White hat SEO is actually pretty simple. Your site needs to have content that the people search will find interesting. To ensure your content has interesting content, here are two elements you need to have (among others):
1. keyword targeting - you need to be targeting high traffic keywords that are relevant to your pages. Google webmaster tools will show you the ctr of your site in the search results. If you have a low CTR, you're not going to rank well so you may have to better target your keywords or work on your meta titles / meta descriptions for higher ctr.
2. Bounce rate / pages per visit. If you have a high bounce rate and/or low average number of pages viewed per session, Google will think you have sucky content. Sucky content doesn't get ranked well in the search.
It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 1000 domains redirected and I recommend against starting fresh. If you're really serious about achieving your target, I think you should hire an SEO consultant like me
