A good use of dormant domains?

[thefarang]

I'll admit right off the bat that SEO isn't my specialty. I know just enough to be dangerous. :-)

So, before I embarked on this I wanted to get some input. I have a ton of domains (gambling and non-gambling related) I've purchased over the years that seemed like a good idea at the time but for whatever reason I never did anything with them. So they're just sitting around and I don't necessarily want to auction them off for $50 or $100 because I may get around to doing something with them someday but it feels like a waste to just have them pointing to a parked type page.

So, I was thinking, I do have a project I need to build links for. Can I just set up websites for all of those dormant domains, slap some unique content on each one and link back to the site I'm trying to boost (with no interlinking of the other sites)? And by unique I do mean a real webpage with real information. Not some gibberish or simply changing the wording around a little bit. They would all be on the same or similar topic but each would be unique.

I was thinking I could get them indexed by having one master site that links to them all with a title like "Sites that I own" or "Sites offered for sale" and then posting a link to that site from one of my high ranking sites.

Is Google going to slap me for something like that or is it legit? And if legit, how likely is it to work in helping my SERPS or PR? Is there a limit on when it becomes egregious? Like if I do this 10 times it's likely to pass below the radar but if I do 1000 it'll get Google's attention? Would it make a difference if they were all on one IP and the site on another unique IP?

I know that they'll all have low PR individually so they won't be sending much juice but I'm targeting some niche keywords so hopefully Google will like the content on each one and give my target site some love.

[MJ]

There really isn't a solid answer to your question except the obvious one:

You can obviously built a network of sites to link to yourself. Yes, it will help your serps if done properly. Yes, you probably should do it (why not just make them decent sites anyways if you have them?), and yes you do run a risk of a penalty although I think it would speculative for anyone to claim what might trigger the penalty.

You could also park them somewhere, but thats less ideal than what you are talking about with unique content.

[Gaben86]

Same DNS and IP record also matter. If you have all the sites in the same IP you won't get any reasonable results.

[MJ]

Same DNS and IP record also matter. If you have all the sites in the same IP you won't get any reasonable results.

I think your opinion on that is over rated, and possibly out dated.

[thefarang]

Excellent feedback MJ. Like I said, I know enough to be dangerous which means I suspected a lot of what you said but wasn't quite sure what real-world experience might suggest.

You asked why I don't just develop the other domains into sites. I might do that at some point but it's the old not having enough time sort of thing. Easy to write up a one-page landing page than develop an entire site which is why I was thinking this might be the route to explore until I get around to creating the sites.

There really isn't a solid answer to your question except the obvious one:

You can obviously built a network of sites to link to yourself. Yes, it will help your serps if done properly. Yes, you probably should do it (why not just make them decent sites anyways if you have them?), and yes you do run a risk of a penalty although I think it would speculative for anyone to claim what might trigger the penalty.

You could also park them somewhere, but thats less ideal than what you are talking about with unique content.

[Gaben86]

I think your opinion on that is over rated, and possibly out dated.

Why you think that in the time when Google are getting smarter and smarter?

[MJ]

You just said it yourself, Google is smart enough to figure out what you own most likely.

[kdollar]

I think making mini sites (for now) with quality information and linking between them where it makes sense shouldn't penalize you.

On the other hand if you try to make a bunch of sites and link to one big site it could look unnatural as there is a definite pattern and may not help you in the end.

[thefarang]

Thanks everyone for the feedback.