Welcome to the Q&A Forum

We are a company with one product customized for different vertical markets. Our sites are each setup on their own unique domains:
contactatonce.com (Brand)
autodealerchat.com (Auto Vertical)
apartmentchat.com (Apartment Vertical)
chatforrealestate.com (Real Estate Vertical)

We currently rank well on the respective keyword niches including:
 - auto dealer chat (exact match), automotive chat, dealer chat
 - apartment chat (exact match), property chat, multifamilly chat
 - chat for real estate (exact match), real estate chat

To simplify the user experience we are considering moving to a single domain and subdomain structure:

contactatonce.com
auto.contactatonce.com
apartment.contactatonce.com
realestate.contactatonce.com

QUESTIONS:
1. Considering current Google ranking strategies, do we stand to lose keyword related traffic by making this switch?
2. Are there specific examples you can point to where an individual domain and subdomains each ranked high on Google across a variety of different niches? (I'm not talking about Wikipedia, Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress, Yahoo Answers, etc. which are in their own class, but a small to mid size brand).

Thank you,
Aaron

Our site, www.autodealerchat.com got hit hard by Google's recent Penguin update (also known as the over-optimization update). For our main set of keywords including:

• auto dealer chat
• dealer chat
• car dealer chat
• automotive chat

We lost placement across the board most notably on automotive chat where we were third and are today non-existent. If you look at our site, we were following former best practices and SEOMoz recommendations. If you look at our backlinks, we were playing the white hat game like everyone else. SEOMoz tools indicated that we were tops in terms of Domain Authority, etc. according to the old rules. Everything changed on April 25th.

Going forward, what are some of the things that we can do to regain some of that lost ground?

Thanks in advance for the insights.

To start...

TWITTER
You can use a tool like SocialBro to analyze your twitter followers. There you want more relevant followers and industry influencers to follow you.  From there you can begin sending targeted tweets incorporating the @ accounts of your key influencers. Try to follow their posts and blogs and have relevant discussions with them including keyword #hashtags. #FF Fan Friday shout outs are great ways to build good will.

GOOGLE+
Build your circles and add great content worthy of +1's and shares

LINKEDIN
Setup a company page and join relevant groups. Then use your posts to target messages that group members and your followers find valuable.

Aaron