WordPress SEO by Yoast (question)

I find this to be one of the most amazing plugins for WordPress, but have a question about its ability.

Right now I am working on my site with a maintenance page up front. I realize that stuff I post when the site is in this mode SEO won’t go out and do its thing–ok.

But any new articles I post: let’s say I put them back into Draft Mode and then take down maintenance mode and then re-Publish them when the site is live.

Will SOE go out again and ping the search engines for me? My site is extremely modified and is still in development. Until the site is ready to go live, I do not wish for anyone to see my sites design (the design is copyright and don’t want our design stolen before its live–and yes we’ve had kiddies swipe our design to use for their own personal site. ect., ect.) — but with what articles I have posted, I want to know how I can still get them indexed with SEO after I make the site live.