A new website can look perfect and still be invisible to search engines. This checklist covers the technical basics to review before and after launch.
Before launch
- Remove any “discourage search engines” setting.
- Give every page one clear title, description and H1 heading.
- Make sure URLs are short, readable and consistent.
- Test the site on a phone and fix anything that overflows.
- Compress images and check loading speed.
At launch
- Submit an XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Check that robots.txt does not block important pages.
- Set canonical tags so each page has one preferred address.
- Redirect old URLs to new ones if you replaced a site.
After launch
Check the Pages report in Search Console for pages that are excluded, and fix the cause. Review speed and mobile usability after a few weeks. If you want a specialist to do it, see our technical SEO service.