Uploading my archive - will this look suspicious?

And if so, what should I do?

[prfb]

I'm getting ready to add my archive of about 5,000 old articles to my site. (Old to me, but not previously online anywhere.) I've read about the importance of growing the number of articles on a site at a natural pace, so I wonder: will this sudden upload look suspicious to Google?

And if so ...
(a) how bad is that, really?
(b) is there something I can do look less fishy?

Some context:
- My current site has been live and available to Google for about a month.
- So far the site has roughly 500 pages of content, mixed between text articles and pictures.
- I'm pretty conservative about SEO, so the site shouldn't have red flags

Thank you!

[William8322]

I would use something simple like WordPress and add a few articles every day.

[prfb]

Thanks, William. Actually this is part of an existing site, so WordPress isn't an option.

I *could* add a few articles a day, but with 5k in the archive it would be a real pain.

Trying to decide whether or not it's worth getting some custom code written to add 15 a day for a year....

[William8322]

You can install wordpress on an existing domain, the tough part is tying it in on the front end (if you wanted to do like a latest article section on the homepage, etc.) Its still possible, and much easier to work with than creating individual files for each article.

[prfb]

Thanks, William. Actually, I'm already using a good CMS (Drupal 5) and I have a mechanism to easily import all the articles. The articles are already prepped in the right format, and it's gone smoothly out on my test site.

The only question at this point is, how do I avoid causing SEO trouble with a massive import.

[reprint]

You could import them and not publish them. Each week then publish a few of them so there is a natural increase in documents.

[prfb]

Thanks, reprint.

Maybe I will do that, and just add 15 a day for the rest of the year.

But I still wonder if there's a way to explain to Google that it's legit content, or to find out just how bad the "hit" would be and maybe just take it.

[prfb]

I was really dreading adding 15 a day for a year (or worse). Looks like I may not have to:
[webmasterworld.com...]

So, I'll be careful and not add more than 25-50% the number of current articles each time I'm indexed, but that's a lot more palatable than adding content in small drops. =)

[reprint]

TRy a batch and see how it does. Sorry, when i said a few, i meant few compared to the total you want to add. If you add 25% of the total on the site each time, that number of articles submitted each time will increase while the percentage will remain the same. You will be done quickly. I hope that made sense to you

100 articles on website - publish 25 on there
125 articles on website next week - publish 31
and so on