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In my experience you see exact match domains ranking higher than they "should" all the time. I have talked to another SEO who prefers to go with an exact match over a brand name almost every time.

I watched a few SEOmoz webinars and Rand Fishkin mentions a bit about keyword vectors, which were explained to be a matrix of sorts that groups keywords with related words. The example given was a key word snowboard is associated with mountain, snow, cabin, etc., so I'm sure Facade and Façade are closely associated, but they're apparently treated as different terms when it comes to search results--just try searching for both Facade and Façade separately (and together) and you'll get different results. I'd venture to guess that versions of words like cafe and café, resume and résumé are prioritized by location and local language, but I'll need someone to confirm that. I write copy in Chinese and English, but since I am not a native Chinese speaker, I creatively include all versions of questionable terms in anchor text and the content body at least once. To find the variation of the term I want to use consistently, I first check the local dictionary, ask my target audience, and then do a search of all variations in different search engines to decide where I want to rank highest. I've been happy with the long term results.

Many thanks David. Regards Blaine

If two paragraphs are the same and the rest is unique (as long as it isn't just a one sentence news item) I'd consider it unique content and NOT use a canonical tag. How long are the news items? I don't see much of a problem if they're of a decent length and not just a couple of lines.

Just to add to this: here is how you 301 in vbscript: <%@ Language=VBScript %> <%' Permanent redirection Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.domain.com/" Response.End %>

You should always link to the authorities in your niche anyway in my opinion. That shows google what network you are a part of..

Hi Blaine, If the CMS allow to modify title of the page, meta description, page content, anchor text, url structure, etc. then there nothing to worry about. As long as you can set those as you wish and that the source code is clean and readable by search engines, then it there shouldn't be any problem. Search engine spiders doesn't care what CMS you use, they look at the source code of the page and gather the information they need. So, as long as the pages can be parsed by spiders and that you can modify the important stuff on it, it can be optimized. Best regards, Guillaume Voyer.