I just stumbled on this gem this morning over at Search Engine Roundtable about dynamically creating your landing page with actual search keywords. See Passing Query Phrase into Document Landing Page, which provides a brief commentary and link to a related thread over at the Search Engine Watch forums.

This is definitely something that would be worth testing for 90% of people out there. In most cases, my guess is it would increase conversion rates for many.

Every time you run a test, think about things you can do to reduce noise- or uncontrollable effects on your data. One thing that is often overlooked is fluctuations caused by the day of the week. Think about it. Many sites enjoy significantly more traffic and more sales on weekdays, while others perform best on the weekends.

Web site visitors tend to be very different on the weekends and evening, than mid day during the work week. I have seen a lot of activity and responses come from senior management of very large companies. Rarely during the day. Weekends are when these time-stressed executives get to surf.

Say you run a test starting on Monday. By Thursday, you could have a substantial amount of data, pointing to a clear “winner.” The inexperienced tester would begin celebrating prematurely. Along comes the weekend, and what you thought was the winner could end up falling behind.

How to avoid this? Always run your tests by the calendar week. This essentially removes the weekday/weekend fluctuations from affecting your end results.

This weeks idea is really more than just a simple idea, but an often overlooked element of the complete online marketing equation, something we call “internal site marketing.” Web marketing strategies like search engine optimization get people to your site, but internal marketing tactics get people signed up for your newsletter, registered for your whitepapers, and attending your webinars- or maybe purchasing your affiliate products.

How these different items are promoted on your site is something that should be tested and optimized. Whether your site uses clever banner ads, product images, or simple signup forms, getting the most out of them should be a top goal. This particular example is one that is currently in use on the Vertster Site. In the coming months, we plan to launch and optimize more internal marketing offers, promoting a free demo, webinars, and more.

Things we could and will test include: layout, headline, use of the word free, inclusion of an image of the item, or inclusion of a “lifestyle” image. There are obviously many more ideas you could use as well. But the point is, get testing!

I get my blog news through a nifty service called Bloglines, which was just bought by Ask Jeeves. Bloglines allows you to aggregate all the blogs you like to read in one place, and even notifies you when they have updated information.

Bloglines also allows you to export a list of all the blogs you read for inclusion on your website. This makes perfect sense. It would stand to reason that anyone reading my blog is likely interested in some, if not MOST of what I like to read.

You can view the list when you enter the blog section of the Conversion Rate Marketing and Split Testing Resources Conversion Rate Marketing Resource Center. This will be constantly updated with the best Conversion rate and marketing blogs out there. If you think I may have missed one, please send me an email at scott@vertster.com.

If you are reading this, you’re probably excited about the possibilities of increasing your sales or lead conversion rate, and overall profitability. I’m excited too, this is an amazing new area of web marketing and the surface has barely been scratched.

Unfortunately, a common tendency is to complete one test and call it “good.” This is a rookie mistake. A true optimization campaign is made up of a battery of tests, some designed to determine best overall creative direction, some to fine tune, and some to provide confirmation.

You should only rarely make conclusions based on a single test. Even if you have a clear winner, it is smart to run at least one identical confirmation test following your first one. This is particularly true if your activity is low (IE low confidence,) or if you know you have some uncontrollable noise factors.