SEO Checklist Before Launching a New Website

The short answer

Most SEO failures at launch are not about strategy but about forgotten details: noindex left from staging, missing redirects from old URLs, a blocking robots.txt. Walk through the checklist below before switching DNS and once more right after.

Indexation

• Remove noindex from every page that should be in search. Check both the meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.
• Remove basic HTTP authentication if it was on staging.
• Rewrite robots.txt: staging often has Disallow: / for the whole site.
• Make sure the staging site itself is closed to indexing and will not compete with production.

A minimal working robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /cart/

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Sitemap

• sitemap.xml is generated automatically and updates on publish.
• It lists only canonical URLs returning 200 — no redirects, 404s or blocked pages.
• URLs use the correct protocol and the production domain, not staging.
• The sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster.

Redirects during migration

If the new site replaces an old one, this is the riskiest item.

1. Export every URL of the old site: from a crawler, the sitemap, Search Console and analytics.
2. Map each old URL to the closest matching new one.
3. Set up 301 redirects directly, without chains.
4. Do not send everything to the homepage: search engines may treat such redirects as "soft 404s".
5. After launch, run the old URL list through a crawler and check the status codes.

Domain and duplicates

• One primary version: with or without www, https only.
• All other variants 301-redirect to it.
• A consistent trailing slash format.
• A correct rel="canonical" on every page.
• For multilingual sites — hreflang tags and separate URLs per language.

On-page and markup

• Unique title and description on all templates, no placeholders like "New page".
• One H1 per page.
• alt text on meaningful images.
• Schema.org markup (Organization, BreadcrumbList, Product, Article) passes the validator.
• Open Graph tags for proper previews in messengers.
• A helpful 404 page that returns a real 404 status code.

Speed and mobile

• Test key templates in PageSpeed Insights: home, category, product, article.
• Images are compressed, in modern formats, with explicit dimensions.
• No render-blocking scripts slowing down the first paint.
• The site works well on a phone: readable font, tappable buttons, no horizontal scrolling.
• Mobile content matches the desktop version.

Analytics

• Google Analytics and Yandex Metrica tags are installed on every page.
• Goals are set up: lead form, call, purchase.
• Search Console and Webmaster ownership is verified for the production domain.
• If you are migrating, keep access to the old analytics for comparison.

Common mistakes

• Launching on Friday evening, when nobody is around to fix problems.
• Redirects planned for "later".
• A staging site open to indexing that gets into search before production.
• Deleted pages with traffic and no replacement.