Now there’s Google’s Website Optimizer. This free, powerful, simple tool lets even the most analysis-phobic website owners test and evaluate proposed changes to their websites.

I attended a presentation at Google tonight (gotta love living in Fremont) by Tom Leung, the product manager for Website Optimizer. As always, I listened with an ear for tidbits useful to independent professionals and solopreneurs.

What Website Optimizer Does

Website Optimizer lets you test changes to your website. For example, say you want to change your newsletter sign-up box and you and your webmaster have different ideas about how it should look. Instead of discussing the change ad infinitum, just test it. With Website Optimizer, you add a little Javascript to your page and Google then shows half of your visitors one version and half the other version. Website Optimizer then measures which version results in more newsletter sign-ups. Simple as that.

Google uses this tool all the time to fine-tune their websites. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for you.

Google Website Optimizer for Independent Professionals

Website Optimizer lets you do simple A/B testing (like the newsletter sign-up example above), or you can do sophisticated multivariate testing on a bunch of webpage elements at once. I don’t recommend the latter for independent professionals since accurate multivariate testing requires more website traffic than our websites are likely to get.

Tom offered a couple of rules of thumb for testing. You need at least 100 “conversions” (website visitors taking the action you want) in order to have your test be statistically valid. He also said that for small sites, you want to make sure you have at least 500 page views a month before you even think about doing any testing.

Some Lessons Learned

Tom and his crew have been working with this tool for a few years now and identified a few take-home points:

• Website testing is a continuous process. You’re never really finished. There’s always something else you could/should be testing.
• You need compelling content, enough website traffic, and the discipline to make tough decisions about what is worth testing and what isn’t.
• Keep your testing simple. This is particularly important for small, low-budget sites.
• Finally, and most importantly, realize that this is an arms race. Whoever has the best-converting website will be able to pay more for leads acquisition from AdWords and similar programs. This excellent article, Google Website Optimizer 101, shows how to leverage your gains from your improved conversion rate.

On a personal note, I’ve got to say that I love this tool. I’ve been trying for years to genuinely divorce myself from attachment to my crackpot idea du jour, and this is just the ticket for that.

This is just a quick look at what consultants charge, just to give you an idea of what to expect if you go shopping for SEO and internet marketing services.

If you are an independent professional or solopreneur, these numbers may look a little daunting. I’m always on the lookout for affordable SEO and internet marketing consultants; unforunately, the ones who are willing to work with small clients (less than $10,000 a year or so budget) are few and far between.

• Your ranking in the search results is based in large part on what other web sites think of you, as measured by Google’s PageRank algorithm and similar measurements at other search engines.
• Your ranking at Google and other search engines is increasingly based on whether you are listed in local directories like Yelp and CitySearch and what your customers say about you there.
• Your ability to land clients increasingly depends on your profile at professional networking sites like LinkedIn and what people say about you there.
• If you write a blog or post comments to other blogs, your readers will quickly develop an impression of you based on what you write and how you deal with comments and criticism.
• Similarly, your postings to discussion forums and how you comport yourself there feed your online reputation.

And the list could go on. The point is, For better or for worse, and whether you like it or not, the web is where many people go these days to assess your professional reputation. There are many implications that arise from this, perhaps the most germane of which is that you should take a proactive approach to developing and maintaining your web presence. Here are a couple of good articles on how to do this:

Reputation Management Emancipation Proclamation - 10 Ways to “Own Yourself” Online

Ten Ways to Fix Your Google Reputation & Remove Negative Results (this one is mostly how to clean up your online profile if it has been sullied)

According to their web site, “SMX Advanced is for the experienced search marketer who wants to enjoy sessions conducted at a high-level and continue to stay ahead in the fast changing world of search. If you’re fluent in search marketing, SMX Advanced is where you can converse with others who speak your native language.” I’m happy to report that, despite my focus on my massage practice for the past five years, I can still hang with these folks and even occasionally make useful contributions to between-session chats.

I parked in the “organic track” (presentations geared for people who are trying to get listed in the organic, as opposed to paid, search results at Google, etc.) room, which was also the location for Danny Sullivan’s opening remarks, his keynote interview with Microsoft bigwig Kevin Johnson, and Danny’s “You and A” with Google’s Matt Cutts. If not for the great food and exhibits downstairs I might never have budged from the room.

Kevin Johnson, President of Microsoft’s Platform & Services Division, likened Microsoft’s position in the search world to where they were with server software 15 or 20 years ago, a niche player dismissed by their competitors (back then wags were saying that NT stood for “Not There” or “Nice Try”) and struggling to gain market share, but they stuck with it and are now a multi-billion-dollar player in that segment. He thinks that by focusing on searches with “commercial intent” and by improving the user experience that MS will gain ground in the search space. Time will tell. . .

The first session was “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques.” Roger Montti opened the session with some great advice on how to identify high-quality potential link sites. Jay Young of Link Fish then shared his unrepentantly dark-grey-hat take on the subject. As a fan of white-hat search marketing I was a little taken aback at his urging us not to fear Matt Cutts and to go ahead and buy links and to “spam the shit out them” with comment spam, but I must say it was very refreshing to see such candor (which I told him when I ran into him at lunch; I also told him that I’d love to see him debate Eric Ward sometime about link-development tactics, a conversation which might go something like this one at SEOmoz a while back). Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts then weighed in with one of the densest presentations I’ve ever seen, rattling off insane amounts of detail on identifying and getting links from good sites, as well as tips on blogging and using social media to get in-links to your website.

Next up was “Bot Herding,” a session which focused mostly on PageRank sculpting, the practice of tweaking your (mostly internal) link structure with “nofollow” attributes in meta tags and links, JavaScript, and other methods to transfer “link juice” to important pages on your site. This session was technically interesting, but, as Evan, the Google engineer on the Q&A panel (and later Matt Cutts) noted, this is a second-tier strategy. Your time can be much better spent on more fundamental search engine optimization tasks (developing good content, e.g.).

The “Buying Sites for SEO” session was geared toward folks interested in buying sites to get links to their site and/or to build existing site networks. Much of this session was devoted to ways to conceal your affiliation with a site you have bought for SEO purposes. I was much more interested in the general principles of how to research and ascertain the value of a web property.

The day wrapped up with a “You and A” (get it? like a Q & A) session with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team. As is always the case with Google presentations, the SEO crowd didn’t get the inside dope we’re all hoping he’ll accidentally spill at some point, but he did clarify a number of Google policies and reiterated the consistent Google message, which he succinctly put at one point as this litmus test: “Would a user be annoyed if they landed on this page.” This gets at the underlying theme of everything I’ve ever heard from or inferred about Google: just do what’s right for the user, and you’ll stay in Google’s good graces.

Tomorrow is Developer Day, so it should get even geekier. Until then. . .