A Technical SEO Checklist for Launching a New Website
Launch day is when small configuration mistakes do the most damage. A noindex left over from staging, a robots.txt copied from the dev server, a 404 page that returns 200 , or a domain switch with no redirects can each keep a good site out of search for weeks, and none of them is visible to someone just looking at the homepage. This is the checklist I run for a new site launch, split into before…
Before launching a new website, it is crucial to address several technical SEO configurations to ensure optimal performance. The first step is to decide on a canonical hostname, choosing either "https://www.example.com" or "https://example.com" and redirecting all other variants to this chosen version. This includes redirecting to HTTPS, eliminating mixed content issues, and ensuring a 404 status code for non-existent pages.
On launch day, it is vital to remove any staging noindex tags and verify that robots.txt has been updated accordingly. Additionally, ensure that every important page is crawlable through standard links and that the content features unique, descriptive titles and meta descriptions. Core Web Vitals should also be checked, aiming for an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, INP of 200ms or less, and CLS of 0.1 or less.
Finally, create and submit an XML sitemap containing only canonical, indexable URLs to help search engines discover and crawl the website more efficiently.
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