Launching a website without an SEO checklist is one of the most common causes of poor organic visibility — the technical decisions made in the first weeks decide how fast search engines find, crawl, and index the site. This walkthrough sequences the work across pre-launch, launch day, and the first 90 days.
Step 1: Lock down the technical foundations
Two to four weeks out, get the basics right on staging. Enforce HTTPS with 301 redirects from HTTP, and set robots.txt to allow crawling of public content — remember Disallow does not prevent indexing, noindex does. Generate a clean XML sitemap that excludes noindex pages, redirects, and 404s, and give every page a self-referencing canonical tag.
Step 2: Map the architecture before writing content
Structure comes before pages. Sketch a pillar-cluster map where pillars link to clusters and clusters link back, and keep key pages within three clicks of the homepage. Assign every target keyword an intent type (informational, commercial, transactional) and a destination URL, and keep URLs lowercase, hyphenated, and descriptive with no parameters.
Step 3: Write metadata and structured data
Metadata is the first thing both users and AI answer engines read. Front-load keywords in unique title tags under 60 characters, write active-voice meta descriptions under 160 characters with an implied call to action, and add JSON-LD structured data for Organization, WebSite, and Article or Product as appropriate.
Step 4: Audit the staging site
Before go-live, crawl staging to catch what would otherwise ship broken. Confirm there are no broken internal links, no redirect chains longer than two hops, and that the noindex tags protecting staging are clearly flagged for removal on production — leaving them on is the single most damaging launch mistake.
Step 5: Execute launch-day checks
On launch day, verify rather than experiment. First, confirm every staging noindex is gone from both the <head> and HTTP headers. Then submit the production sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, request indexing for the homepage and pillar pages, confirm GA4 and Tag Manager are firing, run priority pages through Google’s Rich Results Test, and check mobile rendering.
Step 6: Validate crawling in week one
The first week is about confirming discovery. Watch the Search Console Pages report for “Discovered – currently not indexed” spikes, check server logs to confirm Googlebot is actively requesting pages, and fix any 404s immediately before they accumulate.
Step 7: Build baselines and grow
Over weeks two through ninety, shift from setup to growth. Monitor impressions and early ranking movement in Search Console, review Core Web Vitals field data once it populates, re-crawl to catch orphaned pages, then begin a regular publishing cadence, initial link building, and CTR tuning on high-impression, low-click pages.
Full guide → SOP: New Site Launch SEO Checklist
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