Which address to use

Hello,
First time poster who is pretty new to all this SEO stuff and hoping someone could give me some help?
I am wanting to start a link building strategy with a web client I have. To avoid you thinking I’m spamming with links let call the client testclient.
Lets say they are a property company and have a main web site and then 2 smaller satellite sites for each development.
for example; testclient.co.uk for the parent company and for each development testclient.co.uk/devone - and - testclient.co.uk/devtwo
They also have the full domain devone.co.uk and devtwo.co.uk set up to just forward to testclient.co.uk/devone etc...
So my question is as the client wants to treat the 2 satellite sites and the parent companies site separately for marketing am I better of focusing on the: testclient.co.uk/devone or devone.co.uk for link building and submitting to directories etc… and will directories look on this as spamming as they are all based on the same subdomain?
Hope this makes sense and any help is greatly appreciated.
Steve

anybody have an opinion on this? am i explaining myself okay or does anyone one understand what im going on about?
I guess in its most basic terms im wondering if promoting an address that 'forwards' to a section of whole site is better or worse than just using the subdomain and its directory ie... devone.co.uk (this address forwarding to testco.co.uk/devone) -- or -- promoting testco.co.uk/devone directly

im guessing nobody has any clue on my question? please!

IMO It is much easier to rank 1 site then many small sites. You would probaly be bedtter just using either using directories or sub domains ie testclient.co.uk/devone testclient.co.uk/devtwo etc or devone.testclient.co.uk devtwo.testclient.co.uk than using different domains. Concentrating your efforts on one domain will get you far greater returns in most cases than splitting your efforts between many...

Good luck

many thanks for your input! what do think about submitting to directories? if i submit for each section will they assume im spamming?

Directories are a usefull seotool but there usefullness is limited. Just submit your parent domain to directories. Try to get other links to the internal pages. So yes to your question submiting multiple pages for the same site is something directories think of as SPAM and is not advisable. Remember directory links will not help you win even a moderatley competative search phrase very much. You need to think of how to get relevant quality links. This is a good article to spur some ideas http://seonoobs.com/104-ways-to-get-backlinks-mega-backlink-guide/

best of luck