SEO Redirect

[mkessler]

If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?

[JaneCopland]

As the others have said, redirecting domains with no backlinks (and even domains with just a few backlinks) will likely not be useful at all in terms of making the destination website rank better.

I dealt with a client a few years ago who literally had thousands of parked domains, all with names somewhat related to their industry (for example, if they were in the sports betting industry, they owned thousands of domains like expertfootballbets.net). We completed a backlink crawl for each of these domains and threw out those with no links or too few links, first checking that there were none with particularly catchy names in the list.

Then, we filtered through to find those that actually had good or passable links and decent names. The remaining list was pretty short. We sought (with budget) to build actual sites on those domains. They were basically affiliate sites for want of a better description: they were not "microsites" in that they didn't take away from the business of the main domain and the content wouldn't have been better off on the main site. From the many thousands we started with, I think our build list was about 30 sites, which was appropriate for the content and industry.

I would imagine that most parked domain lists would end up with far fewer than 30 workable websites.

Obvious misspellings or old company names should be redirected, but for usability purposes.

It's much more work, but actually using the domains is much more useful in the long run, if that's possible, than just redirecting. As altecdesign says above, you're better off reinvesting the hosting / registration elsewhere for domains that have no other noticeable value.

[altecdesign]

I just want to make sure I fully understand the question, so you have several hundred domain names all of which just have a generic Godaddy (or registrar) parked page?  If that is the case 1.) that is confusing why you would have so many domain names! and 2.) It sounds like your company is possibly trying to re-sell the domain names so I would think at a minimum you would want to create a custom parked page that had your contact info and an easy way someone could get in touch with you about bidding on the domain.

If you do really just have several hundred domain names your not currently using redirecting them back to your site will have next to no "SEO" value, unless as Richard Mentioned some of them have backlinks.  If non of them have backlinks then redirecting them all to your main page is essentially the same as going: 0 + 0 = 0.  If I were you I would keep and redirect possibly a few domains that have close mis-spellings of your main website.  Then I would tell your boss that you didn't want to renew the remaining 100+ "useless" domains, take that money saved and better invest it somewhere else (a Pro Moz membership, attend a conference ect...)

[TheeDigital]

If they don't have links built to them, I don't see any benefit in redirects unless some are typical spelling errors for instance.  You might be better off picking a few and making specific product microsites that link back to the homepage.