How fast do you release a new site?

I've read a couple articles recently that advocated waiting to promote a site until it is complete (or at least pretty sizable).

I've always tended to make a site available as soon as it doesn't look like it's under construction any more even if there are only a few pages. I don't really do much in the way of promotion or anything until I feel site is ready but I always thought it was better to have a few pages up there in the early days so the site could start filtering into the search engine's. In fact, I thought in some ways the gradual addition of more pages would be a good thing as each time the spiders returned there was something new on the site.

I know nothing of any depth so if I'm way off base I'd really appreciate it if someone would explain the logic behind waiting. Some people even advise waiting until after they have achieved Google PageRank.

Thanks,
Deanna

 

I'm not the most experienced, but most people seam to agree that Google's algorithm also judges the age of your inbound links. With this is mind, you need links as soon as you can get them.

Of course, the best way to get links is to have an amazing site. Then again, you'll never get these links until others actually know about your site.

It seams reasonable to me to slap up 5-10 articles, make the site look professional, make sure all the links work, and then go for it on the promotion end. The delay is significant from when you actually purchase your directory links to when you start seeing results.

Personally, I'd rather bust my tail writing articles and creating valuable content while Google's time limits are wearing off, but I could be wrong.

Brandon

 

Your site should ALWAYS, let me repeat ALWAYS be completed or at least reflect that it's completed prior to any advertising or promoting is concerned especially in a very competitive market. You need to stand out above and beyond your competitors.

The best way to handle this is to do it in phases. I would never have a under construction page. Some areas may require long development cycles. While it's great to let consumer know in advanced that it's coming you may want to create a "notify me when it's available" feature instead of a under construction page. People will not come back if it's under construction because they won't remember to come back. If they can't find what they are looking for, they will go somewhere else.

Have the consumer in mind, not google, backlinks, etc. What's the point of having traffic if there is nothing for them to see or buy.

 

As soon as the main page looks descent, I throw it up and start getting directory backlinks. Even if it's gonna be months before I can do anything with the site, like content building, I at least want it out of the sandbox once I decide to get serious with it. No broken links or anything, and I do have some content on the page. But, like I said, with the whole sandbox thing, better to go ahead and get the site up, get some links, and get a jumpstart on the sandbox.

 

I would launch a site when I think my site wouldn't waste my visitors time.

I only launch a site with enough content (normally at least 30 pages). However my recent trend has been to really work on it for 1 month and launch it viewer-ready and keep on adding new content on daily basis.

I want my site to be bookmarked and deemed worthy to be visited again. It's not easy and definately slower. But that's how i play the game.

 

Thanks for the input it has helped clarify things for me a bit.

 

Using a similar, but different litmus test, I'm like iskander: I launch when I feel there's enough content to intrigue a visitor and not waste their time. Although, I generally don't wait until a magic number like 30; actually, it's usually way less, like 5-10 and then I'm building and launching on the fly.

Once I ensure there's no broken links and there's enough pages for bots to "chew" on, I go ahead and point a few site links to it for it to get indexed by various bots. Then, I continue to launch new pages on a continual basis to incrementally show new, fresh content to encourage the bots to return and crawl deeper throughout the site.

That's just me - no real rationale beyond the stated.

 

Submit to SEs as soon as you have the first page. SE bots visit sites often if they find new content everytime they visit. You are unlikely to get traffic from SEs for a few weeks but submitting earlier means your site is fully indexed as soon as it is ready with the content.

On the other hand its better to have useful content (atleast 15 pages) before you submit to directories or start marketing your site. "First impression is the last impression" . If a first time visitor finds that there is not much on your site, he is unlikely to visit it again.

 

Anyone have a rule of thumb for how often (and/or how many) you should add pages -- to a new or developed site. I don't have time for daily updates on all my sites (a few get them) but am wondering if stopping by once a month to check things over and add new stuff is good enough?

 

Even if you time have time to do full additions, simply stopping by your site and changing up titles, alt-text descriptions, etc. will show modifications to the bots and encourage them to come back IMO. As far as adding new pages, I try to add a few month, though that isn't always possible - so I supplement by doing some "drive-by" modications as listed above and it seems to help.

 

once the initial site comes out, i will start promoting the site while continue working on it.

 

There are definitely couple of thing that need close attention when discussing this type of promotion.

First of all, if it is brand new domain, I suggest putting "info" page with "notify me..." (as someone already suggested) with some sort of neat business card, even if it goes down to one-page site. Some sort of rough estimate on official launch is recommended, of course. This is mainly for sandbox purposes - the sooner it goes down, sooner will come up Another reason for this is gettint attention of targeted audience. If you allow them to subscribe to your newsletter in early development stage you'll save great deal of time for marketing later on. It goes without saying that you'll need to actually have some valuable information to feed them with during this period.

Next step depends great deal on site's complexity. If it is quite robust, you can deploy site in portions/sections as soon as you finish content building for that section. Make sure to provide backlinks in timely manner, one of huge mistakes people make is deploy a complete website, and then do linking campaigns all of a sudden. If Google finds you get 300 links in one day (or even one week), it won't do you much good, as if you stretch 300 links in one month period.