I've been trying to take a measured approach to my SEO efforts, measuring how effective my changes have been on conversions. I use Google Website Optimizer, Google Analytics, etc. One thing, though, that has me stumped is the effectiveness of my Organic Listing. I know that Google uses my Title tag, meta description and url in the organic listing. They also highlight the search words in that listing. Users click or pass based on what I put in there. But how can I measure the effectiveness of changes I make to those three elements? Let's say here's my listing: Free Used Bubblegum - Chewed by the best! Fresh from Kate Bosworth's mouth to yours, just imagine it! http://www.usedbubblegum.com/katebosworth.html and I change it to: Chewed by Kate Bosworth - Used Bubblegum! Kate Bosworth's bubblegum can be yours, ready to ship. Visit our site and we'll ship it to you tonight for free! http://www.usedbubblegum.com/katebosworth.html One of them will get more clicks. It'll take a few days or weeks for Google to change, so I can't run them at the same time and compare. I can't use something like Website Optimizer to see which is more effective. I can use Analytics to see how many times it's been clicked, but I don't know how many times it's been shown. How would you go about testing and measuring the click through rates on various title-description-url combinations? Thanks!
One more thing. Some folks have suggested that I place limited AdWords campaigns to test the ideas. There, of course, I can run them simultaneously and get hard data and click through stats. The issue I have with that is that they're very different (I think). Firstly, the character limitations on the paid and organic differ, secondly I think people treat ads at the top and right differently than they treat organic listings. So I'm not really convinced that the metrics would be comparable.