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I'd consider custom landing pages with vanity URL's (rather than parameters) for each ad.  Say you are the ABC company and you're running Ads in Esquire and GQ magazine.

URL for the GQ ad could be:  www.abc.com/GQ

URL for the Esquire ad could be:  www.abc.com/Esquire

Bonus points, for having unique content on each landing page optimized for that publications readership.  If you absolutely can't do unqiue content, then don't create duplicate content, have 301 redirect both pages to your generic landing page.

If your publishing engine won't let you create vanity URL's, then you could pass the URL's with the ugly parameters through a URL shortner to get a very short URL.  Many readers might appreciate fewer keystrokes to type, but obviously no readers will remember the URL, so you'll only get traffic that actively has the ad in front of the PC.

You might also consider adding QR codes in your print ads to ease readers getting to your pages and traffic attribution.

If it's an ad that people are likey to see what they are out and about... maybe a pub they read at the nail salon, doctors office, beach, etc.. rather than in their office/home you defiantely want to think about making all your landing pages mobile optmized.  Perhaps even use a SMS shortcode as a response to the ad.  That will make it easy on your readers, and give you excellent attribution capabilities.

Goodluck!

Hey William,

You didn't say explicitdly in your post but based on the plugins and themes you are discussing, I'll assume you are asking about Themes for Wordpress.

Selecting the right theme is still very important, even if you are going to use a solid SEO plugin like Wordpress SEO from Joost de Valk (Visit plugin site)

For starters the plugin doesn't let you control every element you might want to optimize.  Such as specifying what content on a page get's H1 tags, etc...

The plugin won't influence how fast your site is, how big the pages are, etc... (it does have some useful minification features but it's far better to start with an efficient page).  You also want your theme to provide good code for multiple page posts, standards compliance, etc...  So a good theme is essential.

Thesis is a good framework, has a solid SEO structure, and is very popular.  There have been some intellectual property disputes with Thesis and Wordpress that have resulted in a number of people moving to other options.  Genesis is another great framework, from the good people at CopyBlogger.com, http://www.studiopress.com/.  It's very strong from an SEO standpoint, it lets you use all the other excellent CopyBlogger tools, StudioPress child themes, etc...

You probably can't go wrong with Genesis or Thesis.

And for reference, this Search Engine Land column from 2009 provides a pretty concise treatment of how to utilize our friend the robots exclusion protocol: A Deeper Look At Robots.txt

I'd recommend Aaron Wall's glossary at SEOBook.com

Google may still index pages excluded by robots.txt if the pages are backlinked either internally or externally.

For best results, use meta noindex to tell search engines they're not allowed to show the link in results, and meta nofollow to tell robots not to follow any links on the page.

Webmaster Tools Help: Using meta tags to block access to your site

You can also explicitly address goooglebot in the meta tag, as opposed to just robots. If you use both a robots.txt and meta robots tags and there are conflicting directives,  googlebot will follow the most restrictive one.

While I like Ryan and Sha's approach, it is like selling ice to eskamo's in terms of convincing the brand managers who are convienced that they have too much equity in their existing brands to dillute/consolidate.

When a  browser does a branded keyword search, the brand managers aren't going to want a "http://story_of_Best_Foods_and_Hellmanns.com" url to be the top hit.  They are going to want the branded URL that already has mindshare with the consumer.  And of course if you do a search on Hellmanns Recipeis and get a hit like "http://hellmanns.com/recipie/bobbyflay.html" it's going to have much higher click through than "http://mayonnaise.com/recipie/bobbyfly.html" would get.  The branded keyword in the URL just imply's relavance.

Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country.

Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods".  It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different.

The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages.  The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe"

http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1

http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1

Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo.  Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority).

If you were advising the client, what would you do.  You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches.

So do you:

1. Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links.  I.E.  Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods?
2. Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords?  (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds).
3. No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all.  The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords.

Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer).

Note:  I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position.  I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1.  (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client).

Any thoughts?

Thanks Ryan, I didn't noticed that about the reply sequencing, and you're right, I read them in the wrong order.  It makes much more sense now.

By "some" support, I meant that even Google via Matt Cutts says that they don't take cross domain canonical as "a directive" but rather a "hint" (and even that assumes Google agrees with you, that your pages are duplicates).

So the magic question is how how much authority do Bing and Google give the rel="canonical" and is it similar between the two engines?

Ryan, at the end o the thread you linked to, it seems like both Dr. Pete and yourself, agreed that there wasn't much evidence of bing support.  Have you learned something that changed your mind?

I know a rep from Bing told Dr. Pete there was "some" support, but what does that mean?  i.e. Exactly Identical sites pass a little juice/authority, or similar sites pass **a lot **juice/authority?

Take a product that has different brands in different parts of the country.  Hellmanns's and Best Foods for example.  They have two sites which are the same except for logos.  Here is a recipe from each site.

http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1

http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1

The sites are nearly identical except for logo's/product names.

For the (very) long tail keyword "Mayonnaise Bobby Flay Waldorf salad wrap" Best Foods ranks #5 and Hellmann's ranks #11.

I doubt they have a SEO looking very close at the sites, because in addition to their duplicate content problem, neither pages has a meta description.

If the Hellmanns page had a

[http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1](http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1)"/>

I'd expect to see the Best Foods page move up and Hellmanns move down in Google.  But would Bing appears to not like the duplicate pages as much, currently the Best Food version ranks #12 and the Hellmann doesn't rank at all.  My own (imperfect tests) lead me to believe that adding the rel="canonical" would help in google but not bing.

Obviously, the site owner would probably like one of those two pages to rank very high for the unbranded keyword, but they would want both pages to rank well if I added a branded term. My experience with cross-domain canonical in Google lead me to believe that even the non-canonical version would rank for branded keywords in Google, but what would Bing do?

I'd be very cautious about relying on the cross-domain canonical in Bing until I see some PUBIC announcement that it's supported.
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I definitely agree that you should figure out if your footer links are adding value to your users.  If they are, I'm not sure I'd blindly follow the "prune your links" philosophy.  I note that Zappos.com seems to rank OK with a pretty link heavy footer.  One size does not fit all.

Google may still index pages excluded by robots.txt if the pages are backlinked either internally or externally.

For best results, use meta noindex to tell search engines they're not allowed to show the link in results, and meta nofollow to tell robots not to follow any links on the page.

Webmaster Tools Help: Using meta tags to block access to your site

You can also explicitly address goooglebot in the meta tag, as opposed to just robots. If you use both a robots.txt and meta robots tags and there are conflicting directives,  googlebot will follow the most restrictive one.

I'd consider custom landing pages with vanity URL's (rather than parameters) for each ad.  Say you are the ABC company and you're running Ads in Esquire and GQ magazine.

URL for the GQ ad could be:  www.abc.com/GQ

URL for the Esquire ad could be:  www.abc.com/Esquire

Bonus points, for having unique content on each landing page optimized for that publications readership.  If you absolutely can't do unqiue content, then don't create duplicate content, have 301 redirect both pages to your generic landing page.

If your publishing engine won't let you create vanity URL's, then you could pass the URL's with the ugly parameters through a URL shortner to get a very short URL.  Many readers might appreciate fewer keystrokes to type, but obviously no readers will remember the URL, so you'll only get traffic that actively has the ad in front of the PC.

You might also consider adding QR codes in your print ads to ease readers getting to your pages and traffic attribution.

If it's an ad that people are likey to see what they are out and about... maybe a pub they read at the nail salon, doctors office, beach, etc.. rather than in their office/home you defiantely want to think about making all your landing pages mobile optmized.  Perhaps even use a SMS shortcode as a response to the ad.  That will make it easy on your readers, and give you excellent attribution capabilities.

Goodluck!

A cross-domain canonical will help with Google.  (make sure the pages truely are duplicate or very close), however, I haven't found any confirmation yet that Bing supports Cross Domain Canonical.

If the other sites don't need to rank at all, you could also consider no-roboting the job pages on the other sites, so that your only Site A's job listings get indexed.

I'd recommend Aaron Wall's glossary at SEOBook.com