How to properly leverage hundreds of domains for SEO - NEED ADVICE

[AdamS]

Hello,

My company has a long list of domain names that we are currently redirecting to our main site. Since these redirects are at the server level, search engines are not indexing these domains. I'd like to leverage these domains to generate more SEO traffic, and would love to get your advice on how best to do this. At the core of this, we will have to create 'micro sites' (I'm assuming) so that search engines recognize it as a unique page. Here are some questions I have:

Should we host internally or with a 3rd party?
Can we use dynamic generated copy (ie name of the domain in the copy) or should we go static?
Any suggestions on the landing page focus? We will test (of course) but wanted to get some ideas up front.

Any other advice I should know?

Thanks!

[Jill Whalen]

You're actually doing it the smartest way right now. What you're looking for advice on is how to spam the engines, and it's probably not a great idea, imo.

[AdamS]

Thanks Jill. I just read about the 301 redirect, and I dont think we are using this to redirect. Is the 301 the way to go?

[Marcia]

Permanent redirect 301 to the main domain using mod_rewrite in your .htaccess file.

If you ever decide to develop one or two as tightly-niched and targeted micro-sites, make sure to separate them, c-class and all, with independent IBLs, and create meaningful, relevant, original content that has value for the users that's geared for the specific niche market you're targeting.