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I haven't seen much in the way of data on this. Since many usability studies and A/B tests mean that a site has solid investment, it's rare to see someone test "bad grammar" vs. "good grammar". Plus, if you've invested in good grammar enough to have a "B" version, then why not just use it. So, practically, you just don't see this in the research very much.

I agree with GNC that it's primarily a trust issue. Are you going to give your credit cart to a company with dozens of typos, spelling mistakes, and bits of bad grammar? If they offshored their copy for bargain basement prices, is that where you want to put you money?

I saw a good international SEO talk once about the importance of writing copy for your target audience and NOT just translating. So much is idiomatic that it's easy to lose important details in translation. When your competitor is a click away and especially if you're an unknown quantity (and not a big brand), these details can matter quite a bit.

Just double-checked in GWT, and Google crawls the iFrame source but won't interpret the data behind it. It's essentially like external JavaScript in that regard.

Agreed - I've seen it cause duplicate content issues with URLs, but I'm not aware of situations where it mattered in on-page keywords. I don't like lower-case page TITLEs, because they look spammy, but that's more a CRO factor.

One minor exception, but I'm not sure it's in play anymore. I once ran into something where acronyms were pulling up different results depending on what case they were in. Google might have been mistaking the acronym in question for a misspelled word, though - it's a really isolated case.

On the CRO side, usability research actually suggests that (on the web) the first 2 words of a headline carry most of the weight. In SERPs, I think that's even more at play - people scan, they don't read full TITLEs. The natural assumption is that long TITLEs carry more information, but in many cases, what's good for SEO is good for users with titles and headlines.

Of course, you don't want to be too spammy, or just string keywords together - that might get someone's attention but then cost you the click. Overall, though, I wouldn't be afraid of short TITLEs.

More info here in a post from 2009 by Jakob Nielsen:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html

Someone who will not be named (it rhymes with "Bomb Itch Slow") told me to Mechanical Turk the crap out of it

Unfortunately, I've seen mixed reviews on this one, test-wise. The inconsistency is why we don't recommend it (as GNC said). Generally, though, I'd say it's better than nothing.

I have some smaller clients who have had limited luck with it, but I think it's best to just stick to one of the sites and do periodic releases (maybe every couple of months). If nothing else, it'll give you a sense of what's working, and you can take some of the popular releases and push to get them a broader market.

What I wouldn't do is go after multiple low-value PR services and plaster the same releases everywhere you can. At best, it's diminishing returns - at worst, they'll be devalued. I'm with Peter G. - the best press release opportunities come through relationships with the media. Obviously, though, that takes a lot more time.