i have about 20 websites all calling the same content. We are not using 301 redirects for the alternate domains. Basically all of those domain names point to the same website/IP address. we could probably set it up so that each domain had it's own corresponding site using host headers (though they would all still share the same IP address), then set up 301 redirects for each 19 of the sites to all point to the 20th site. would that be best?
If all 20 sites have exactly the same content (sounds like what you've said), then 19 of them are probably getting a duplicate content penalty in Google?
yes, i agree. that is why i'm wondering what is the best way to fix this for search engine optimization?