Submit a semi-completed site to search engines?

[cssoh]

I have a new website www.visual-communication-matters.com. It's complete for the current purpose (to manage content of my newsletter), except for one page which is still under construction.

Stage 2 of the development will commence in a couple of months when more articles will have been added and there will be database and seach function built into the website then. The site map (which is empty at this stage) will also have some contents.

Knowing that it takes some time to be indexed by search engines, my question is: do I submit the site now or later when it's complete so that I will rank (more) favourably? Search engines like site maps amongst other things, is it worth waiting?

[peterjhale]

you don't need to "submit" to search engines

they will find you and utimately rank you based upon the number and quality of links pointing to your site

OK, submitting may get you in the index, but you'll never rank unless you have links pointing to it

So in answer to your question, point some links now and get it indexed - the earlier the better

[cssoh]

Thanks Peter. So the question now should be "Would anyone like to link to me?"

I think I could start by linking the two websites together, and invite some of my colleagues to exchange link with me.

[peterjhale]

most of the ranking criteria is incoming links - so they are really important

[tlm]

I work as an SEO specialist and yes YOU NEED to submit to search Engines. For Google and Yahoo, never never submit an incomplete site. Your site must be 100% ready especially if you plan to submit to Yahoo. Its because the one who will be reviewing your application is a Real person and incomplete sites are always frowned upon and will most probably be rejected.

Include an "About Us" page as well as your office address and tel no. on your site as Google and Yahoo like to know who they are dealing with.

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by tlm

Include an "About Us" page.

Off topic but most "About Us" pages are laughable as they generally tell you zilch.

[peterjhale]

Originally Posted by tlm

I work as an SEO specialist and yes YOU NEED to submit to search Engines. For Google and Yahoo, never never submit an incomplete site. Your site must be 100% ready especially if you plan to submit to Yahoo. Its because the one who will be reviewing your application is a Real person and incomplete sites are always frowned upon and will most probably be rejected.

Include an "About Us" page as well as your office address and tel no. on your site as Google and Yahoo like to know who they are dealing with.

I have never heard such rubbish. OK, if you want to be in the Yahoo directory, sure they want a complete site - but to get in the SERPs - YOU DO NOT NEED TO SUBMIT
simply get backlinks - the SEs will find and rank you based mostly upon this

[BIZAL]

Google likes sites that have been up for while and grow. The sooner you start this the better and TLM sorry but I strongly disagree. No business website is ever finished and people are always adding to them. Our site was not finished and was only 6 pages in total and yahoo had no problem with it.

[cssoh]

Thank you all for your comments. I have submitted my site to major search engines. Peter, you mentioned backlinks. I am unclear exactly what they are; being a non-specialist in this area I can only digest so much from my reading materials, so would appreciate a quick and lay(wo)man explanation of what it means.