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Thanks, it's a little complicated in this case because some key competitors are able to use the same brand name.

I'm trying to rank for brand-name related keywords for a website. Most of the titles on the site include the page topic followed by the brand-name separated by bars or dashes (ex: title= widget | My Brand). Is this creating cannibalization for the brand-related terms? I was wondering if it was better to leave the brand out of the title all together except on a dedicated page.  However, due to the nature of the business I work for there are multiple recognized iterations of the name including acronyms and long-form and short-form versions and creating content for each targeted iteration seems superfluous.

Right now, rel="author" is only useful with intra-domain URLs. It does not "count" if you are linking to other domains.

BUT...

In the future it might, so doing this could either give you a nice head start, or not. Time will tell.