Technical SEO Checklist: 12 Checks Before Launch

A new website can lose months of traffic because of one wrong setting. Run through these twelve checks before launch, and again right after.

Crawling and indexing

1. Remove "noindex" from live pages. Staging sites often block search engines. Make sure that setting does not go live.
2. Check robots.txt. It should not block important pages, CSS or JavaScript, and it should point to your sitemap.
3. Submit an XML sitemap. List only pages you want indexed, then submit it in Google Search Console.
4. Set canonical tags. Every page should point to its own preferred address, so duplicates do not compete.

Redirects and URLs

1. Redirect every old URL. If you are replacing a site, map each old address to the closest new page with a 301 redirect.
2. Pick one version of the domain. Choose https and either www or no www, and redirect everything else to it.
3. Fix broken internal links. A crawl will show links that lead to missing pages.

Speed and experience

1. Test Core Web Vitals. Check loading, layout shift and responsiveness on mobile.
2. Compress images. Use modern formats such as WebP and set width and height so the layout does not jump.

Content and structure

1. Give each page a unique title and description. Duplicate titles confuse search engines and users.
2. Use one H1 per page. Then organise sections with H2 and H3 headings.
3. Add structured data. Organization or Person, breadcrumbs and FAQ schema help search engines and AI tools understand the site.

After launch

Watch Search Console for the first few weeks: coverage errors, pages that are not indexed and any drop in impressions. Most launch problems show up there first.

Want a second pair of eyes? My technical SEO audit covers all of this and more, and I also build websites with these checks done from day one.

Written by

Omar Abobakar

AI-driven SEO specialist in Lahore. I help brands rank on Google and get cited by AI, and I build my own sites to test what works.