Comments on: You Can’t Optimize Cardboard

By: Arrow SEO

Arrow SEO — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:38:16 +0000

This is so true! Great post, thanks!

By: Steven van Vessum

Steven van Vessum — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:47:47 +0000

This post made me laugh. But you’re right. You need a decent website to do any kind of optimization for SE’s.

By: Rachel Andersen

Rachel Andersen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:21:09 +0000

Appreciate all the great feedback and support. Good stuff!

By: Relevant Trafik

Relevant Trafik — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:30:38 +0000

I agree: 2010 is more about trust and its only going to get more intense as the competition stiffens. For those that have been ethical all along, good for you! That means we are all way ahead in this.

By: Keith Errington

Keith Errington — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:29:32 +0000

I really like the idea of your post Rachel – reminds of me of the old joke where the tourist asks: “How do I get to the city?” – and the local replies: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here”.

And trust is definitely one of the most important factors when deciding whether to do business across the Internet. The way to leverage and promote that trust factor is through branding. So if branding was important before – it’s double so now. Here’s my thoughts on the links between trust and branding – http://tinyurl.com/ybhgb4u

I think your post title is one of the best I’ve read in a while! Thanks.

By: Melissa Mackey

Melissa Mackey — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:04:58 +0000

Great stuff, so true! This is an issue with both PPC and SEO – clients want optimization, but their site continues to convert at less than 1%, yet they don’t want to change their site. I’m definitely using the “you can’t optimize cardboard” analogy! It all goes hand in hand, you need all the pieces working together to make big improvements.

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:23:31 +0000

I wonder if any of my agency clients would appreciate me using this the next time they say – “hey we need this site optimized” when in fact they’re pointing to a 4 page site with a flash home page, 3 paragraphs of content on the whole site, and no allowance for me to change any of that…

Hey Alan – we need this site optimized…”

“Uh, yeah – about that… I can’t optimize cardboard”

LOL I HAVE to try that now. :-)

By: Patricia Skinner

Patricia Skinner — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:18:34 +0000

Nice article Rachel. Indeed, we all have to work to build trust in 2010.

By: Hesham @ FamousBloggers

Hesham @ FamousBloggers — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:47:07 +0000

There is tones of great meaning and tips in your post, and you are right 2010 is the year of trust, it’s going to be so very hard to do biz with out having the trust on this year!

Personally I am running a multi-authors blog, and I am looking and searching for the best way to gain trust of our readers as I want to push this blog to the next level, and I can see now that building trust is time consuming!

By: Ted Rex

Ted Rex — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:52:18 +0000

Rachel, I am coming at this not from the SEO aspect (because I don’t know about the technical nuts and bolts related to it), but more of a marketing angle and I think you are right on the money with your “trust” theme. Today’s consumer is not looking for somebody to interact with whether its to buy something or learn something, but rather they want to build a relationship–a relationship that needs to be based upon trust. Quickly the marketing questions are moving from “How do we get them to buy this thing” to “How do we get people to come to us for help, and then how do we earn their loyalty?” Those are profoundly different questions, the later one being almost too overwhelming for many.

Excellent work, Ted