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1. All Things Jeep
2. Brides’ Village
3. Bright and Bold
4. Calypso Parrot
5. Classic Charms
6. Nature Chest
7. Shop the Gift Basket Store
8. Shower-Curtains.com
9. Titanium-Buzz

For long, there were only minor size differences between mobile devices and these tiny “purse puppy” laptops.  But for all intents and purposes (ode to Cathy at BridesVillage.com), laptops were always considered part of the PC family.  Now, laptops are becoming princess-friendly (yes, I own a Droid and love their ads.)  And they’re looking a heck of a lot more like mobile devices than ever before.  So where’s the fine line? I’m pretty sure it’s blurred forever – I find that exhilarating.  More importantly, I find it “inviting”.

An Inviting Blur: The hope and promise of a stronger e-commerce world is contingent on the world’s willingness to adapt to the internet.  Phones have had a head start against PCs, so it’s no wonder that so many people consider mobile internet to be the key avenue of growth for e-commerce shopping and internet adaptation in general.  Although I hate to give Apple the credit for this shift in the marketplace values and trust factors when it comes to shopping online, they have surely made an impact and I believe this new iPad of theirs will continue that trend.  By further blurring the distinction between mobile and PC, the attitude of comfort achieved by phones will now share their strength with the PC world.  And no better Brand to facilitate a new level of comfort than Apple… enter my bigger point.

An Inviting Brand: In the conversion world, we consider the commitment to a personality type as a major sign of a strong brand.  Apple is the example I typically use in my mind when thinking of a brand that has committed to engaging the “social” part of our personalities when it comes to shopping.  They understood the learning curve challenges they faced with bringing their innovative products to market.  To overcome this obstacle, they greet everyone from grandma to tween when they enter the Apple store and offer to walk each individual through using their products.  They’ve helped push adaptation towards the mobile world in such a comfortable, non-intimidating way.  Now, they can bring that to a new set of customers.  Customers who were not in the market for a phone or a music player.  Now, customers with PC interests will be candidates to learn from Apple’s educational approach to shopping.  Sure, they have the Mac computers, but I always felt they positioned those as “advanced”, while iPods were always presented as “easy-to-use”.  And that’s where I think they’re going with the iPad.  That’s why I think it will push adaptation in a dramatic way.  That’s why I think this is a great sign for the future of online commerce.

1. Seeing Google’s big picture when it comes to algorithm changes.
2. How Google’s recent changes reflect a new attitude towards SEO’s.
3. What mechanism Google uses to disqualify duplicate content and how you can protect yourself.

It never stops changing, folks.  Google’s algorithm is the Bugs Bunny to an SEO world filled with Elmer Fudds.  Unless you’re going for some kind of a world record for BS-ing while scratching your head, you probably need a swift change of perspective that will keep you “in tune” with your white whale at all times.

Google’s algorithm will continue to be adjusted over time to fit one simple goal:  return the most relevant, helpful pages for any particular search.  To that end, there has been a dynamic shift in Google’s ability to attain this goal, changing from being a very reactive entity to one that is proactive.  Since there was such a low historical penetration within the internet space of proper SEO practices and a high prevalence of SEO trickery (or SEO mockery from Google’s perspective – note:  geeks hate mockery), Google’s major changes of the yester-year were laden with defense tactics, penalties and black/white thinking.

But what formerly seemed like a very emo view of the world has changed to one that is much more in-line with the hyperbolic hopefulness of generation-Obama.  Google is starting to see that SEO is not an island, but rather a part of a much larger organism of the internet.  This mentality is reflected in a few changes that I’ve seen recently:

Part I: Content is more important than ever before.

Google will always believe that people searching on the internet are, by majority, seeking knowledge and information.  Do you agree?  I personally do still, but also think it’s starting to change towards entertainment and shopping.  I think that regardless of what a person is looking for, they are bound to at least peruse content on a page.  Having unique content (150+ words) is more important now that I can ever remember.  Keeping up is akin to allowing your page to face search users.

Your Next Step: Write content for pages that deserve more face-time on the search engines.

Part II: Duplicate content is undervalued more heartlessly than it was in the past.

It’s simply a matter of keeping up with inflation, that’s all!  Google chooses 10 results for the first page SERP and they’re not going to stop. After that, results only really matter till we hit the 100th result mark. So when your google SERP says “Results 1-10 of about 1,000,000″ or even “… of about 1,000,000,000″ – to Google, everything past the first 100 or so is just a waste of space. They can’t control how much content is being places on sites, but they do have the freedom to control how many of those page are pulled into the index – specifically, how much duplicate content is allowed within the index. I call their control mechanism the “duplicate content threshold” because it makes sense to call it that. Here’s how I believe it work: in the example below, 675 pages are all constructed based on one original piece of information.  Of those pages, 500 are directly copied.  At the other extreme, only 5 pages truly wrote that content from scratch, with just the original idea in mind.  The duplicates are 100% identical to the original content, when the “from scratch” pages are only 40% similar.

So if your re-writes once passed the test by being less than 90% similar to the content you nearly plagiarized in the past, now the cut off may be something more like 80%.  It’s a very easy mechanism for Google to seek high quality in an inflating pool of options.  It’s just a matter of Google adjusting a setting on their duplicate content threshold and all of a sudden, they no longer need to house tons of duplicate content. Below, we see that by changing the threshold from 95% to 80%, they only need to serve up 6 of the 675 pages that were all based on the original content.

Your Next Step: Write that new content from scratch and don’t cut corners now, just to get penalized later.

Part III: Do No Evil.  Just Do The Work.

Obviously there’s more to the store, but this is what matters on the content side and it should give you an idea of how you can prepare for the future.  Think like Google and she will like you – build your relationship on trust and understanding and she’ll be yours forever.

Your Next Step: Embrace the good and do no evil.

From my own experience I have noticed that trying to get into Google’s coveted local map results is quite a different animal compared to traditional SEO. For example, Exclusive Concepts has been working with a law office that ranks for many competitive terms in their niche. A few months ago this attorney made it a priority for us to get him listed in the Google maps results for his key term/city. No problem, right?

The problem with the Google local listings is that it is still such a new technology that I am not sure even Google knows the best way to rank these sites. Plus, there is so much contradictory information on the web that I honestly did not know where to start. The good news is, we eventually got the client listed in the Google local map results and here is how we did it.

1. Luckily for us the Law Office has a location near center city. As there is a buzz going around the internet that Google weighs this factor heavily it was important to have this to start with.
2. Next, I began submitting the client to every possible yellow page directory on the web. It may seem tedious and repetitive but I believe this adds to what I call the echo effect.
3. After that, the most obvious step is to create an account in the Google local business center. It wouldn’t hurt to somehow acquire a few reviews as well once this profile has been created. You can do this by either asking your patrons or offering some sort of incentive for a review.
4. Next, we submitted the client to the yahoo local directory.
5. Finally, while performing a back link analysis on my client’s competitors I noticed that several of them were included in an industry directory for lawyers. Not only was this a PR5 law directory but it also gave several “followed” links back to the clients website. Within a couple weeks, our client’s law firm was listed in the local results. A celebration ensued.

It is hard to pinpoint which actions were effective and which were not as they were all done relatively at the same time. But one thing is for sure is that it worked and it was no easy task.