Google Website Optimizer

Wow, this is really the tool for serious Google AdWords professionals! Google has invited us to test out the Website Optimizer, a professional grade tool for testing landing pages for Google AdWords performance.

What an excellent tool! Click our post title to sign up to receive an invitation when they have spots open. I just completed our test set up and I have to say that the tool is complicated but looks like it should really be a jewel in Google’s toolbox for account management professionals.

A few tips, I found it confusing to add the scripts to the various includes for headers and footers that I have on my site. Even though I added the code, Google had trouble sensing it. I ended up just making an HTML page from my includes and put my content in there without a problem. Highly dynamic sites may be harder to set up if you are using several includes.

Take time to watch the movie first, I scrimped on this and will now watch the full video to see what I missed.

Don’t do your work late at night. The implementation and set up took several hours and so it is best to do this when you are fresh not at the end of the day. The level of detail is intense to make the program work best and so take your time and think out what kind of testing you want to do first.

This tool will be a real resource for clients who really want to test landing pages for improved results.

This is what the Website Optimizer does. Allows you to create a page, tag special sections, then create dynamically inserted new sections – this makes up your test and Google will measure the activity and let you know what is working. Google serves up the dynamic content for you.

I was able to make one landing page with three different titles, two different content blocks, and two different images one male one female for our ghost blogging ad group.

Google has detailed reporting that will identify what is working best during your test period. It is all tied into Google Analytics and into the Google AdWords interface.

An excellent, top level, professionals tool that you will definitely want to check out.

Search Engine Optimization Is Not For Everyone

Search engine optimization is not for every website. Although search engine optimization can really improve the organic search results for some websites, there are a couple of considerations when really search engine optimization should not be considered and maybe a full site redesign may be a better investment of money and time.

When not to do search engine optimization:

  1. If your site is created in Frontpage and the site layout becomes broken when new content is added
  2. Your site looks funny in browsers other than Internet Explorer
  3. You have a site designed totally in Flash
  4. Your website looks dated or non-professional

As search engine optimization is not inexpensive, in some cases the money that would have been spent on search engine optimization would be better spent on a new search engine friendly design with built-in optimization features.