Must Design

Canonical URLs Explained
The Yoast post provides an easy way to understand why rel=canonical is a powerful new SEO tag. Yoast has a dog in the hunt. They make a Magento plugin that easily writes the rel=canonical tag into a product page's head.

The explanation about WHY canonical URLs are so important is only half right. We have a million ways of expressing and sharing URLs these days. Without rel=canonical we end up duping content to distraction.

Here's the rub. All ecommerce sites dupe content. They must. When I was a Director of Ecommerce a single product accounted for 50% of our profits. You better believe I merchandised that product into every nook and cranny our site offered. I duped that product and it's content to distraction.

There are other ways to limit duplication including:

* Use of your Robots.txt file.
* Locking content behind a firewall.  

* Use of blockquotes & rel=canonical tags. 
* Rewrite duplicated content so it's not as duplicated (lol). 

We included our email output into a folder with a "no follow" line in our robots.txt. You may think such a move is enough. It isn't. Be sure NOT to drive links from spiderable content INTO that folder or you eliminate the effectiveness of the robots.txt.

In the end every ecom site worth it's salt MUST duplicate content. Rewriting sounds like a good strategy, but it isn't. Content = time and time = money when managing million dollar commercial sites. You will be duping content.

Best to use rel=canonical because it shows Google you aren't trying to STEAL anything. Reminds me of what a friend shared about the disavow tool (used to deny inbound links or signal they may be untrusted).

 My friend was using the disavow tool daily on his clients accounts. "So you are brown-nosing Google," I kidded him. "Exactly," was his answer. Rel=canonical tells Google you are TRYING to do the right thing and sometimes that is enough. 

Burn Down Your Website
Websites are cool and a great marketing aid...until they aren't. If the line of when they aren't isn't behind us we are approaching it. What is a "website" when we share posts on Medium, Scoop.it and GPlus?

 Feels like the idea of a website as a MUST GO HERE to interact with our marketing message is hopeless out of touch. Even when we do GO to a website what are we looking for? 

FUN, ENGAGEMENT and RELEVANCE.

The typical talking to yourself about yourself marketing that most flog online feels more than dead, it feels dangerous. Google's vote is clear - if your content doesn't create an increasing number of likes, loves, shares and loyalty your website is screwed, blued and tattooed.

Especially if someone in your immediate competitive sphere knows how to THROW DOWN, create community and MOVEMENTS instead of the usual solipsistic crap. Keep talking to yourself while someone else in your business vertical is hosting a party and you will be waxed.

Waxed because what really matters NOW is LOVE. If your win hearts and minds because you are honestly all in and listening hard you get to "win". If you are amazing you create blue oceans and uncontested competitive space for however long the ride lasts. Talking about FUN.

This Haiku Deck discusses the death of tactical web marketing. You can't out email market my team and I, or not for very long. We've been doing this crazy biz since 1999. You can gain an inch and we are likely to come back and take a mile.

 https://shar.es/12ekPU