Google and Ecommerce have been doing a lot of fighting lately, and if you own an Ecommerce shop you know what I’m talking about. The single most problematic issue with an online shop is of course making your content pages unique. With the recent Mayday update affecting Ecommerce sites quite a bit, you now more than ever have to stick out from the pack. Rand from SEOMoz gets all the credit for this video in which he describes so many cool ways to spruce of those product pages. If you’re dreading doing this, just thing about the long term and how it isn’t going to get any easier.

If you haven’t heard, Google has dropped its realtime results page for you to play with. This should set off alarm bells about real time marketing if they haven’t been going off. While it currently shows mostly Twitter updates, I have seen the odd Facebook updates which makes we wonder what else is going to start showing up in here. I imagine this Google feature will lead to all sorts of fun and free statistics and trend updates for us to use in our marketing efforts. From a user perspective, I really like how you can use geographic specifications to find updates near you and local news. I urge you to get familiar with the features and keep your eye out for what’s new on Google Realtime Search.

Video is a standard feature now more than ever and the press release sites are finally catching on. I wanted to round up a few usable resources for everyone to utilize in their next release. I have yet to test the results out myself, but I’ve been helping clients get out video releases more than usual lately. The more your prospective clients or future business partners can see a real person interacting with its audience, the more you will stand out in your industry. I only had a limited amount of time to write today so feel free to add sites in the comments, and read this interview with Greg Jarboe from the video marketing Pros at ReelSEO.

PR Sites that Support Video:

- PRtube.com

- Free-Press-Release.com

- Marketwire.com/video

- 24-7pressrelease.com/video_press_release.php & Read the How To PDF

- PRlog.org/tips/1048-free-video-press-release.html

- PRWeb’s “Media Visibility” package includes the embedded video feature for $360 per release, a more economical approach than other major news wire services featuring online video

I recently started using Google’s Voice & Video Chat for Gmail which is a welcomed free tool in my opinion…especially for us link builders. I tend to do a lot of direct emailing for clients, and the ability to have this kind of access to my link prospects is going to open things up quite a bit. With all those Gmail contacts you’re collecting I implore you to take a chance and try to chat with webmasters and site owners face to face. I’m sure by now a lot of you have cold called webmasters which we all know brings in mixed results. If it’s easy enough for Grandma, then it surely is easy enough for a skilled SEO such as yourself.

I just saw a post by Loren Baker about this very slick looking software suite from the fine folks at BlueGlass and just had to post about it. This software takes your marketing campaign to the next level with organization, analytic and work flow tools to make life easier. They have been private for a while, and this is the launch of a private beta in which you can sign up for. Loren did an amazing post on SEJ about the software, so there is no need for me to do it again, however I urge you to take the time to watch this video on how it all comes together.

Unlike here in North America where we let Google get away with snooping on our citizens, South Korea took more affirmative action the other day. With concerns over privacy, South Korean Police raided Google’s offices in Seoul mainly on the suspicion of unauthorized collection and storage of data on unspecified Internet users from Wi-Fi networks. While this is going to get a lot of press, can you imagine the viral link campaign Google is getting out of it…as if they need it though.

I’ve been soaking in all the location based and real time marketing lately, for obvious reasons of course. On my digital travels I came across ShopKick while writing for an upcoming publication. I was talking with Scott Loader yesterday about his Foursquare rampage while shopping here in Vancouver. While Foursquare is no geared directly towards just stores, it still does an ok job of providing deals and fun through its games. I however really like the idea of a location based deals application just for shopping, and this is exactly what ShopKick is all about.

The amount of different deals and coupons that could be offered by this app makes it most intriguing to me, and my clients. While ShopKick is still in its infancy(private beta), you can get that stores are hungry to have this new revolution help bring back some lost business during these tough times. The app itself is set to bring up a stores real world “bounce rate” with features such as KickBucks. This form of currency can be collected by just walking into stores, and further more by scanning products in store with your phone! Once you’ve collected enough, well you guessed it, rewards can be had in real life with prizes such as iPads, phones and more! Check out the video to see a little bit of it in action.

I’m just half way done my morning latte, reading through the Google section of Webmaster World and quickly came across this gem. You’ve seen me on Twitter, forums and here discussing the recent changes that Google has mixed into its search results, but this just adds more fuel to the fire. From the picture below, is it any surprise to you that there are so many Apple Computer links showing up for this term. Obviously these results will vary depending on where you live, but just take this in as a little lesson. I’m not on the “Google’s losing” bandwagon just yet, take a look at why the results are showing up like this, and how you can take advantage.

Whether or not your website had a positive effect after the Mayday update, you have no doubt noticed the difference in the search results Google has been rolling out. While they stated it would help clean up the listings, not many people are actually seeing a positive difference. I’ve actually seen more grey/blackhat sites gaining ground, and the paid links are still ranking people like it was the only thing that worked. If you’re an avid reader of Webmaster World, you will have most likely noticed the horror stories of people losing almost all of their business. The original thread about the Mayday update is also a great 14 page read…it may scare you a little though.  I always highly recommend the a Google search for the keyword term ‘buy cialis‘ to bring up a spamtastic research time.

So as you can see, blackhat link spamming still works like a bloody charm. While sites with years and years of creating high quality content, and doing it by the “book” have been slammed in more than a few cases. For my holy grail keyword, link building, I’ve been going at it for years without building specific links and I’m almost reaching the top 10. A quick look at the top 10 shows only a couple of legit companies who’ve earned the rank, and the rest have ranked by link spamming in the lowest quality form possible….wtf Google? Lovely to see a site mostly talking about selling links ranking very high, makes you wonder.

If you folks have any positive and or horror stories over the past few months lets hear them! The more discussion the better off other webmasters will be.