Website Optimization Techniques

I was just reading a post on Pro Blogger regarding How to Split Test (A/B Test) Your AdSense Ads and had a light bulb moment.

This year I have watched my Adsense earnings gradually improve to useful levels and got keener to create more opportunities to earn Adsense revenue. But it never occured to me to split test Ad Units to see which work best on my sites.

I need a slap on the head since I have been creating testing software and not applying what I already know to maximum effect on my own sites. I may have left $1000’s on the table? Like when I was slow to initially embrace Adsense a few years ago.

I think it was because Adsense uses Javascript and you aren’t allowed to alter the code that you generate in your member’s area, I didn’t think it was possible to split test the Ads automatically.

But of course it is, it is no different to editing your pages manually to try different Ad units to see which work best.

What I did within minutes of reading Darren’s post was to login to my Adsense account and check out my highest earning Ad channel. The channel is a tag that you apply to Ad units to track their performance.

This particular channel is applied to a wide 728×90 text unit which tends to show 4 Adword Ads side by side. So I am excluding the square Ads which may be a mistake.

It’s possible that the square Ads may generate more revenue due to higher higher bids and CTR. So it is worth testing this theory. Let’s see.

The 3 Ad sizes I am testing are: 728×90, 300×250 and 250×250

What I did was to generate new code for each of these Ad units with their own channel tag. So now I can randomly rotate between them and compare earnings to tell which format works best on my page.

Here is the code I wrote to randomly rotate these 3 Ads in the same position on my php page:

p.s. where you see < ?php you need to remove the space (a problem due to the code high-lighter).

Hopefully, the above code is self-explanatory and you can easily modify it to suit your needs. For example, you can cut and paste it to a PHP template file.

This should be fun. I look forward to reporting my results from this test.

One of the easiest ways to make money from a website that gets a good amount of pass-through traffic is to help visitors exit your site via Google AdSense.

Earnings range from a few cents per click up to over a dollar per click depending on the quality of your web pages and the quality and relevancy of the visitors to your pages, so please consider this before you dive in and plaster your site with Ads.

If you are not registered yet, it is free via a monetization button.

To make this work well, you need the Ads to be relevant, well positioned on your pages and blended in with your site theme.

Google publish hotspot data to suggest the most frequently clicked areas on a web page. These tend to be biased towards the top left corner of the page.

The hottest part is after the first paragraph of your main content [Heat-Map Image]. But you don’t necessarily want most of your visitors leaving your site immediately. Do you ???

My suggestion is that once they are ready to leave and they were not interested in buying your products and services or they simply had enough excitement on your pages, then make it easy for them to exit via AdSense or whatever relevant Ads you provide rather than your visitors simply closing their browser window.

I already mentioned positioning Ads in the hotspots such as in the article. You can also position Ads at the end and to the sides of your content.

I favour links at the end of articles e.g. link units and tower images or Ad units to the right side, depending on how it integrates with your page.

To get an idea for what Adsense Ads are likely to show up, you can actually test it live on your site. Also, you can select the geo-targeting you are after and play around with color schemes before you commit to your Ad formats and positioning.

To get hold of the free tool, surf to: this URL and download the AdSense Preview Tool.

After following the instructions to install it, you need to fire up Internet Explorer (enter a web URL into the Windows Explorer address bar if you are like me and normally use FireFox or another web browser). Then, when you right click on web pages, you will have access to this tool to preview what kind of Adsense Ads may appear on your site.

Credit to Dr. Andy Williams - ezSEO for making me aware of this tool via his newsletter.

p.s. I just noticed that the AdSense for search feature has been enhanced to allow you to help your visitors perform relevant searches that could result in generating revenue for you. Before you had to jump through some hoops to set up a custom search to monetize the search activity.

If you have any questions on what may have been advanced topics, please don’t hesitate to ask a question in the comments:

Well I finished the IPN script and did some testing but didn’t have time to create a user guide, also I think it should have an administration back-end so it is as easy to use as possible.

So unfortunately I am going to slip my goal to release this week. But it will help in making my 3 initial products have a common look and feel which will enable them to work well together.

Thank you for your patience.

In my previous post I mentioned about the imminent launch of my first product. Well, this product is ready apart from the sales page. In the process of setting up the product delivery system, I decided to turn my IPN script into a product too. If you don’t know, IPN (Instant Payment Notification) is one of the ways you can automate your product payment with PayPal.

With IPN you can send a download link by email to a buyer of your product and log the transaction in a database. IPN is the most secure way to do this rather than the other method PDT which relies on a buyer proceeding to a Thank You page to get the product. The problem with this is that they may stay on the Pal Pal site and wonder, where is my product. Or, the URL of the Thank You page may end up in Alexa search results so anyone can search for the download page of your product.

The Thank You page should only really be used to thank the buyer and remind them to check their email for details of the transaction and comply with PayPal’s Thank You page requirements.

I have one PayPal business account but multiple products and sites, so I also wanted a solution to send buyers to a particular Thank You page, send them a download link by email (or not if they are paying for a service) and be able to test multiple sales prices.

This is easily done with non-encrypted buy buttons, but I wanted to use encrypted buy buttons. This prevents people changing the price and avoids having to check that the price is correct with a database look-up. The reason I don’t want to verify the price is so it becomes easy to split test various prices. I simply have separate button code for each price.

I also made the code easy to integrate with testing software where the IPN script pings the relevant conversion goal file.

So in summary, this new script allows you to set up unlimited, automated product sales pages where you have an encrypted buy button on the page and hooked into one PayPal account. Also, it ensures that your buyers get their product details delivered and facillitates accurate tracking of sales conversions.

I will aim to release this product this week. Stay tuned…

My first website optimization product will shortly be released. It is a mini-site creation tool. What it does is allow you to create a highly focused and keyword optimized content-based website.

The home page is a sales page or a squeeze page, with the content pages comprised of articles that act to draw in organic search engine traffic (visitors interested in your topic).

The articles are loosely linked from the home page footer with the intention of search engines (rather than people) following a link to an index of the articles.

Visitors landing on and reading articles are encouraged to write their own articles at the end of each one, so the site can actually grow in content pages via contributions from site visitors.

I have made it as easy as possible to add articles to the site and also added many countermeasures to combat spam submissions. There are also moderation options for how you want to handle article submissions.

There is an admin area where you can approve, edit and delete articles. With the least strict settings, you can have articles that pass through the spam traps automatically added to your mini site.

URLs are based on the title text and are made unique by adding a dash plus a number to the end of the URL should their be a conflict.

I have created a set of basic templates that can be chosen together with an outline of a sales letter to help you fill in the content in a structured way. I based this on possibly my favorite e-book called “Killer Mini Sites” which is years old now and I don’t recall where I obtained it.

I have been testing the script with live sites. The first one is a sales letter style site and the second is a new website designed to capture traffic and attract inbound links at FreePrivacyPolicy.org.

The first site uses an older version of the script with the link to the articles in a subdirectory and linked to mid-way down the sales page. With the second site, you can spot a link to the articles in the footer. But notice how the home pages have large “call to action” links at the end of the sales pitch. So the articles are designed to capture relevant visitor traffic and drive them to the home pages. The second site has the latest script running.

You may be thinking that a blog is another way to do the same thing, but they are not since the home page of a blog is usually a list of the current posts and people read these and bounce off the page to another blog.

However, a sales letter is designed to steer people towards a single goal. Blogs are cluttered with options and gizmos so most readers are blind to the offers on the page, so read and leave for the next blog on their list of favourites.

As a blogger myself, I have created several “dead blogs”, these are blogs that you started off enthusiastically writing articles (posts) for and then got fed up of posting to anonymous people that read your blog and leave without even a comment. So this tool allows you to turn a dead blog into a useful sales site by copying the posts to the article input form and erasing the old blog code. This removes all the pressure to blog everyday.

So when will I release this mini-site generator product? Well, I think I have all the code running smoothly now but I wanted to create instructional videos for using it and create a DVD containing the product and tutorials. Also, I need a sales page. So the full product is about a week away from launch.

Please post your thoughts in the comments…

In one of my first posts I promised to post details of any videos that I create. Here is the first one:

It’s about how to create a database in your web hosting control panel (cPanel).

Since most many of my scripts make use of databases, this was a natural first choice video to make. Also, the process is quite short at around 3 minutes.

I’m not very happy with the sound of my own voice and from what I gather by asking around, most other people are not happy with the sound of their own voice either, so I can’t do much about that. What I did do was work on how to get the background noise down.

After many experiments I ended up in my car with a battery-powered lap top computer. This helped cut out the sound from my home and a nearby road, and the lack of a mains power supply probably helped reduce the electrical noise from the switched mode power supply that is normally used.

I only used Camtasia Studio 3.1.2 which is currently free software to produce the AVI video file which I just uploaded to YouTube. So hopefully, by the time I finished this post, the video will be up.

So, if this works out ok, look forward to more videos and hopefully better ones as I get more experienced at producing them.

Getting things done is the secret to success for many successful people. But there is so little time I hear you cry!

It’s actually very easy to get many things done, the way to do it is to focus on the most important things and get them done first before you do anything else such as web browsing or checking email. Also, do these things when you have the most energy and alertness.

For me, this is mid morning. Even so, I get up from bed and the first thing I try and do is something highly beneficial to my business before I eat breakfast. This may only take 30 minutes but it is a great start to the day to get this thing, whatever it may be, done and achieved right at the start of the day. To get ideas for what to do, you could plan them at the end of the day before or think about what you will do immediately before springing out of bed, this is what I tend to do, after brewing my mug of tea (#1 priority).

After completing the productive task, I will shower and have breakfast. Then I am ready for my mid-morning session of productive time. Then, by lunch time I often have made great progress and relax by checking out blogs by inspirational people over lunch. I don’t need to check news since I have a rotating news RSS headline in my browser which will show me if there is anything majorly important going on that I need to check out.

In the afternoon I will often not work but go for a run, go 10-pin bowling or more work, but it is often less productive work than in the morning.

Now it is evening and I am writing this post since I can do my miscellaneous tasks such as blog posting. Even, this is work-related but fun and relaxing.

I like to watch downloads of mini-series of sci-fi or action dramas but these are treats so I limit these to when I feel that I deserve these treats. Today may be one of those days

Of course, I don’t have the time waste of a commute to work, meetings and a forced time frame to work to, so it is easy for me to make every day highly productive. But, like normal people, I do have my unproductive days where I stayed up too late the night before etc. But I hope I gave you some ideas for how to prioritize and get the important things banged out early in the day or whenever you are personally most energized.

When you have expertise in the area of Internet Marketing there is plenty of scope to leverage income out of clients for your services.

I have a danger here to reveal my tactics to current clients so I will only present a few ideas here and expand on them in future posts.

First off, you can mostly save them time: you can do your coding and web design very fast, so you can quickly debug and respond to requested changes by the client.

This makes them happy. Every day lost to them is revenue down the drain, also they need the expert to make sure their money-making site runs smoothly.

But you need to make sure that you get paid. The way to do this is to host their code on your site and only transfer it over once they paid you the money.

To ensure that you get future business from them, over-deliver on expectations. So you go the extra mile outside of your contract to complete the job.

There is more to this strategy, but I will leave it for later.

- Mr MultiVar … the man with the tips for maximizing your profits online

Here is a quick tip on how to optimize your landing page text link Ads for relevancy to the visitors search query.

When people search on Google, MSN or Yahoo! for something, they end up on a search results page that has a url including the search terms that they used.

If they see your site listed and click on the link, they visit your page and their browser will usually reveal the url that they came from unless they are a privacy nut that denies all data to you via browser settings. Then you could maybe serve them up some special free content instead?

No, don’t do that since they may have come from another page on your website. So if the referrer information is not available you can’t act on it.

But, normally, you can get hold of the referring url that contains the search terms in an environment variable called “HTTP_REFERER”. Make note of the way this is spelt!

Then, using some PHP or maybe Javascript code, you can filter out the search terms.

Now we can use this valuable information to make our Ads more relevant to improve all kinds of things like the user experience, the relevancy of the Ads to what the visitor searched for and possibly improve the quality score for PPC landing pages.

The idea now is to insert these search terms on your page. I suggest placing them right before an Adsense Ad unit to try and get the Ads in that unit to be most relevant to what the visitor is looking for. But this is hit and miss since only milliseconds are available for the poor old Ad bot to select the Ads.

But what works extremely well is to use an affiliate link that is a search link. The idea here is to get hold of an affiliate link that contains a search term and replace the keywords with the ones we grabbed from the referring url. Also, we can insert our keywords in the anchor text of the link.

So now the visitor gets to see a super-relevant link leading to your affiliate page and that page will be targeted to their original search terms.

To get hold of this kind of affiliate link you need to go into your affiliate member’s area and hunt around for any links that you can generate that contain some keywords. For example, a direct link to a search page on the merchant’s website.

So I hope that made sense and got you thinking about how best to optimize a page for search keyword relevancy.

Of course, you need code to put this strategy into action. So how do I go about handing you the code? Should I sell it, give it away for free or let you donate random amounts of dosh depending on how useful it was to you?

Best regards,

Mr MultiVar

Deciding the pricing of a product can be a tricky situation to be in. There is an optimum price tag for any product where the profits are maximized, but finding this sweet spot is the problem we need to solve.

Supermarkets are experts at this since they carefully analyse the data from millions of shoppers to finely tune their prices. But checking out the price of a can of beans in the supermarket does not help us much on the web I think.

So we have to do our own testing. It’s not efficient to guess, since if you get it wrong then you will make no sales. The price has to be dynamically adjusted to continually zero in on the most profitable price point for your product at any period throughout the year.

But to test with too many price points may be a problem if you have no idea of a suitable price and/or you have low visitor traffic to your sales page.

So it helps if you can get some knowledge of what digits to use in your online sales prices. Then you can produce a manageable number of variants of your sales price to test out.

To cut a long story short, the most profitable numbers to use are: 0, 1, 3, 5 to produce prices such as $15, $35, $100 etc. But this is not my data (it’s from the man from Costa Rica who shall not be named on Forums).

I am currently setting up a test with my own product and look forward to revealing results when I have them. Before this test, I did make multiple sales at $5 and one sale at $25

A while back I asked a question on a marketing forum why everybody was obsessed with using 7’s in their pricing since I couldn’t find any logic to it. And nobody out of the circa 100,000 members answered my question.

So that makes me suspect that the guru’s have programmed their automatic lemming buyers to respond to the “7″ digit. Of course, the guru’s do not reveal these kinds of secrets to their followers. Only those in “inner circles”. But let’s not get too mystical here.

p.s. I just found an option in my PayPal payment acceptance preferences that is set to “must have PayPal account” by default which I think would reduce sales, so I switched this setting, I don’t care what credit card processing system customers use as long as they buy.