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Just to clarify, I want to direct the link juice to: www.mydomain.com from app.mydomain.com.  As these high profile websites will be linking to the app.

My idea was to have them link to a page on the www.mydomain.com/app that I would effectively redirect back to app.mydomain.com.

But if I use a 301, the 301 will direct link juice back toward the sub domain (app.mydomain.com).

So my question is ... will the 302 keep the juice at the www version (not pass the juice)

Hopefully this makes sense.  The other option is to simply let them link to the app. and add a canonical tag that points the juice back to the www version.

I am trying to figure out the best way to garner the most amount of link value.

We have an app that lives on a sub-domain ... For the purposes of this question, let's call it app.mydomain.com.  We provide a service with this app that requires clients (with very high ranking websites) to link into app located on the sub-domain.

Would I garner more authority if had the high ranking client website link into a url that wasn't a sub-domain and redirect it using a 302?

For example:  What if I created a 302 that was www.mydomain.com/app and have it redirected to the sub-domain version of app.mydomain.com?

Additionally am I correct to assume that a 301 would merely pass that value to the sub domain and NOT provide much value to the root?

No PPC or email, I have been pushing straight organic with a lot of 301 work.

Just real weird to see a jump like this in direct traffic that mimics the referral and organic trends.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks for the reply.  I get what you are saying, but there is something that just isn't quite right about the answer in the article.  A 301 happens on the server side, so google wouldn't know about it.  Additionally, no page (let alone tracking code) exists for the old urls that now have redirects.  I would think that in order to qualify it as a referrer, google would have to know where the traffic was referred from ... no?  I think I would feel better if the article you referenced actually stated 301 instead of a redirect (possibly client-side) that COULD be tracked by google.

Here is something I found where there are conflicting answers to the same question I have here, maybe some others here on SEOMoz can weigh in on this as well.

Does anyone have any insight on exactly how on-site 301s are reported in Google Analytics?  My direct traffic seems to climb at the same rate as my organic with absolutely no off-line promotion.  I have a suspicion that the 301s that I have built to re-coupe traffic being sent to old pages are being reported as direct.  Any validity to this?

Nope didn't work.  Not sure what that feature actually does now.  Once I download the CVS, it was possible to use excel to sort by the url that included the subdir.  I know that is not what you are looking for, but it may help until someone else that knows chimes in.

I am not 100% sure, but it looks like on the advanced tab you can download a CSV that will return links to a sub folder.  In section 2 of the tab there is an option for: "Any page in this subfolder".

I entered a www.seomoz.org/users to run the test.  I will report back once the report is done.

Whiteboard Friday Link:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/title-tags-is-70-characters-the-best-practice-whiteboard-friday

There is a good whiteboard Friday that deal with this question.  Arguably, anything after 70 character gets ignored, so it isn't helping anyway.  Of course we know nothing for sure.  I say test a few and see how they do.

I know the old standard for title tag optimization is to use your brand name in the title for a multitude of reasons, all of which are indisputable  The most important reason being any strength and awareness can aid in click-thru.  But does this hold true for exact match domains?  Considering the way a search result is displayed, any awareness and strength derived from using the brand in the title is automatically included in the search result of an exact match domain without having to sacrifice valuable characters in the title.  The organic value (or value beyond simply seeing the brand displayed and nothing else) can't have that much of an impact, can it?

For Example, given the result attached, is it worth it to repeat dog.com in the title if it is already showing in the result?

dog.png

When link building, try to create an even and natural distribution of anchor texts.  Supplement your distribution strategy with anchors that use you domain name and brand as these types of links are most commonly allowed by webmasters and appear natural.