New site: tell Google it exists now or wait until its completed?

[Shrike99]

Hi!

I recently registered a new domain name and only uploaded one page of draft content as the main page. Since this is a part time project, I don't think other pages will be ready to upload until a few months. Do you think I should submit the url to google to tell it it exists so that I can avoid being sandboxed? By that I mean that if Google waits a few months before showing my page in the SERP, it might same me a few months of waiting.

Or should I wait to have at least a few pages before telling Google it exists?

Thanks for the help!

Shrike99

[Smashing Young Man]

I try to avoid doing anything that would allow a search engine to find my site before it has at least a few pages of content. Regardless of that, once you register a domain, it will be found by the search engines eventually, no matter how hard you try to keep it off their radar.

[truezeta]

Well I actually submitted my site when I was "testing" it to the search engines. For the most part they tended to index what I had fairly quickly. But definietly try to add on more revelant pages as you progress. When I begin testing, I had about 50% of my site completed, so the bots had something to eat. And daily I would add more.

[Borek]

My approach is to make the very first page spidered as early as possible. Site must get some age before it leaves sandbox and gets reasonable position in search results, the earlier the count of that age starts - the better. (OK, some state there is no sandbox, but even they agree that the site must get some age before becoming visible - so nomenclature doesn't matter, but site age matters).

So what I do is I register the domain, put a single page explanining "This will be the site about keyword, with information about keyword and keyword. Keyword is (single phrase explaining what the keyword is) and can be used for (some more keywords)." Then I link to the site from some other page so that it will be spidered as fast as possible.

Note that my "in construction" message is already done in such a way that it is of some use for an accidental visitor - it contains some real information, even if it is distilled as an entry in encyclopedia.

I upload real content when it is ready - in about few weeks.

[Nikke]

Go for it. Submit it to Google, link to it, add a Google sitemap as soon as you have a couple of pages.

Then start adding your content, step by step, one page after another.

Just don't change any urls during the course. Instead, change the content.