Better to add content to a NEW site SLOWLY for SEO reasons?

9 replies
a friend paid some people overseas to write up content and build a new site for an academic purpose. Now, after years of work, they have 900 articles ready to be placed online.

But his team claims that the articles should be added to the new site SLOWLY because "Google will only index a few articles at a time" and that if they add all 900 articles at once, most of the articles won't get indexed.

Sounds totally bonkers to me. But I thought I ask. Could it be beneficial to add the content a new site slowly instead of all at once?
#add #content #reasons #seo #site #slowly
Avatar of Unregistered
  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    The bots that crawl websites certainly have crawl budgets, but they are capable of crawling and indexing more than a few links a day on any given website.

    That said, just because links are crawled, it does not mean they will be indexed, whether they appear all at once or are trickled over time. What matters is if the content is good and satisfies user queries.

    And of course, indexed and on page one or indexed and buried on page 100 of the search results is yet another matter. Search engines' goal are to list the very best answers to queries in front of others.

    I've got a couple questions ...

    First, have you read all 900 of these articles? Are they fantastic, grammatically perfect and engaging? Are people online eagerly searching for the content in those articles and they engage them better than anything else online? If so, get as many of the articles that check all of those boxes online as soon as possible. If not, you could have 90,000 articles and none of them would help, regardless of when or how fast you publish them

    The other line of inquiry is this ... If all 900 of those articles were published at once, then what? Will all new content stop?

    It's really hard to give a whole lot of advice without knowing the type of site and purpose of it. If it's an educational site, the more the better and I'd put it all up at once. If it's just a blog about a subject, it's probably best to publish slower, since you don't want to run out of content and suddenly have nothing to say.

    Regardless, there is no actual evidence to suggest that adding content a little at a time is any better than dumping it all at once, at least in terms of SEO. It undoubtedly will make a difference if you have active readers who get used to seeing new content daily.
    Signature
    BizSellers.com - The #1 place to buy & sell websites!
    We help sellers get the MAXIMUM amount for their websites and all buyers know that these sites are 100% vetted.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11713519].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    If it has taken them years to write these articles, I wonder why you didn't start to publish them sooner. As Dave mentioned, you need to check the quality of every article. If you don't have sufficient knowledge to do that, you'll need to pay somebody to read them all and give you an assessment.


    I could do it (for a fee) but that's not just why I have said it. If your site is loaded with a lot of crappy articles, you won't retain customers who may come to see what you have to offer. Quality beats quantity every time.
    Signature

    Cheers, Laurence.
    Writer/Editor/Proofreader.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11713534].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author alexTaf
      Hi there, thanks for your reply. the articles were written by history and arts academics with no SEO experience, of course, in a RTL language so it would not something whose quality you could assess.
      Would you recommend WordPress SEO plugin to do a basic check of the pages?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11713695].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    in a RTL language so it would not something whose quality you could assess.

    Can you read the language? Can your friend read it? Are the articles on topics with descriptive titles? ONLY someone who can read the language articles are written in can decide if they are SEO friendly or not, if they have made use of keywords, etc.



    I usually agree with Dave but I don't in this case. Are the 900 articles the entirety of what will appear on this site? If so, I would not dump them all in a day....would launch the site with 100 articles and then add articles 1-2X per week at a rate of 20-30 at a time.


    Something doesn't add up - perhaps because you appear to be asking for someone else. If you waited 'years' for articles - wouldn't you have specified what you wanted in the beginning?
    Signature
    Saving one dog will not change the world - but the world changes forever for that one dog
    ***
    2024 Patriot's Award for Service to Veterans
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11713696].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

      I usually agree with Dave but I don't in this case. Are the 900 articles the entirety of what will appear on this site? If so, I would not dump them all in a day....would launch the site with 100 articles and then add articles 1-2X per week at a rate of 20-30 at a time.
      I don't think I really committed one way or another because it really depends on what kind of website this is. If, for instance, it is a website that is using these articles as a course, you need them all as part of that course.

      When we launch an eCommerce site, we don't add a couple products per day. We build the entire site out with every product before it is launched.

      If it is just a blog, trickle them out if that's all you have and will ever have.

      My point was that it will not affect SEO except there will be less to index and rank, the slower the articles are rolled out, so it will take longer for the website as a whole to have organic traffic. It may, however, affect the people who actually visit the website and posting a handful per week may be better for them if it is a blog.
      Signature
      BizSellers.com - The #1 place to buy & sell websites!
      We help sellers get the MAXIMUM amount for their websites and all buyers know that these sites are 100% vetted.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11713790].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author incomenow
    Originally Posted by alexTaf View Post

    a friend paid some people overseas to write up content and build a new site for an academic purpose. Now, after years of work, they have 900 articles ready to be placed online.

    But his team claims that the articles should be added to the new site SLOWLY because "Google will only index a few articles at a time" and that if they add all 900 articles at once, most of the articles won't get indexed.

    Sounds totally bonkers to me. But I thought I ask. Could it be beneficial to add the content a new site slowly instead of all at once?
    When starting a new website, it is always better to slowly add content than to rush and add spammy content. This way, you can make sure that your site is well-structured and that all of your content is relevant and valuable to your audience. Additionally, you will avoid potential 404 errors and other problems that can occur when content is added hastily.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11714332].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Tyler Nalbach
    As a few others mentioned, the quality is going to be very important. I won't touch on that too much since they already did.

    I've never seen a site run into issues posting TOO much content at one time. I have seen a few sites really explode their traffic posting a big chunk of content like this, though.

    I wouldn't worry about Google only being able to index a few pages at a time. However, if you have a brand new site, your pages will likely be indexed slower than a high authority site that has been around for a while.

    There's really not much of a downfall of posting a bunch of content at once. Even if it took Google weeks/months to crawl and index those pages, you're going to be better off having the content up right away so they can find it as quickly as possible. For example, if you publish 2 new posts per day, and Google could have been indexing 50 pages per day, you'd be wasting a lot of time.

    Overall, I would focus more on what your site can handle as far as publishing, rather than what Google may be able to index at a given time.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11716761].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author blairquane
    I did a similar thing a year or so ago. Personally I think its better to load them up in lots of 50 or 100 each week as that also allows you more time to market the pages as you load them. Either way, I don't think Google will care much as they index much more than a few each time.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11719170].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author alexTaf
    Many many thanks for all this feedback. Im very grateful for Warrior Forum.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11719213].message }}
Avatar of Unregistered

Trending Topics