Landing Pages on main site or on separate domains?

[GDesigns]

This post is deleted!

[scanlin]

Almost everything I've read says to do it in subdirectories off the main domain (your strategy 1). You get domain age on your side, as you mention, plus any link juice that may flow to your landing pages from wherever you promote them. Your strategy 2 could be seen as a link farm (many small sites who only exist to promote another site).

[CPU]

Any links gained to the sites in strategy 2 will be shared and only benefit those sites

Any links gained in strategy 1 will benefit the whole domain.

A brand new site can take a while to gain decent rankings although it may have the advantage of a keyword matched domain name.

Hope this helps.