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One of the advantages of optimizing for conversion is that Google can't take away your revenue arbitrarily.

Normally, we are thinking of SEO when we say this. Panda, Penguin and now Pidgeon are algorithm changes that may have hurt your business.

Now, it appears that Google is messing with paid traffic as well.

Mike Roberts of SpyFu.com has the analysis of an upcoming elimination of "Exact and Phrase Match keyword targeting" by Google.dealing with a 10% loss of revenue is not what I need now or ever. Optimize for conversion, and Google will not be able to reach into your pockets.

 @Avinash Kaushik has a unique ability to make analytics human. I don't share many analytics posts with you, as I don't want to scare you off. But I fear I may be underestimating you.

Here are ten very good ways to get to know your visitors through Google Analytics. I believe you will be energized and excited if you open these reports in your own Google Analytics account.

This is a great way to start appreciating your visitors in ways that will make your site more successful.

 @KISSmetrics - Google Analytics has become a very important tool in helping us diagnose your site and increase conversions. I'm spending much more of my time showing businesses how to setup Google Analytics to give them amazing insights into their visitors. This list is pretty intense, but if you're getting up the learning curve on GA, it can't be beat.

If Google Analytics is your thing, Ian hits the highlights of v5

PayPal is a preferred method of payment for many of your visitors. Even if you've got a merchant account and gateway all setup, you should consider PayPal as an alternative source.

However, measuring transactions through PayPal is problematic. Or it was.

Here is an excellent post on how to configure your PayPal account and Google Analytics for full-transaction tracking, includkng Ecommerce tracking.

Using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer together

Google+ is affecting search rankings for authors on the web, so we need to make sure we're playing the game. This article from @AjKohn of tells us how to establish ourselves as the masters of our content in the eyes of Google using the "rel" attribute in our links.

"After clicking through 900,000 ads, researchers from Google discovered that the average mobile landing page loads in an embarrassing 22 seconds. That's over 7 times longer than most impatient internet users will wait before they abandon a page - 53% to be exact."

For those of you who are new to Google for our advertising, analytics or SEO, here's a nice set of tools to help you get better at making money online.

If you didn't know, Google has redesigned their search results pages recently. The change is primarily to the portion of the page that contains "sponsored content", or ads.

The eye-tracking images provided by the folks at EyeQuant are telling.

The pages now drive more attention to the ads, taking attention away from the free results. Ironically, it also makes the ads more evident, with a bright icon beside each.

EyeQuant calls this "a Subtle Work of Genius". What do you think?

Wordpress plugin handles the details of using Google Website Optimizer on your blog.

Great primer on regular expressions for Google Analytics. You don't have to be a programmer to get something from regular expressions.

With Google now occupying the first click to our site, converting searchers to clickers is critical. For businesses with geographical presence, here is a very in-depth summary of how to optimize your image for Google Local Search.

Conversion math is sometimes hard to understand. How can really small increases in website conversion rates LOWER the cost of all f my marketing? Well, that is a discussion for another time. Now you don't have to think so hard about it.

Google has laid it out very clearly: If your landing pages are good, they will send you more traffic for less money. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out the importance of conversion optimization anymore.

Article comparing Google Analytics and Omniture

This is a great tour of Google Analytics' best features, some of which may be new to you.

 @chiefmartec "out of 12,000 experiments that Google ran in 2009, only about 10% of them resulted in adopted changes." You are not Google. But you must realize that in every industry, an online leader is going to emerge, and it will be the company that adopts a testing culture.

Intuition is no longer your friend. Your intuition cannot comprehend the variety of ways our visitors are coming at us. Data and testing are your friends, or your online audience will continue to abandon you.

Get excited about testing and taking that leadership role in your marketplace.

Regular expressions rear their ugly head in more and more places. Google Analytics is just one.

For me the regular expression showed up in the excellent Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress. I needed to redirect a URL that had parameters, like this:

http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

To do this, I could not use a regular redirect, as everything after the ? would be stripped away. I needed to use a Regular Expression Redirect. However, this sort of thing -- using query parameters -- wasn't covered in any of the Yoast documentation.

This article gave me the hint I needed, and the technique that ended up working. To summarize, I used the following regular expression to match my URL with the parameters:

^\/conversion-upside-report($|\/.*$)

The parentheses save the matching contents into a variable, which I can access using $1 in the new URL, like this:

resources/conversion-rate-optimization-calculator/upside-report/$1

It worked great. Give it a try: http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

Thanks to Himanshu.

In their own words:8. Conversion Sciences Blog Conversion Sciences is another A/B testing conversion optimization agency that has stood the test of time (it was founded in 2007). In this blog you can find some remarkable and noteworthy ideas about A/B testing and conversion optimization. What to read: AB Testing JavaScript: Great Power, Great ProblemsHow to Avoid Mobile-Friendly Redesign DisastersAB Testing Inspiration: Using Emotional TriggersHow Google Reviews Drive Conversions for Local Businesses

Juxtaposition, or "where" something is placed on a Web page has lots to do with "what" you say on that page. I find that I can only develop copy and headings so far before I have to see how they will interact on the page. I have to do a mockup. Well, there is another place that our titles and copy show up, and it is a very competitive context: Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). So, I was glad to find this handy little tool that let me see what my title, description and URL look like on a Google SERP. Now if only @SEOmofo could add the the page preview feature as well for a complete picture