! Now, it will gather data whenever someone lands on your landing page from any of your ads. The code will rotate which page users arrive at, and it even keeps track so repeat visitors don’t get different versions of your site (so they don’t get confused!). After a while, you’ll be able to view a sample report like this:
(As you can see, Variation 1 really killed the original!)
To view this report, click on “Website Optimizer” and then “View Report” by the name of your experiment in the table:
Multivariate Experiment
A Multivariate Experiment is taking the A/B test a little bit further. This is the experiment you want to run if you’re trying to change multiple things on different parts of the page simultaneously. You’ll want to be getting 1,000 or more views a week for this to be effective. This is for advanced testing, but Google does a pretty good job of walking you through it.
You start at the same spot as A/B Testing: create an experiment in Website Optimizer, only this time choose Multivariate Experiment. AdWords will walk you through the following steps:
1. Identify experiment pages
1a. Plan your experiment
2. Add JavaScript tags to experiment pages
3. Create variations
4. Review experiment settings and launch
5. View Report
You can see an example of Google’s multivariate experiment on its Adwords homepage in our previous post on the subject.
Constant testing with Website Optimizer can increase your conversions by over 100%. We’ve seen cases where conversions have doubled or tripled just because of the layout – not even the content – of a landing page. Why are users finicky like that? I guess figuring that out is all part of marketing.
Read MoreGoogle Suggest Feature To Shake Up PPC World
Search giant, Google Inc., recently rolled out its search enhancing “Google Suggest,” a drop-down box that recommends search queries as users type. While Yahoo! has had this feature for some time, the addition of search suggestions in Google has caused a special stir among pay per click managers.
As Google users search, a drop-down box appears with 10 suggested queries, along with the number of results. For example, if users type in “UFO” Google suggests “UFOs (8,370,000 results)”, “UFO Sightings (1,430,000 results), and “UFO News (830,000)”, among others.
PPC Discussions calls Google Suggest “the death of the long tail.” With search made easier for users (searchers don’t have to type a full query – they can just type a word and choose a suggestion), many long-tail keywords will likely be less searched or even un-searched. Major increases in search volume for the most popular queries will not only result in more advertiser competition for those keywords, but also much more revenue for Google as bids increase.
Read MoreAdWords Creates Advanced Level 3 Seminar
In August Google added a third tier to its AdWords Seminars for Success: AdWords 301. In addition to the beginner and intermediate level AdWords seminars (now called AdWords 101 and 201 respectively), this highly advanced seminar has been added to the Seminars for Success program, targeting advertisers who already understand the fundamentals of Adwords. Google explains that AdWords 301 topics will include “campaign best practices, advanced optimization techniques, and split testing.” The seminar will also dive into content network strategies and advanced bidding.
Seminars for Success are hands-on training sessions offered in a variety of cities across the U.S., including Denver, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City, San Francisco and several others. There will even be a couple of seminars in Honolulu this December. The cost of a session is about $250, but Google gives attendees $50 of it back in the form of AdWords credit so they can get started applying what they have learned at the seminar. Sessions last a full day and are led by what Google calls “independent and unbiased search marketing professionals.”
Two Analytics seminars are also available: “Introduction and User Training” and “Advanced Technical Implementation.”
Read MorePaid Organic ‘Site Links’ In Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search Submit Pro recently added (99% sure this is recent because I haven’t seen this before) a ‘site link’ functionality that looks very similar to business.com’s paid links and, of course, there was probably some influence from Google’s first result site links – I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo! got the bright idea to add more links to more sponsored ‘organic’ results from Business.com because business.com’s paid directory listings have been fed into Yahoo!’s organic results for quite some time now.
Click this screen shot to see the details:
Special note: Every single link above the fold for the query ‘loans’ in Yahoo! is paid! Wow!
Check out what a normal business.com listing looks like:
Eerily similar, right? Business.com’s directory feed has been picked up by Yahoo! and stuffed into the organic results for quite some time now…or business.com has been using ‘search submit pro’ for their directory feeds…I can’t confirm anything, just speculating here but I can say for certain that business.com directory listings appear in Yahoo! organic search results…so I wonder if Yahoo! picks up these extra links now as part of the package or does business.com submit them via ‘search submit pro’ as part of their package?
Yahoo!’s Search Submit Pro is a program where you can get ‘organic’ results that are really ‘paid’ if you can spend $5K+ per month. The application process is quite rigorous because the quality level of the pages you want in the ‘organic’ area have to be extremely high – or so they say. These ‘sponsored’ results are easy to spot as a paid search marketer or SEO but the general user probably does not or would not know the difference. You can spot these results by simply rubbing your mouse over the link and looking at what the status bar says at the bottom of your browser.
You might be surprised at how much those ‘organic’ listings could cost – they are profitable for business.com because they cost less than business.com does. I can say that I know from current experience that the top organic result for some insanely competitive keywords only costs .75 to $2 per click while the sponsored ‘non-search submit pro’ side of advertising would cost $5+/click for the number 1 spot.
Read MoreLink Builder for WordPress – Download it Now!!!
Introducing the Link Builder for WordPress
The Link Builder simply tracks the websites and pages you link to and sends an email message to that website owner/administrator notifying them of your link.
Download the Link Builder for WordPress here
Then watch this video (update: haha – if you turn up your volume, you can hear a ‘darth vader’ breathing effect from my mic…sorry!) to learn how to configure and use the plugin:
You can read the readme.txt file for installation instructions here.
UPDATE: Reminder - you MUST remember to edit your config file! And this is not a 100% automated tool – it is designed to be personal while simplifying your link building efforts.
Other Plugins that are built for SEO/Link Building from WordPress
Internal Link Building by SEOROI – This looks like it’s an awesome tool although it didn’t work with our admin/theme/template for some reason…haven’t had a chance to look at it but it’s received rave reviews so we recommend giving it a shot yourself!
All In One SEO Pack – One of our favorites. You control title tags, descriptions and keywords for every post and page or you can let the pack update them automatically!
Two Excellent Guides To Optimizing Blogs
WordPress SEO – The Definitive Guide To High Rankings for Your Blog
The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – Aaron and Giovanna Wall of SEOBook.com fame wrote this awesome guide…a must read!
About the Programmer: The programmer that was our lead dev on this plugin is Simon. We own the copyrights, programming and design – but Simon is a fantastic resource and he is freakishly fast with WordPress dev stuff if you need him.
Read MoreAn Inside Look at Myspace’s New PPC Program
Last week we wrote about the new PPC platform that Myspace came out with, called “Find Your Fans.” This program allows music artists to place banner ads (either their own or from Myspace-provided templates) on the profiles and pages where their defined target audience are likely to be browsing. Advertising musicians pay $0.25 per click.
“Find Your Fans” requires a review and approval from Myspace, so we had one of our team apply for the program with his band’s profile. After Myspace finally approved the band, we went in and took some screen shots:
Log in at http://advertise.myspace.com/landing.html and click “get started.” You’ll be brought to this page.
You are prompted to either upload a banner ad or build an ad using one of Myspace’s templates. Banner ads must be 728 x 90 pixels in size.
When you click on either option, a legal agreement box pops up:
Next, you get to choose from a variety of fairly hideous banner templates:
And then you input your band name, picture, etc. (or upload your own banner). At this point you’re taken to the target audience definition page. You can specify the gender, age range, country/state/region, interest categories, and genres that define your target:
Next you put in your budget. As mentioned, all clicks cost $0.25 regardless of anything.
Next, you review your banner and campaign details. Here’s the banner we made (shrunk down a little):
Then Myspace asks you for your credit card number, which we will not give you a screen shot of… 
Here is what the dashboard looks like:
There is an alerts section, a report graphing account performance, and then campaign summary details at the bottom.
The campaign page is pretty simple, and you basically edit your settings in the same way as you edit your myspace profile details. Click the “edit” button next to what you want to edit, some input boxes come up, etc. You have to actually pause your campaign in order to edit anything in it.
So that’s an inside look at Myspace’s new PPC program, “Find Your Fans!”
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