Once all the contents are ready, you can deactivate the function and the site will appear in all its splendor, ready to be admired by your audience!
What happens to the SEO while the site is in “under construction” mode?
If your site has been online for some time and has already been indexed by search engines, leaving the site offline for a long time could negatively affect the positioning on Google & Co. This is why we recommend the use of the function only to new or not yet indexed.
If your site is brand new you do not have to worry about anything. Google always takes us some time to index new sites and most likely yours does not appear in search results yet. In short, if you have not yet reaped the benefits of SEO you have nothing to lose.
If your site has been online for a while and already appears in search results , putting it offline for several days, you may temporarily lose the ranking achieved.
It all depends on how long you have to leave it offline and on the popularity of the site.
To be clear, if you plan to leave it in Under construction mode only for a weekend it is likely that Google crawlers will not visit it and do not notice that you are offline. If you need a longer break though, this could temporarily penalize indexing.
Other solutions to hide the work in progress or the restyle of the site
For JimdoFree sites or professional sites already indexed there are other solutions that allow you to work on the site discreetly and keep it online, available for search engines. Here they are:
1. Create a “Site under construction” page
With this solution you can create a “Site under construction” page with texts, photos, videos or other elements that seem useful to you.
Create a new page in navigation and call it “Site under construction” or “Under construction”.
Enter a welcome text for visitors, such as “Stay tuned, we come back online soon” and maybe an image or icon representing the work in progress.
Then hide the other pages of the navigation by clicking the eye icon that you find in the navigation menu.
2. Keep individual navigation pages hidden
If you are renewing some pages of the site you can simply hide them from browsing by clicking the “eye” icon that you find in the navigation element.
These pages will remain hidden to your visitors – unless they have a direct link – and you can update the contents undisturbed.
3. Create password protected areas
Since you can still reach the hidden pages if you have a direct link, to be really sure that the contents remain protected you can use the function “Area password”. You can find it in the management panel under Settings> Password area.
Choosing the password you can protect some pages and give the password only to whoever you want.