What is the best way to test affiliate landing pages with adwords since I am not able to do it through the website optimizer? Should I just let each page run for a few weeks at at a time then compare them or is there a better way of doing this?
You can set up a split test by creating two exact text ads, one leading to "Version A" of your landing page and the other leading to "Version B". Each ad will be displayed roughly the same amount of time and will receive roughly the same amount of clicks. After you have a statistically significant number of clicks to each landing page, see which one converted better. At this stage you shouldn't be content. Make a small change to the landing page that did the best and run the test as described as above. See which one performed better after receiving a statistically significant amount of clicks and repeat the process until you get the best converting landing page.
Interesting, so I could just create 4 ads then a / b test 1 set into one page then the other set into another page? so 2 ads into each page, but I can what the conversions are by using the conversion tracking then just looking at the ads? Is that what your saying?
Yes I know that. And you don't need analytics you can check it directly from the AdWords account what I'm asking is what ways are other affiliates testing their landing pages. I think I'm going to create 2 ads for each landing page. Then when I compare the ads I'll know what landing pages are converting better becuase the traffic will be going to them pages.
ah OK I got you know, i was a little confused at first. I would go with your idea of two ads for each page. Let us know how it works out. Im currently testing something very similar. I have two ads running for a product. One ad is a more natural feel and the other is a "hurry and get this" more aggressive type of ad good luck!
I always use the URL Rotator script here - http://www.starsol.co.uk/scripts/ - to split testing landing pages/URL's You can just set up a single ad to split its clicks to however many URL's you need. That's much easier to set up and track than multiple ads.