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Hi sichristie, I find your question confusing, probably because it's a complex scenario you're trying to describe. If I understand it correctly, I agree scenario 1 would be better for SEO because it's all about reputation. If you're looking for an explanation that might resonate with lay people, I'd try an analogy that builds upon the rationale you've described above. Here's an example of what I mean. Say to your audience, "Assume you are lost and thirsty in a desert when you come upon a set of three paths pointing in different directions. All three have a sign posted with an arrow saying "this way to fresh water". One of the paths looks like it's been there a long time. It's deep and well worn. Up ahead you can see others have taken this path because there are small items like candy wrappers and cigarette butts shed along-side the path. The other two paths are faint and debris free. You're barely able to make them out in the sand. It looks like their signs have been planted there recently, maybe even moved a few times." Which path would you take?

When you finally get your urls sorted out, google will sort it out also. in the mean time you may loose ranking, but in the end all will be sorted.

On the balance of your answers it sounds like a positive thing. The site is highly reputable and even though on a another c-domain (which is a great thing) is a 'friend' of ours. I guess the quantity of links is safe.

I wish you the best of outcomes!

Wow! Thanks Ryan. I'm sure it won't surprise you to know that I'm always reading eagerly when I see you respond to a question as well.

They are not treated as the same. In fact, use of sub-domains is one way to combat Panda by shifting low value content off the main site. http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2011/07/wsj-wtf-google-panda-subdomains.htm

Best answer. But at a granular product line level, Amazon use 'product details' for all their products. Might try replicating each product title with each alt tag on one category - see how it goes.

'Post response' deleted my answer. I'll try and remember what I said! I think Rand's WBF was focusing largely on new websites with link portfolios that consisted almost entirely of 1000s of 'dogdy links'. Provided that your website is aged (and it sounds like it definitely is) and that you have a mix of natural and 'artificial' links then you have nothing to worry about. While I don't know, I would imagine that Google takes far more kindly to image links than text links; simply because text links have much more weight and therefore more power to manipulate. Anyway, you have a totally legitimate link building strategy and I would suggest that even if your site was brand new there wouldn't be an issue.