I have my designer building a new website for our company right now. Should I wait two weeks until the site is finished to start building links and add directories or can I start doing it now? Any other tips on ways to optimize a new website?
There a few things can do like make a landing page with proper title attribute etc. and send up an xml sitemap to get it indexed. I do this fairly regularly. Directory submissions typically don't do anything except a few paid ones so that is a waste of time across the board. You don't really want to do anything that gets reviewed as most sites, directories, etc will not post links to "under construction" related matters. Sig. links to get it indexed or anything like that is fine though. hope that helps, Nigel
The way I set up SEO on the last site I worked on was to organize my SEO efforts to go live at the same time as the site: social networks, keywords, articles, sitemap, etc. I feel like if you create a large presence very quickly, you can give the impression to search engines and visitors that your site is useful. Visitors will undoubtedly hold you to a high standard if you begin with a high standard, which is beneficial to you in the long run anyway.
When we re-launched a site with a new URL structure, we had a list of key places to go an update our information. You could do something similar for your new site. I used a spreadsheet to keep track of all directories, partners, affiliates, and other outlets where we would need to obtain/modify links. I wrote up the change requests and had them ready to go so that the day we launched we could quickly update links. A similar approach could help with a new site. I would not start getting links to a "coming soon" page or something similar. Visitors will likely not return. Also consider using a press release via PRWeb when you launch your site. That's a quick and easy way to get some attention for your new site, including backlinks you can embed in your release.
Yes i would suggest you to wait.As soon as the sites gets to its position you may soon start its optimization, initially followed by on page optimization
It is advisable to wait; you wouldn't want to risk being penalized by Google. However, there is nothing wrong with a few backlinks and social bookmarks here and there. After all, these will only be indexed by the time your site is done anyway.
I think now. You can never start early enough.. it's not there's a penalty if you do or you don't. Either way, the algorithm is going to rank you the same depending on your grade/value.