How much content at launch?

[AresBlade]

If you're designing a blog style site or online magazine for example, how much content would you try to have in place before you actually launch? Do you think there's a sweet spot of a couple of articles, or would you try to fill out one per each category you've planned?

 

[Neverz]

I try and plan ahead but sometimes you just have to go with the flow and put out content when you are in the mood to do it. Make notes about each article you write, and "go back to points" aka a part of the article you could write another article about. Then link those together and get the link juice flowing. I've set blogs live with 1 article, 3 articles or 10 articles. Keep the quality up and people will return for more.

 

[lludawg]

For an online magazine, it would be good to have at least 2 articles in each category. Nothing is worse than clicking a category you are interested in but then finding out there are no articles in that specific category. Since magazine articles are sometimes short, the more the better!

 

[AresBlade]

For an online magazine, it would be good to have at least 2 articles in each category. Nothing is worse than clicking a category you are interested in but then finding out there are no articles in that specific category. Since magazine articles are sometimes short, the more the better!

I can see that, however I'm afraid that may be a bit of information overload for people first joining. I think that the best approach for an initial launch might be somewhere between the two extremes. Thank you both for your input.

 

[Ed321]

I go for quality over quantity. I think a site can be successful with one great article to begin with as long as updates with comparable quality content come on a regular basis. The only thing more content gives you is more keywords that may give someone the opportunity to find you. Think of each article or each section of your website as needing to stand on its own. Too many webmasters go for the "totality" approach and think they have enough "stuff" on their website so it should be okay to a large number of people.

You want it to blow away a small niche of people! Then you repeat the process and blow away another small niche of people. It is adding up all these smaller groups that gives you a great, popular website and not an underwhelming site whose content is bland to a larger number of people.

I never claim to have all the answers. I love to share my opinions and what has worked for me, but there are many differing styles out there and you need to do what works for you. Every once in awhile a Eureka moment occurs and I am able to clarify what others just needed a little push to grasp and they can effectively put the thought into motion.

There are many gray areas, but I believe strongly in this one. Start with low quantity of content, but the highest of quality and repeat the process to round out your site. You will greatly increase your chances of getting to the point you want to be.

 

[PhilA]

I think the 'more the better' here obviously, but as far as putting enough content out for Google to index and recognize as a good site I always hear people saying 7.5k words, I don't know the science behind that but I have heard it many times.

 

[AresBlade]

That's interesting Phil, I had never heard the 7.5K words thing before. I think it makes sense to follow both pieces of advice, fill the content out so that your site is not completely bare, but at the same time focus on Quality over Quantity as the quality of the site is what's going to bring people back.

 

[PhilA]

That's interesting Phil, I had never heard the 7.5K words thing before. I think it makes sense to follow both pieces of advice, fill the content out so that your site is not completely bare, but at the same time focus on Quality over Quantity as the quality of the site is what's going to bring people back.

Last time I heard it was recently on a No Hat Digital podcast, not sure if anyone here has heard of that site/pocast.

 

[AresBlade]

Last time I heard it was recently on a No Hat Digital podcast, not sure if anyone here has heard of that site/pocast.

I haven't heard of No Hat, but I'm checking it out now and it looks interesting. Seems like a good way to learn lots of things from people with a bit of an insider edge. Thanks for sharing.

 

[PhilA]

I haven't heard of No Hat, but I'm checking it out now and it looks interesting. Seems like a good way to learn lots of things from people with a bit of an insider edge. Thanks for sharing.

No problem, there are one of the more open and progressive groups when it comes to being honest about what tactics they are using. They do/did rely heavily on PBN's, which I personally disagree with - and they got hit by Google like a lot of people recently.

They do have hundreds of successful sites however, I am longing to just have a small handful!

 

[AresBlade]

Would you mind giving me a quick rundown of what PBN's are? I remember reading about Google targeting PBNs and shutting some sites down completely, but I'm not sure exactly how that impacted most of the internet.

 

[thomas264]

Me personally I think that you should have at least 5 posts per category. The thing is a lot of people will come to your magazine or website and they will be looking for something to read and if you do not have enough content for them they will just come and read what they think they want to and then will just probably just move on you know.

 

[xTinx]

If you're designing a blog style site or online magazine for example, how much content would you try to have in place before you actually launch? Do you think there's a sweet spot of a couple of articles, or would you try to fill out one per each category you've planned?

I am not sure how big your site is going to be, but if you're going to launch a content, however, make sure the text is around 15% of your overall HTML ratio. Ass you add more pages and graphics to your site, you should likewise expand the size of your content. I think this is the general rule for most SEO auditing firms.

 

[net_zen]

Once I decide on the scope of a new blog I focus on design only, content is secondary. With the design complete I start adding content and work on categories, user experience and ad placement. As you see, I have no rule regarding content at launch, the main reason being - who's gonna visit a new blog anyway until I start advertising it?

 

[Goat of Departure]

I can't really say much but I think it's better to have things settled down first before you do any launch. If I were to establish a site like that I would definitely focus more on the content since you've mentioned that it's a magazine style site. I would first gather as much articles and content as much as possible and try to fit them together in a neat package once I start my launch.

And like the other guy mentioned you can plan ahead and make your articles side by side so you can link to them once everything is up so you don't have to worry about it later. Also, it's best to have a bunch of content at launch because it will help a lot in terms of SEO.

 

[OhioTom76]

I'm working on an insurance related site right now, which I have not launched yet because I am waiting to get enough content into it first. Since the site will feature 4 different lines of insurance, I have set a goal of 20 articles for each line of insurance to have ready at launch. On top of that I scraped some insurance term glossaries from several sites and combined them into one giant glossary of insurance terms, which added several hundred more pages to the site. And finally, I am creating geo-specific pages for each state, and the top 5 cities by population for each state, which adds several hundred more pages to the site.

My goal with the blog articles is to first, fill out the page template so I can see how the site actually looks with a steady flow of articles going through it (which activates all the pagination, and "previous page"/"next page" links at the bottom of the layout. But I also want to launch with about 10-15 articles in each category, incrementally back-dated, then schedule the remaining articles to be posted in the future to give me a writing buffer so I always have a steady stream of articles posting to the site regularly.

 

[Shawn Barton]

For every category you have on the new site or online magazine, ensure that you have at least two or three articles. Why? Many people who actually visit new sites tend to spend a little more time checking around and looking for 'variety'. This means they will skim around the site to see if there is something interesting. If you have more content, they will definitely spend more time. The most important thing is ensuring that you deliver quality and interesting content from the word go.

Plan everything in advance before the launch and dedicate some time every week to come up with new content. You don't want your readers to come and find the same articles you wrote before the launch several weeks later. Keep the articles informative, unique and do frequent updates.

 

[calebmelvern]

Whenever I set up a new site, I usually tell myself to write X number of articles at once so visitors can bounce around. However, what happens is that I just tend to write or set up the homepage, make it look really good and in-depth, then just go from there. Of course, this may not work if you're planning a press release or something, because then you want your site to be more complete. Otherwise, I just write articles on different categories slowly and the next thing I know I have everything set up.

 

[proxynvpn]

It's always best to have around 10 - 15 articles on a blog before launch if not more I believe so that there is plenty for your visitors to read when you start getting traffic but also so there is something for the search engines to index when they start crawling.