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Hi Brian, Unless you are able to share the identity of the website, it's going to be shooting in the dark as to what might be going on. You've categorized this as 'local'. Could you be targeting keywords that don't actually relate to your client's geographic location? For example, a business outside city limits trying to rank for a geo+keyword term inside the city. Everything cool with Google Search Console? No warnings? How competitive is the market/keyword phrase you are targeting?

You're welcome, Brian, and I hope you'll be able to find a consultant who can offer a second opinion. Sounds like you are trying to save your client a big headache!

Not a problem Brian. I'm interested to see what sort of impact these changes make!

awesome, awesome answer here man. thanks for taking the time to respond. I went in and setup WMT for the old sites and things are looking a little bit better now.

Do Google penalties EVER pass through a 301? Yes. 301 redirects make sure end users, search bots and link equity are passed to the new page. It is true though that not all link equity is passed with a 301, however good or bad it is passed. I have found this out with my own testing with clients as well as a few post i found on SEO round table and Google groups. Does anyone have any clue why my links shot up so quickly and then dropped? Where you tracking your external links use OSE? If so they crawl a different amount of domains and URLs each time they update their index so chances are you are looking at different data sets each time.

Thanks Colin - very good feedback. I was leaning that direction but you're advice pushed me over the edge. I agree, I think all the 'off site signals' are what's got my non geo home page ranking for Dallas.

Well Google prefers relevant page-by-page level redirects....  Do what Google wants and you will be rewarded. Your client is investing in SEO so he/she should understand that the work you're doing, no matter how costly, is an investment in his or her business. Sometimes the 'right' decision isn't always the most cost-effective, but it's still the right thing to do.

1. I prefer you, to use subdomains. 1.1 Than every subdomains, connect with an local hosting provider. for example, for a New York, use a nyc hosting provider, with an ip located on new york 1.2 Earn local backlinks, from local directories,events, businesses, another sources etc. Stay away from "Duplicate Content  or ON-PAGE Factors". I think, this is the best solution. And try to use only 2-3 characters of each franchis eand not completely name. Because you can place the name of franchise on the title, example: Brandname Dallas. Hope it works.

No one has mentioned this, but have you thought about making all your ad groups geo-modified? My guess is this client is targeting a specific location or several specific locations. Like "air conditioning repair miami" and then also tailor your landing pages to target that location too.