Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I took a look at bronxpad.com in opensiteexloreer.org.

If this is the website you are referring to, when you implement these 301 redirects make sure you also redirect bronxpad.com/index.html and www.bronxpad.com/index.html to www.bronxpad.com, for the same reason as the non-www to the www.

These links do not count as 1,000 links from 1,000 seperate website, since Google does recognize linking root domains.

The most important link to your website would be from the page with the highest page authority, which is almost always the home page.

I am not 100% sure, but I remember reading about a recent Google algorithm update that targets multiple links from one domain. Web design firms were affected, since they typcally sign the footer, which creates a link on every page of the website.

The subdomain, works similar to a subpage. Google will notice the root dominan, which is abc.edu.

I do not think you are at risk of a penalty or anything like that, but if you want to continue to increase your rankings, once you get a link from a domain, I would focus my efforts on getting another link from a separate root domain, instead of a link from a subpage or subdomain from the same root domain.

Here is a recent article in published in Search Engine Journal about subdomains and subpages, as they relate to SEO:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/

It looks like Cody is right, Google does recognize them has seperate, but a recent tweak in Google's algorithim, now cause them to be recognized as being associated with each other.

I would think that this means a link from a subdoamin and a root domain would not be equal to two links from two different root domains.

Cody, thanks for you insight, and I would love to hear what you think?

Cody, I would like to hear your opinion, but in Kristian's case, I would not think removing these site wide links would be a good idea, unless the links are spammy. Especially if the website has a good reason to be there (ex: it is a good resource, it is a sponsor, it si the parent company, etc.). As long as not all of the links in Kristian's backlink profile are site wide, I wouldn't link the website is at risk of a penalty. Also, I would not think removing a site wide link on an .edu site would be a good idea, just becuase all of the referral traffic potential.

Like I said, the site wide penalty seemed more geared to a web designer or hosting company that only have site wide links in their profile.

Cody, what do you think?

It looks like you have laid out all of the positives and negatives very well. You seem to have a good understanding of SEO and of what each plan requires.

A few years ago, the several website model for one business was a widely used SEO tactic, but in my opinion it is not as strong as it used to be. Since exact match domains are not as effective any more and link quality is so important, I would recommend one website.

Also, the search terms you want to show up for are most likely competitve. You can not just build a website with good title tags and header tags and expect to show up. You will need great links for each website.

My advice would be to build one website, but create a separate link building plan for each department. When you build a link for a certain department link to that department's subpage. This will build your domain authority while also giving your website more value because of the deep inbound links.

Also, in my opinion, you will build a stronger brand with one website.

Thanks for checking this out Francisco. Per your suggestion and after a little research, we actually went through today and removed our signature from all of the websites we manage. It is a tough pill to swallow since it seems like almost every design firm does this, but we want to do it right. And you are 100% correct, the footer link to the design firm's website is not best for SEO or the client, which is always our first priority.

Thank you again for your response.