A new website launches once. The SEO decisions made at launch — URL structure, canonical setup, title conventions — are much harder to change later without disrupting accumulated history. A pre-launch check takes an hour and prevents months of clean-up work.
Technical Setup
- [ ] SSL certificate installed and HTTPS working on all pages.
- [ ]
wwwvs non-wwwdecided and consistent (e.g. alwayshttps://domain.com, never both). - [ ] 301 redirects in place for any old URLs that changed during development.
- [ ] robots.txt in place and correct — not accidentally blocking all crawlers (common on staging sites).
- [ ] XML sitemap generated and accessible at
/sitemap.xml.
Indexing Control
- [ ] Staging site is blocked from indexing (noindex in settings or robots.txt on the staging domain) — this should be on, then turned off at launch.
- [ ] Production site is set to allow indexing after launch — double-check the CMS's "discourage search engines" setting is off.
On-Page Basics
- [ ] Every page has a unique title tag (under 60 characters).
- [ ] Every page has a unique meta description (under 160 characters).
- [ ] Every page has one H1 tag that matches the topic.
- [ ] Images have descriptive alt text.
- [ ] No broken internal links.
Content Quality
- [ ] No placeholder or "Lorem ipsum" text remaining.
- [ ] Core pages (Home, About, Contact, main product/service pages) have substantive, useful content.
- [ ] Blog or content section has at least a few published posts (a completely empty blog can look abandoned).
Local SEO Setup
- [ ] Address, phone and business name displayed consistently.
- [ ] Local Business schema added to the site.
After Launch (First Two Days)
- [ ] Verify the site in Google Search Console.
- [ ] Submit the sitemap in Search Console.
- [ ] Request indexing for the homepage.
- [ ] Run SEO Checker on key pages.
- [ ] Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage.
For the ongoing audit process after launch, see how to run a basic SEO audit on your own website.
After the First Month
Once the site has been live for 4–6 weeks, return to Google Search Console for a proper review. Check which pages Google has indexed, which queries are generating impressions, and whether any errors appeared during initial crawling. This first-month check often reveals pages that didn't get indexed as expected or queries where the content isn't quite matching what searchers want. It's far easier to adjust content and structure in the first month than after a site has established patterns that take longer to change.
