One question we quite often get asked is what you should do with your domain before your website is launched.  Should you have information there? Should you just buy it and only worry about the domain once all of your content is ready to go?
What we mean by this is the following scenario…
You’re a new business, you’ve purchased your domain and you or a professional website designer are currently busy putting your site together.
But that can take a while for you or your designer to do.
What do you do with your domain during that period?
One thing we see quite a lot of on Twitter is people saying they have a new site on the way, but when you click on the page it takes you through to a parked page from the company they’ve bought it from, for example GoDaddy or 123reg.
This really isn’t ideal.
The reason this isn’t great is because when you launch a new site it won’t automatically rank well in Google and it may take a while to get indexed (included within Google’s ranking system).
You want to keep this period as minimal as possible for your business because you’ll want to be seen.
If you simply register your domain and don’t do anything with it for a month or two while you build your site then Google will come along and note that the domain is parked.
Google doesn’t want to give these domains to users when searching so it notes that it is parked.  When you do come to launch your website this can slow down the indexing of your site because you’re relying on Google to come back to your site, understand that it is no longer a parked domain and then take note of what it is your company is about and what it is you do.
That all takes time.
Can you afford that when you’re launching a business?
Probably not.
What should you be doing? As Matt Cutts from Google explains you should ideally be adding a few paragraphs or a holding page that explains to visitors and to search engines that you’re launching a new site and it will be with us soon.
Google can then quickly index your new content and you’ll be seen faster.
All of our clients benefit from our knowledge of how to make the most of a site, not only through design but also through search engines and making you visible to your customers; why not give us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk