How much content before starting

Full or partial content launch?

[confusedxx]

I want to launch a News Portal on Financial products. I have some content from shared content directories and some of my own. I plan on having about 20 sections and each section currently has about 10 articles.

Does it make sense to type up all the content I have in mind now, or does Google like it better if you add content regularly after the launch?

Secondly, with so much content, I find there is hard to find what you would like to see from the home page. Do most visitors come to a specific article from searching and that is how they find something among the hundreds of content pages?

[mcneely]

Sometimes it's difficult to guess just what it is that Google likes, or not.

Content is king in this business at any rate, so for the money, I'd put on what you have and be done with it, all the while adding new as you go.

Not all of your visitorship is going to be entering through your home page.

Lets say you have hundreds of great content pages. Here I am, searching Google for wonderful wandering widgets. It just so happens that on page 999 of your site, there are some exceptional quality wonderful wandering widgets ... Google serves up your 999th page in the top spot and I click on the link.

There it is ... I found you ... and I didn't go in through your home page to get to where I wanted to be.

If you are still uncertain as to how you might proceed with regard to your home page, I might suggest putting on a simple search and then even an easy to find sitemap link for your visitors to click on.

[londrum]

in my experience people seem to rank in google when their site first appears, and then drop way down after a month or two (the dreaded sandbox). it might take you another six months or so to drag yourself back up again once you've established 'trust'.

of course, some people disagree with that completely. but in my experience that is what happens.

so you need to make the most of google's gift at the beginning -- which means having a half-decent site before you put it up.

[whadu]

Question: does Google like it better if you add content regularly after the launch?

Yes, definitely.

Question: Do most visitors come to a specific article from searching and that is how they find something among the hundreds of content pages?

By word of mouth, you'll usually have people coming in through the home page, but if you rank high in a lot of search engines, most of those people will probably never see your home page unless they like the site, in that case they wil only see that one page that was found through the search engine.