Will S...

I've voted option 1. I think out of the two, it's the product that would have the most appeal, especially for businesses that are more towards the small end of medium size, which I get the impression is what you're aiming for here. Option 1 sounds like it'd give people actionable advice, without overwhelming them. I think time is going to be a precious resource for a lot of the people interested in this product, so maybe with option 2 a lot of customers are going to end up with advice that they're just not going to have the time to implement.

That said, maybe you could have it so option one appeals to one man band/small team firms, while option two is aimed at those with the man power to implement a wider range of changes and offer both.

Finally, is there anyway you could add a follow up call to the deliverables? So X period of time after you've sent over your suggestions you have a follow up call to talk about how things went. That would allow you to a) get an idea of what worked and what didn't, which is always helpful and b) land repeat business if a client was impressed. (Right now, I can't think of a way to have this as a deliverable that benefits the client as well, so maybe that's the sticking point here.)

Good luck!

My initial impression: Your homepage is not providing the information visitors want from it.

People are clicking through to the services page far more often than they're clicking any of the green call to action buttons. Although the floating navigation bar will skew things (the service page is always there to be clicked and other CTAs come and go) I think it's pretty clear that people want information about your services but aren't getting what they need from the homepage.

Also, the animated top call to action seems ill-advised as I wouldn't be surprised to learn many people have already started scrolling by the time it appears, meaning they'll never see it.

I'm also struggling to see what the next step in the process would be for people who are interested in your services - there doesn't seem to be a clear lead-gen form anywhere (or at least I couldn't find it, which is pretty much the same thing.)

I would refocus the homepage copy on your services, focusing on the benefits they'll provide to customers with a CTA leading to a lead gen form, so people know how to move on to the next step of the buying process.

I'd probably ditch the floating navigation too.

~3.1k according to SEM Rush. Out of those, guess how many are non-branded results in positions 1-5? 

90. That's 3% of their rankings. Hardly killing it in the SERPs.

Thing is, Disqus doesn't really rank for anything...

My initial thoughts:

"Take control of your inbound career" makes it sound like a recruitment agency.

That first piece of copy needs to focus on the educational benefits of joining (because that's what the main focus of the page is.) I'd like to see "Everything you need to excel at inbound" as the main headline.

I'd also drop the word marketing in there somewhere. Maybe just "Join the inbound.org marketing community". To get the "hey, I'm a marketer, this community is for me!" reaction. (Or it could be dropped in at the end of "Everything you need to excel at inbound" if that was the main headline.)

On first glance, I found the sign up/log in layout a little confusing. It wasn't instantly clear to me that the sign up button was a sign up button. I thought that maybe I would have to enter my details into the two boxes below that button (without clicking) - the partition between the two is pretty weak. (It didn't take me long to realise what was going on, but there was a moment of confusion.)

Although outing can be distasteful, part of me thinks it does have its uses as a) It provides an antidote to the "all you need is great content" posts and b) It highlights the hypocrisy of Google.

Now where can I get me some of them footer links?

I think it's important to note that "you can't" is still an answer to the question "how can you effectively report violations to Google?".

It's possible those links aren't passing any value anyway.

There's a certain irony in writing about not writers not being paid enough on a platform that doesn't pay writers.

It's also a good idea to understand the difference between linkbait and clickbait 

Looks like all those upvotes come from fake accounts using fake Twitter accounts that use pictures taken from LinkedIn. 

There probably are, but is it really worth Google's time and effort to make effective use of them? Would the expenditure required to shift the needle on its organic results from "good enough" to "best possible" provide a worthwhile return on investment? Or would the money, manpower and expertise required be better spent on improving the AdWords platform, or launching a content recommendation service?

Organic results only have to be good enough to keep people coming back and no better. The opportunity cost of working towards the best possible organic search results across every niche would be far too great for it to be even considered. Outside blatant spam, I'd be surprised if Google gave a flying fudge about improving the quality of results for porn searches.

I guess what Jacob is really saying is that links are still vital to ranking a site. Maybe not those sitewide footer links or those spun article links with exact match anchor text though. Those things are really easy to spot through even the most basic of tools...

If a niche has fewer links as a whole, then that doesn't make it any harder for Google to rank it based on links, surely? It would be like a drop in turn out an election - the person with the most votes would still win. 

It might make sites within that niche more susceptible to negative SEO though. Perhaps someone should try targeting a porn site using links with anchor text of "this article on Wikipedia" to see what happens...

Ok, I'll bite. Be the change you want to see in the world does not mean "go on the internet and have a moan".

If Doc deserved his penalty, then how about a guest post that contains five anchor text rich links to a non-relevant site?

More specifically, this post on YouMoz. Now I'm not saying Moz deserves a penalty, but it's hard to see where the line is between Doc's guest post and that guest post.

I know Moz put a lot of effort into vetting the content, but if the end result is still a post with keyword rich anchor text to an irrelevant site,  and that's what Google has a problem with then surely Cutts should be going after them?

Just a thought...

As others have pointed out - the links MBG built to itself weren't always kosher. Even if you leave the guest posts to one side, they were still doing stuff like widget bait and competitions.

I think there's not much difference between the two disciplines - for me the big split comes between things done well and done badly.

Bad outreach and bad PR is untargeted and scattershot. Good PRs, like good outreach specialists, understand their audience and how to target it. I also think there's a tendency in the digital world to separate out the bad stuff that's done and pretend it's a separate thing called spam. In reality though, spammy outreach is still outreach in the same way that bad PR is still PR. So maybe when we compare what we consider to be outreach and PR we're not doing it fairly because we strip out an element of the former because we don't want to be associated with it.

As for the tools available for outreach - I think they're a boon to anyone who is good at outreach, but they can't turn someone into a good outreach specialist all on their own. I don't think the analogy with coding holds - someone who terrible at coding can't ship full stop. Someone who is terrible at outreach can spam til their heart's content.

In fact, I think it would be easier to turn a good PR (with basic tech skills) into a good outreach specialist than it would be to turn a bad outreach specialist into a good outreach specialist.

By 2019, I'd be very surprised if there's any distinction between the two fields - they'll just naturally meld.

My mum would say: "Oh, I don't know. Something to do with the internet. He never tells me anything anyway". She would then text me to ask me about something I've already told her. (Love you, Mum!)