Would submitting incomplete site be a mistake?

[serpent star]

I am relatively new to SEO work and have a question... A company that brought me on to submit and optimise their site would like me to submit the site before the initial optimization is complete. I was compile a list of the most heavily searched relevant keywords for about 5 pages of a 15+ page site. Then I was to develop metatags and validate HTML to 4.0. They were going to revamp their content to incorporate the chosen keywords. This is not started yet. Now they would like me to submit before the new optimized content is written... just submit it as is. I am not too sure but something seems not right about doing that. My question is, are there any benefits too submitting before the content is revamped (I am guessing just getting it in there would be a mistake)? What are the disadvantages of doing this? I am worried that it may not be indexed properly from the start and may not be updated once the newly optimized content is added.

Any advice, opinions, or explainations would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
Mat

[Air]

Definitely do not submit the incomplete site to directories, for those you should wait until everything is complete.

For spidering engines, if the page names are not changing, and there are no obvious page problems (things that will get you in trouble for spamming, etc.) then submitting just the index page will get you a head start and shouldn't hurt the site IMO.

Having said that, my preference is to always wait until the site is complete, or well on it's way before submitting, or adding a link on a already indexed site so the spider(s) will discover the index page of the new site and crawl from there.

[Thors Hammer]

Serpent,

I would agree, even being somewhat new to all this. That you should wait until you have a 'complete picture' of your site ready to go live....

Is your site going to be so extensive, that you are wanting a head start, or just trying to find out to avoid any problems??

Thor

[serpent star]

thanks for the replies. Just too get a handle on it... what would happen if it were submitted too early to directories? Would it potentially be indexed wrong and potentialy not have a good of rankings. Would it not be re indexed or updated?

[JayC]

Just too get a handle on it... what would happen if it were submitted too early to directories?

Air was making a distinction between directories and search engines, in case you didn't catch that. Directories most likely will simply decline to list an incomplete site. For paid placement directories (Yahoo, for example), that would obviously be bad.