Do SE's penalise for "Coming Soon" pages?
 

I've been wondering about this for a while: Do SEs ding sites that are only one page deep? Does anybody have any ideas or insight into this?

I almost always keep a hold page with a few sponsor links on newly purchased domains. Bad practise?

Keep your hold page on theme with what you plan for the domain and they do just fine. Actually, when you do build on them, they actually get into the serps a little faster.

I always figured it wasn't ideal, but that it's a reasonable and necessary practice.

It would be better to put something unique on the name as soon as possible.

But I like to let domains age, too.

Put good meta tags and some content on your hold page that is related to your coming soon site. Also, put in the meta tag for search engines to come back and spider. Having something is always better than having the generic page your registrar posts or a 404. Can't hurt, for sure!

It takes time to build PR and more important get out of the sandbox, so getting something up as soon as possible is always a good idea.

ronnie

Short answer: NO. Thaey actually help you by giving you a headstart out of the sandbox.