Should we submit a site before it's fully finished?

[mipapage]

Marcia (and others)
I have a client who wants their site in Google asap. As the site is going to take several weeks to build, is it wise or would it be wise to put up just the home page with some descriptive content while I build the rest of the site, so that I could get it into DMOZ and then hopefully the Google directory a little (relatively) quicker?

[rfgdxm1]

As an ODP editor, if I was reviewing this and saw that this was just a holding page with just a little descriptive content, I'd quickly delete this with extreme prejudice. Annoying ODP editors by submitting under construction sites that it says not to on the submission form is not the best strategy.

[mipapage]

Gotcha. Not being familiar with the rules (although I would have read them), I am glad you told me. So the best idea would be to get a working site up asap, then expand? The fact is, I have a lot of content for the site, but we will be waiting for some pieces and pictures.

I suppose that this is a lot like the 'is this spam' question. If you think might be, don't do it. In my case, if I don't think that the site is functional etc. I wont submit it.

[Marcia]

We're talking about two different things here. One, you don't submit less than a completed site to a directory; you don't even want anything under construction when submitting. Editors are looking to add quality to their directory, you wait until it's a finished, working product so that it has actual value for users.

For search engines it's a different story, with different opinions about it - so we have to choose who we listen to, and a lot can depend on the site itself. Some say wait until a site is fully complete before submitting, and they have a point there with some good reasons. Others don't wait.

Personally - just my opinion - for the most part I get them submitted to search engines almost immediately if I can, just so they'll know they're around, because it takes a while. Google's pretty quick, but it can still be two months. And they're not the only search engine - other search engines can take forever.

Google is very good, absolutely the best, but it can still take two months to see a site in. Inktomi runs a good second, they've been adding nicely lately, even deep pages. Others aren't so good - one site went up very end of December, all FAST and AltaVista still have is just the homepage.

There's nothing that breaks any search engine rules with putting the homepage up and then adding the rest of the site that I've ever heard of. If the search engines weren't looking to add pages to their index they wouldn't be sending crawlers out, so I figure I can help them out a little by letting them get a head start with finding new sites when I can.

>>I have a client who wants their site in Google asap.

A lot can depend on the site, whether it's s small or a large one, and in the case of a client site, what the arrangements are for delivery. Most love to see rankings asap.

[edited by: Marcia at 10:48 am (utc) on April 4, 2003]

[rfgdxm1]

What Marcia says is correct. For search engines, try to get in as early as possible, because they can take a while to index you. As for directories, expect your submission to hit the bit bucket pronto if your site basically is just "soon, there will be a really good site here". Because of course both good sites under construction, and lousy sites under construction, will both say this. Directory editors don't review promises of what will happen in the future.

[albert]

Complement to Marcia and rfgdxm1:

Submitting early to SE's and then enlarge the site can do some good - because spiders will likely find new content at your site. And that's important.

But before submitting I would try to start with some minimal but substantial content, anyway.

[mipapage]

Thanks a lot everybody, the more ideas the better! Seems to me to ba a multistep process, whereas before I always waited until the bitter end.

[Marcia]

mipapage, most people do wait until a site is finished, that's the usual way it's done. Just remember that people who do search engine marketing can tend to get a little fanatic about it sometimes. :)

There are other considerations with client sites, one being whether the client has gotten all the content, text and graphics to you beforehand, and what the approval process is during the design phase. Sometimes there are delays in getting materials, and sometimes there can be "project creep" where they decide on adding extras or making changes mid-stream. Plus, there's a time when they have to approve the design prior to the site going live.

The general procedure is to get a percentage up front and get paid in full before final delivery - with variations, but people have been burnt by delivering and trying to get paid after. So factor that end of it into the process in addition and keep all bases covered.

If the client is in a hurry to get rankings, while once a site is in ODP and has inbound links it'll get picked up by search engines eventually, there's also an option of doing a few Inktomi PFI pages for low to moderate keyword phrases to get that 48 hour spidering. Those are generally best done on targeted interior pages of a site, and are a good way to show some decent rankings asap, plus give a chance to tweak pages toward higher rankings if necessary, with the frequent spidering and updating.

It's only for MSN now, so we have to make sure Inktomi results there aren't pushed down by a lot of LookSmart listings for the phrases when we choose them, those come before. But Yahoo has bought Inktomi so we don't know what will be with that. It's not a bad idea to figure that into a plan if possible, and cover all future possibilities by trying to get ranked decently with Ink also.

[vitaplease]

I had a spanish university trainee coming starting to work for us in september.

He was going to translate 60 pages or so of our website to start out with - plus respond to incoming spanish requests for information.

What I did is I auto-translated the content with Google languages and "submitted" (an unobvious internal link) that content just before the august deep-crawl.

That way, the trainee had real life requests in september (it took him about 8 days to refine Google's translation).

Nowadays with Freshness abound, for a completely new site, it is less necessary if you can immediately place some good external inbound links. I would then just put up a few ready pages and add the rest as they are finished.

[Birdman]

I agree that you should get it in as soon as possible. If I were to recieve a clients text content today I would quickly build the site without any graphics, just plain vanilla. Then link(from your site) to it to get it spidered this time around.

Of course anyone who views the cached version will see the plain site but I imagine that's a fairly small percentage. Now you have a month to finish the site and pick up some quality links for the next deep crawl.

[Oaf357]

I'm in the process of building a rather extensive site. Getting in Google quick was a priority (and easily done). Submitting to other search engines is priority two and getting external links a third priority. All the time building new content. As spiders crawl around new content is fresh and indexed accordingly.

Submitting to directories will come when the site is in a "add content, not structure" mode.