Shawn Cohen

I agree with your point but it seems like the complaining/whistleblowing is akin to citizens in a country complaining about the government. Someone could say, "Well, if you don't like it, leave." But there's too much invested there to make leaving realistic. 

Same with organic--I can't easily switch my resources from organic b/c of the investment in what has typically been a less expensive marketing channel. However, you have a good point about diversifying b/c ranking for target keywords just isn't as cheap as it used to be.

You're welcome, bro. You deserve the shout out.

Oldie but goodie, circa 2011.

Not that I understand much of this but here's the related blog post for what it's worth: http://www.nowherenearithaca.com/2013/04/explorating-googles-pagerank.html

One blogger who reviewed a client's product nofollowed all the links she pointed to my client's site in her review. I politely asked if there was a specific reason she did this and if she could remove the nofollow tag.

She immediately responded that she would remove the tags but that various sites had come back asking her to add the nofollow attribute b/c they had gotten penalized by Google.

W/ all these penalties and backtracking, it's no wonder everybody is confused on what the hell they should be doing.

Yeah, I see your point but Ian Lurie has a level of respect in the SEO world that few people have. To me, the writer manipulated our respect for Ian to get us to read the article. If the article was that good, why did she need to coopt Ian to get us to read it? 

A good headline induces action but I shouldn't have a reason to feel duped afterward.

I'm just annoyed when the writer uses a provocative headline and then modifies it in the first sentence of the article.

Apart from a potential privacy issue, do you see something else?

Thanks for the reply, Peep.

We'd be more than happy to provide them w/ CRO recommendations but they contract their web dev and are very cost conscious. W/ that in mind, I think I'm looking for some CRO tools that don't require a coder but will integrate w/ a custom e-comm platform. 

Thanks for any suggestions you have!

What are a few ways my clients can get their feet wet in CRO without spending very much money?

A bit dated but extremely applicable.

Reviews are so important! I recently had a client's page drop from #1 b/c, from what we could tell, the other page had more fresh reviews even though our page looked better in just about every metric.

I recently noticed a competitor 302ing an important page to another domain to benefit from that domain's brand while retaining their own page's authority. Nice to think they might be hurting themselves trying to get sneaky:)

My faves are the BMW v. Audi pix and Stella v. Newcastle. Ingenious.

Oh the mayhem a new design can cause...

I think it was like $40 per interview when you added a couple extra parameters (they give you a bunch for free: gender, age, married/single, kids/no kids, education level, etc). They give discounts for bulk interview purchases. it might seem steep for one 30 minute interaction but you won't regret it.

RE talking to the frontlines, you can talk to your target market via a service called http://gutcheckit.com/. You set the parameters of your target demographic and they pair you w/ a person that you chat w/. 

You can send them to your site and get their feedback. I've used it before and it was incredibly helpful to get raw, unfiltered feedback about how clear our USP was on the site, etc.

Yeah, I'm still scratching my head why he didn't say that...

Some of this advice is kind of scary--don't read printed books might be an okay idea but he could have coupled that w/ "read all the ebooks that you can find since many of them are continually being updated."

I find there are very few synonyms for natural when it comes to internet marketing. Annoys the crap out of me sometimes.