BUILDING WEB2.0 LINKWHEELS: - Some interesting questions!

Your questioning far too much. It's all about getting link juice to your site in a way that looks natural. So whether links are pointing to the home pages or inner pages. It really doesn't matter at all. Just set them up in a random structure all pointing downwards.

As for contextual or blogroll.... How about using both. I'd also recommend linking out to the occasional authority site. Such as wikipedia or youtube. It will look more natural to google, and you won't lose all that much link juice.

As for the how many articles.... Again, it really doesn't matter. If you want to avoid a footprint, you can randomize this a bit. Create some properties with a page of content. Others with 10. Some marketers recommend that web 2.0 properties have at least three posts. But I don't necessarily agree. My testing has shown that single page web 2.0 properties can pass along good juice.

As for the number of keywords.... It really doesn't matter about the keywords in your link wheel. It's far more about the keywords of your money site. Use the anchor text on your 1st tier that's most suitable for the keywords you want to rank for.

As for the domain name.... This again, really doesn't matter that much. You will get a slight relevance boost for having the keyword in the domain name. So if you're trying to rank for "blue widgets," then you will have an advantage if "blue widgets" is in your domain. But that's only for ranking a site. You shouldn't really care about whether your web 2.0 sites rank. It's more about the link juice that they pass to your main site. And the domain name has no impact on the amount of link juice passed along.

Thanks for reply!
Would anyone know if constantly updating the Web2.0 properties with fresh content will help?

It will definitely help, as long as it not spun content and "solves the problem" you are writing about.

If I had 5 articles on each Spoke of the linkwheel.. do all 5 articles need to link to 2 locations within the wheel?