New Website and Domain Question

[BenInder]

Hi all,

I am launching a new website around the end of October and I have purchased a great domain to use for it.

My question is should I put some kind of holding page up to try and start building up some domain authority in preperation for launch? Or maybe a blog at www.domain.com/blog and then keep all the blog content at the same location when the full site goes up?

Or is it best to wait and just launch the site when the first version is complete?

Thanks,

Ben

[MassivePrime]

This really depends on the topic of your site. Could you give some indication?

[BenInder]

Sure, the main part of the website will offer restaurant, finding, rating and online booking for around 8,000 restaurants

[MassivePrime]

What I'd do is set up a poll/survey for people to vote for their favorite restaurant and then announce the winner on a monthly basis.

I would then send an email to the restaurants telling them about the competition and encourage them to get people who visit their site to go and vote for them on your site.(Easy back links and visitors)

Finally I would offer a $50/100 voucher for a random person who voted for the winning restaurant to spend at that restaurant. (This will encourage the restaurants to add the link in the first place and the visitors to make the effort to go to your site and use it.)

The setup for this would take no more than 10 minutes. so it's a very easy thing to do and will get the ball rolling very quickly.

Hope this helps

[bradkrussell]

Great idea there - thumbs up for you.

We've launched new sites in the past where we've placed a 'holding site' on them for at least a few months prior to launch. My recommendations for this would be to not make it spammy and ensure the first few links are very high authority links (not directories, blog comments etc).

But the idea above is far better than just a plain holding site. Go with that.