Q&A: For SEO, Should I Upload a Bunch of Content All At Once?

Q: If you’ve got a bunch of content to upload to your site, should you upload it one piece at a time or put it all up at once?  

A: I received this question recently from a very active client.  I told them to go ahead and upload everything, but I might not give the same advice to every site owner.

Here’s the thing: Google certainly doesn’t want to penalize you for uploading a bunch of great content.  Your articles aren’t doing you any good while they’re tucked away in a folder on your desktop.  You should certainly get them out as quickly as possible.

However, there’s an exception, and it’s an important one.  If you don’t typically add new content — if your site is pretty much static other than the occasional update — you may benefit slightly from uploading a piece at a time.  Fresh content is usually a good thing, and a site that keeps making good content will generally do better than a static site.

Therefore, if you don’t think you can afford a content creation service (cough, cough) and you don’t have the time or skills to write new content on your own, you may benefit from slowly working through that big backlog.

On the other hand, if you’re already creating fresh content on a weekly basis, go ahead and put all of that stuff up there.  Just make sure that it’s all ready for prime time.  With each piece of content, you should:

• Check the title and header tags.  Make sure they’re optimized and that they reasonably address a search query.  Use relevant key phrases, but don’t stuff your content with keywords to try to get a higher ranking.  That never works, or this website would be nothing but the word “SEO” and I wouldn’t have a job.
• Check the meta description.  Yeah, yeah, Google doesn’t use the meta description in rankings, but it still shows it to potential visitors.  Write a compelling meta description that will draw people in.
• Use relevant images.  Make sure that the images are properly tagged.
• Promote your content.  Even if you’re just releasing a bunch of technical documents, find a way to drive some temporary traffic.  Make a press release or a blog post announcing your content.

So, to reiterate: there’s certainly no penalty for putting a bunch of stuff up at once.  However, regardless of your release strategy, make sure that your content is properly optimized.