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Thank you both! Now when is the damn Penguin update coming?!?! hahaha I wish we could have an answer.

So glad to be of help, Eduardo.

The only way I could imagine this would hurt the home page is if the site structure is terrible enough that its Panda penalty is extremely severe. I can't think of a place where I've seen this "in the wild" though so that's entirely theoretical.

Directly no...but indirectly yes. The links going to your site will boost your domain authority. While it will not boost your homepages page authority, it will boost the domain authority which can help with your ranks

I agree with Keri...there are a ton of factors that all contribute to ranking for any given term.  It's possible to rank well based simply on a few of them, if it's not super-competitive space.

Thank you guys for your answers! You just confirmed what I always had in mind. Honestly, his budget is VERY low for what he wants and his expectations of what SEO can do are completely out of proportion (he believes SEO could put his homepage on the first page in a couple months). I guess I will continue to push the idea of different landing pages per brand, or ultimately, be brutally honest and make it clear that his expectations don't match his budget and he'll never get the results he wants without a huge investment. Thanks again!