Can’t decide which images to use on your home page? Not sure if you want a 5-word headline, or 10? Wondering if you should go with Times New Roman or Arial?

You can take the guesswork out of building an effective website with Google Website Optimizer, a free tool available to anyone who has or creates a Google account.

With Google Website Optimizer, you have two testing options.

1) A/B Experiment, which allows you to compare the performance of one page version with another. Google recommends this experiment if you have fewer than 1,000 visitors to your site per week and if you’re simply looking to test the layout or overall appearance of a page.

If you choose this option:

· Select a page on your site that you want to test

· Create alternate versions of that page, such as alternate images, text, headlines or fonts

· Assign each version of the page a different URL

· Choose a page that visitors will be directed to after they have successfully converted (i.e., signed up for a newsletter, submitted a contact form or made a purchase)

· Install the experiment code on your website

2) Multivariate Experiment, which allows you to compare the performance of various elements on a page. Google recommends this experiment if you have more than 1,000 visitors per week and you want to try multiple content changes in different parts of the page all at the same time.

If you choose this option:

· Select a page on your site that you want to test

· Decide which sections of the page you want to test and create alternate content accordingly

· Choose a page that visitors will be directed to after they have successfully converted (i.e., signed up for a newsletter, submitted a contact form or made a purchase)

· Install the experiment code on your website

Visitors who come to this page will be randomly divided up, with Google showing one group of visitors one version of the page and another group of visitors another version of the page.

Once the results are in, go with the version that performed best. You’ll not only decrease bounce rates, but also increase time spent on your site, conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction — all for optimal ROI.

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Google Analytics Part II: Tracking Visits from Start to Finish

Google Analytics Part I: The Basics of ROI for SEO

The more you know about visitors to your website today, the more successful you’ll be at using SEO to attract and convert more visitors tomorrow. Google Analytics can help with a vast array of tools for tracking visits from start to finish, including where they’re from, where they go on your website, and when and where they leave.

• Map Overlay – Displays a world map showing the areas where your visitors are coming from. Click anywhere on the map, and it will go in for a closer look at that specific country or state. Below the map is a “Site Usage” tab. In this area you may use the “Detail Level” drop down menu to specify more detailed results by continent, sub continental region, country or territory, or city.

If you see that a large percentage of your visitors are coming from New York City, for example, but you don’t have any information on the site relevant to that area, then you should be able improve your conversion rate simply by adding content more relevant to people from that part of the country.

• Site Overlay* – Shows the “hot spots” of visitor activity on each page, with a breakdown of what percentage of visitors are clicking where.

If you see that one of your call to action buttons never gets clicked, you may need to try tweaking its content or moving it somewhere else on the page.

* Be aware that if you link to the same URL twice on one page, and visitors click 2% on one and 3% on the other, both will show 5% because it’s the same URL. Though Google is working on this issue, Crazy Egg is a good alternative to refer to in the meantime.

• New vs. Returning Visitors – Compares the number of people who are new to your site with those who have visited before.

If you see that you aren’t getting a lot of return visitors, you may need to add some incentive in terms of frequently updated content, such as a blog, forum or newsfeed.

• Visitor Trending – Displays visits, absolute unique visitors, pageviews, time visitors spent on your site and the bounce rate (or the number of visitors who left the site after viewing just one page).

If you see that visitors aren’t spending much time on the site and leaving after just one or two pageviews, you may need to consider improving the relevance of the content on the site or tweaking the site design to make it more user-friendly. You can even pinpoint the specific place on your site where visitors are losing interest and tweak that page accordingly.

• Visitor Loyalty – Shows how often people have visited your site, how recently, how long they spent there and how many pages they viewed.

If you launch a new marketing campaign, for instance, take a look at visitor recency. It’s one good way of judging the success of your campaign at pulling in more visitors within the relevant time frame.

• Browser Capabilities – Identifies various aspects of browser capabilities, including a breakdown of visitor:

- Browsers used to find you, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla

- Operating systems, such as Windows, Macintosh and Linux

- Screen colors and screen resolutions used to view your website

If you see that many of your visitors use Internet Explorer 6, for example, you may need to be careful with your site design as that particular browser is very touchy and may look misaligned.

When weighing all of this data, it is important to remember that no analytics program is 100 percent accurate. However, Google Analytics serves as an invaluable guideline for evaluating your site’s SEO, content and design, then making changes accordingly.

Still to come, Google Analytics Part III: Google Web Optimizer.

For businesses looking to deflect the impact of this economic downturn, analyzing return on investment (ROI) is more critical than ever. And the key to that is choosing the most trackable of marketing options, of which search engine optimization ranks close to the top. In fact, according to a recent online poll, SEO is the number one internet marketing tool that website owners plan to use over the next six months, with blogging and cost per click advertising ranking second and third.

Of all the tools you may use to track ROI for your internet marketing, the most important one to master is Google Analytics. Last week, this fact was reinforced at an SEO seminar where much of the focus was on this valuable tool.

In this first installment of a 3-part series on Google Analytics, let’s start with the basics.

Through your Google Analytics account, you can easily determine the ROI for your SEO by tracking all of the following within a specified period of time, be it daily, weekly, monthly or the entire year:

• Total number of pages viewed on your site
• Average number of pages viewed by each visitor
• Average time visitors spend on your site
• Percentage of visitors that leave your site after viewing just one page
• Percentage of new visitors to your site
• Which countries your visitors are from
• How visitors are finding you, including:
  • Search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.)
  • Typing your URL into the browser
  • Referring sites that link to your site
  • Emails that link to your site
• Top viewed pages

Though this information is especially important in determining the ROI for your search engine optimization, it’s equally beneficial in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of your content.

For example, if the percentage of new visitors who find your site via search engines increases by 20 percent each month, it’s really inconsequential if you’re seeing similar increases in the percentage of visitors leaving your site after just one page view without converting. In that case, your SEO may be right on target, but the call to action on your pages may need to be strengthened.

Stay tuned for Google Analytics Part II: Tracking Visits from Start to Finish.