SEO checklist for a new website: before and after launch

This SEO checklist for a new website runs in launch order. Before launch, remove every staging block, settle on one HTTPS host and give each page a unique title. On launch day, verify the site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, turn on analytics and 301 redirect every URL from the old site. Expect indexing to take days to weeks.

Each item comes with the check that proves it's done.

SEO checklist for a new website, before launch

1. Remove staging blocks. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure it does not say Disallow: /. Then view the source of the home page and search for noindex. WordPress adds it when "Discourage search engines" is ticked.
2. Drop the staging password. Load the site in a private window. If you see a login prompt, so does Googlebot, and it gets a 401.
3. Pick one host. Type http://, https://, www and non-www versions of your domain into the address bar. All four should land on the same HTTPS URL with one redirect. See www vs non-www.
4. Write a unique title for every page. Check the browser tab on each template. Repeated "Home" titles mean the theme fills them in. The on-page SEO checklist covers the rest.

Also confirm that each page's canonical tag points to its own production URL, not the staging domain. Search the page source for rel="canonical" and read the href.

On launch day, verify the site and submit the sitemap

Verify the site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools the day it goes live, then submit the sitemap to each.

Getting Google to index your site walks through each Search Console step.

Set up analytics before traffic arrives, because you can't recover the first weeks of data later. If you care about visits from AI assistants, tracking ChatGPT traffic in GA4 shows how to separate them.

Redirect every URL from an old site

If the new site replaces an old one, map every old URL to its closest new URL with a 301 before you switch DNS. Skipping this loses more traffic than any other item.

1. Export the old URLs from the old sitemap, your analytics landing page report and Search Console's Pages report.
2. Map each one to the closest matching new page. Send it to the home page only when nothing else fits.
3. After launch, request a sample of old URLs and confirm each returns one 301 to a page that returns 200.

Google's site move guide says to keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year. If the domain changed too, use the Change of Address tool in Search Console for the old property. Point each rule straight at the final URL to avoid redirect chains.

Publish your first content

Launch with the pages a buyer needs. That means a home page that says plainly what you do and for whom, one page per main service or product, and an about or contact page with your real business details. Link every page from the navigation or the home page, because Google finds new pages mostly through links from pages it has already crawled. To check, count the clicks from the home page to each key page. More than three is too deep for a small site.

Skip fifty templated location pages on day one. Google often leaves them out of the index.

How long does it take a new website to get indexed?

Expect a few days to a few weeks. Google's guide on asking Google to recrawl gives that range, and a new domain with no links pointing at it sits at the slow end.

Run URL Inspection on the home page after two or three days. "URL is on Google" means you're in. A Discovered status means Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it, and discovered, currently not indexed covers the fix. Indexed is not ranking. Competitive rankings take months on a new domain.

If nothing shows up after two weeks, work through why your website isn't showing up on Google.

Check your new website before and after launch

Our website check tests the on-page items above. The home page preview needs no account and costs no credits. It checks crawling and indexing, on-page SEO and structured data in about 20 seconds and shows verdicts, counts and three issue titles.

The full check covers your URL plus up to two more pages on the same origin, and you pick the checks. The default set covers crawling and indexing, on-page SEO, structured data and content, and costs 67 credits for one page plus 47 for each extra page. It returns one prioritized fix list and 0 to 100 scores for SEO readiness, AEO readiness and AI access. A rerun reports the percent of issues fixed and the score change.

It does not read Search Console, check rankings or backlinks, or crawl every URL on the site, so the Search Console, Bing and analytics items stay on your own list.