Should we wait....or not?

[Online Business Video]

Hi all, here's a quick question for all you seo gurus out there.
We've got a new website (new domain) which is nearing completion, and we've love to get it 'out there' as soon as possible. However it's not finshed as there is minimal / nil content on a few of the pages (important ones!). I'm quite happy to place a 'content currently being updated' or some such message on these pages but...... is it better to wait till these pages are finished or not. Will the big G for instance, penalise us for having neglible content on certain pages at the outset -or am I over worrying?

Any advice / experiences would be welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Chunkford]

They wont penalise you for thin content they just wont give it much authority.

Get it seen by G and get it in their index I say and keep your site evolving. G will love you more for that.

 

[ITsoldUK]

Google won't but your potential new clients might (if they find you)

How many pages you talking about 3-4-5-1000

If it is a few pages, sit down, right a 150-200 word piece or add relevant info and publish.

Won't take you more than 3-4 hours.

Then you can evolve it and get the rewards from G.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION will send most visitors into the arms of your competitors IMHO.

 

[fisicx]

I'm quite happy to place a 'content currently being updated' or some such message on these pages but...... is it better to wait till these pages are finished or not.

This makes wonder how they are building the site. The content drives the site structure so you should have this ready to roll BEFORE they build the site. If you are using an off-the-shelf CMS then get the site published with the content/navigation in place while the developers fiddle and play with all the geeky bits and the designer does the layout/theme.

 

[DavidBHill]

Influencing Google can be very difficult or very easy depending on what you want to achieve. Ranking for "reduced height shower cubicles in Smethwick" is very easy - ranking for Business Telephone Systems which is what my company is trying to do is very difficult. The trick is to find a niche that is big enough to matter to you and small enough so that the world doesn't want to own it.

Against that -when you launch is not very important - it's what you launch that is the key (and then the other million or so factors). Trying to envision what utter indifference there will be to your site is a difficult (and humbling) exercise.

Good luck!

 

[JElder]

IT Sold is right - get it up ASAP, as long as it is not bad enough to deter anyone who finds it. You can always delay your promotional work, like social media or PR a bit, but at least get search engines finding it.

For non-critical pages, hide them from the navigation - they are better not being there than being there with no content. For the important pages try to get some content in place - you can always add more content, details and images later.

One caveat - you do not want to be changing URLs later, so ensure the site structure is finalised and unlikely to change.

 

[UKcentric]

I always launch the site with minimal content, but an article on the home page describing what the site will be doing. Then, start link building to it from anywhere I can.

Google likes domain longevity, and content growing at a sensible rate.

 

[mit74]

get your domain up immediately even if it's a HTML paragraph explaining the business and that the main site is coming soon. Make sure you have correct meta title,description and keywords so google can start indexing and categorising your business. Make sure you manually submit the website to google as it can take 2-4 weeks sometimes to index. Having something up is better than nothing.

 

[Online Business Video]

Hi all, many thanks for your replies, much appreciated. I think I'll put some brief filler content (maybe a couple of images too) on the pages which can buy us some time. But at least we can get it up and running sooner rather than later!
I get bogged down a bit worrying what the search engines will make of empty pages, but As ITsoldUK quite rightly suggested, end users won't like it much either! and that's the main thing for any website.

Not sure quite what you meant there Fisicx? I'm sure most customers go to a web designer and say I'd like 'this' please, go off and write some content - whilst the web chap gets on with the design?? (And I doubt web designers will turn down clients because they don't have their content ready) so I'm a bit confused by what you said....:|

 

[fisicx]

Not sure quite what you meant there Fisicx? I'm sure most customers go to a web designer and say I'd like 'this' please, go off and write some content - whilst the web chap gets on with the design?? (And I doubt web designers will turn down clients because they don't have their content ready) so I'm a bit confused by what you said....:|

If the designer gives you a mock up you will try to fit the content to the layout. This never works. But if you begin with the site structure, sort out which pages you want, how it will link together, if there is a payment portal, testimonials, galleries, order forms and so on then the designer/developer has got something to work with. But they need to be flexible enough that if you decide you need another 5 services listed in the navigation they can make the adjustments and move the nav from the top to the left or the right as necessary. You might also find that the contact/quote form converts better in a different position to that originally suggested.

What I'm trying to say is that the layout of the site really isn't important until later on in the project. And even then it will almost certainly have to be tweaked and adjusted once you go live.

So no, they won't turn you down but they shouldn't start with a layout, they should be having all sorts of meeting and discussions to find out about your, your services, the needs of your customers, how you intend to market the site and so on as all these will have an impact on the design. It's only then that they can begin to sketch out some ideas for the layout.

Never ever sign up for a layout and hope it will work. It never does.

 

[Online Business Video]

Hi Fisicx, ok, thanks, I take your point. Maybe I didn't make it clear in my initial post - everything has been structured already, i.e. page titles, layout, design elements. We've also done extensive keyword/ term research for each individual page. So as far as the onsite seo goes, it's already to go. There's a massive hole though in some pages where the bulk text content has to go! And that's down to me to find the time to do some quality content - and it was this part that concerned me when I asked if the site would not perform well due to thin content. It's a niche market in which I know an awful lot, so it's down to us to provide the meaty bits that will keep viewers engaged and impress Google! ...Just a case of getting round to it and doing it!
...having said that, this post took a few minutes to write - could have spent the time writing some decent site content!!!!

Cheers.

 

[Ali-v-8]

"First impressions" springs to mind.

Google caches a page and its empty, how you going to convince the spider to return.

 

[mit74]

"First impressions" springs to mind.

Google caches a page and its empty, how you going to convince the spider to return.

first impressions don't apply... better any impression than nothing as Google takes the age of the site into account which is the biggest problem for SEO on new domains. Obviously you won't leave a competely blank page but the spider ALWAYS returns as the site could have been temporarily down.

 

[ITsoldUK]

"First impressions" springs to mind.

Google caches a page and its empty, how you going to convince the spider to return.

Or more importantly.....a potential client

 

[fisicx]

It's a niche market in which I know an awful lot, so it's down to us to provide the meaty bits that will keep viewers engaged and impress Google! ...Just a case of getting round to it and doing it!

Launch the site with the content you do have but no links to the stuff you haven't written.

As you write the new content add the links to the site and google will love you long time.

 

[Online Business Video]

Thanks all again for the advice, but - now I am confused.:|
We're going to put some content on the pages to get going, but, some of you say that Google doesn't care if there's no content at all, 'best to get the site out there' etc and Google just won't take any notice and not rank the page - others say that if there's no content there in the first place, chances are that Google will never return! ...which was the jist of my original post. So who's right???

 

[fisicx]

Publish the content you do have. do not have links to empty pages or thing content pages.

As you add new content you add the links to the navigation. This will trigger google to visit the new pages. If you have an under-construction page then there is no incentive for google to revisit when you do publish as google won't know there is new content to index.

Just publish what you have got and only include those pages in the navigation.

 

[Online Business Video]

Hi fisicx, thanks for the feedback. I'll take that on board.

Cheers.

 

[Chunkford]

Google caches a page and its empty, how you going to convince the spider to return.

Become a full member here and add a link to your signature

 

[Ali-v-8]

SHhhhh - dont tell everyone - they will all be at it lol

Become a full member here and add a link to your signature

 

[aaronsmith2266]

Google only penalized on duplicate content... not on thin content... i think its only took 2-3 hours for writing content

 

[Ali-v-8]

From my experience - You launch your website (own) you tend to make do and tend to push thing to one side.
I did it with my website - I half finished it and launched it - then got way to busy with clients and kept writing content, but ended up doing other things.
Now I plan on relaunching a new website - More up to date - I kind of left my old website alone.

What i am trying to say is if you launch you might become complacent and forget to add the changes - I would complete it if i was you.

 

[ShortyMedia]

Hi all, here's a quick question for all you seo gurus out there.
We've got a new website (new domain) which is nearing completion, and we've love to get it 'out there' as soon as possible. However it's not finshed as there is minimal / nil content on a few of the pages (important ones!). I'm quite happy to place a 'content currently being updated' or some such message on these pages but...... is it better to wait till these pages are finished or not. Will the big G for instance, penalise us for having neglible content on certain pages at the outset -or am I over worrying?

Any advice / experiences would be welcome.

Thanks.

Everyone's making this more complicated than it needs to be (as I find is customary with anything SEO related).

Although any good website should keep SEO in mind when designing a site structure these days, it is far more important to think about your visitors/potential customers. Is there enough content for them to find out what you do? If so, things are ok, you can add blog posts/other pages when you need.

A new site isn't going to rank for much anyway so the only visitors you'll get initially are ones obtained from Facebook/Twitter/Forums or whatever.

In regards to all the stuff about "Will Google ever return once the page is cached?", the answer is "yes" so don't worry about it (assuming you don't build your website and then leave it to waste away of course, you'll need to build a few links and keep it updated otherwise a website is pointless anyway).

However, if your lack of content is likely to make visitors think "Is this business operating? They don't look very well established, I'll look elsewhere", then add content!

Hope that helps.