Is linking 1500 websites to one main site bad?

[Jimmysunglasses]

Hi. I compete in a very competitive keyword market. My SEO person is very against cross linking websites, but for some reason I can't compete with the people that are doing this tactic.

Our current site has unique content on over 1000 pages... And there's the obvious internal linking going on in our site. We have maybe 300 external random links that people have put up over the years (None paid) But we can't get our internal keyword pages to rank against our competition that has generic spammy looking pages with tons of links going to them from other sites they own.

Here's my big question. Over the last two years I've been accumulating almost 2000 domains that are the exact keywords i'm trying to rank for. Got almost all the State+keyword.com, state+keyword.net, .org, .biz, .us, and recently, .co then got the state-keyword all endings...

I own all these domains under a different legal name. (An actual legally filed Corporation) and the whois is under this company for all these other domains, while my main site is under it's own legal name for whois.

I don't want to risk linking all these sites to my main site, so what i'm about to do is launch a new generic BIG site, and then write real quick landing pages on every one of the 2000 domains with unique content (Not a ton of it though), unique title, meta tags, keywords etc... but put a link to the new main site, or deep link into the internal pages of the new big site.

Ultimately the new main site will basically be re-selling the same thing as my current main site, just under a different URL... Wondering if there might be some consequences to this... If it's a good idea... you know. the whole thing...

Our current main site does really good on some search terms, and gets a lot of traffic every day, but just can't get around 175 of my pages to rank. Current main site is a PR4 and it seems like if i linked 2000 domains that had unique content to it, it would give it a boost, but I can't afford to have it look like i'm doing something shady or trying to trick google, so maybe i try this experiment on a new main site?

Look forward to everyones thoughts.

[SEOLair]

There is a thread about this strategy thats getting more traction

[webmasterworld.com ]

I would say IF you are going to deploy a strategy like that, do it gradually. A large number of links to the site all of sudden with no significant increase in content will cause some unwanted attention.

[idolw]

There is nothing wrong about the other sites linking to the main one as long as there is some use for the user.
For example:
your main site is a transactional website - takes orders and sells widgets.
your other sites may have content about the niche and link to the transactional site for purchasing.

The key, I think, is to make it like a human being, not like an idiot. A link here or there will help but 10000 links on each site pointing at the transactional site with one anchor text might not.

I would try with one - five sites first and move forward.

[mrguy]

I would slap up the links all at once and go for it.

People will tell you not to do it because they know it works and is effective and they don't want the secret getting out.

No guts not glory as they say!

[Jimmysunglasses]

Thanks for the other link SEOLair.

All 2000 domains would actually have benefitial information on them. I don't want to develope 2000 full-fledged sites, but put pure information (Actual helpful information) on the home page and have one link at the bottom of the page to the main site where they could buy.

I think my bigger question may be whether it's too riskly to link them to the current main site, and just start a separate main transactional site to link the domains too... Or if I'm over-worrying about the whole thing, and just gradually start linking them all to the current main site.