New Website Launch Checklist
For developers, marketers and owners about to take a brand-new site live. Run it in the final week on staging, then again on launch day against the production domain.
0% 0 of 11 done
- critical
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Staging settings copied to production are the most common reason a new site never appears in search.
- How to check or fix it
- View the page source of key templates and look for a robots meta tag with noindex. Also check the X-Robots-Tag header in DevTools Network and the WordPress setting Discourage search engines.
- critical
Why and how
- Why it matters
- A leftover Disallow: / rule blocks all crawling, and a missing sitemap line slows discovery of new URLs.
- How to check or fix it
- Open /robots.txt on the live domain and read every rule. Test important URLs with the Search Console robots.txt report.
- critical
Why and how
- Why it matters
- A clean sitemap helps search engines find every page and shows you which ones get indexed.
- How to check or fix it
- Generate the sitemap from the CMS, open it to spot-check URLs, then submit it under Sitemaps in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- critical
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Without verified properties you cannot see indexing errors, queries or manual actions after launch.
- How to check or fix it
- Add a Domain property in Search Console using DNS verification, and import the site into Bing Webmaster Tools from Search Console.
- important
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Template defaults often ship with duplicate or placeholder titles that waste ranking opportunities.
- How to check or fix it
- Crawl the site with Screaming Frog and review the Page Titles, Meta Description and H1 tabs for duplicates, missing or lorem ipsum values.
- important
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Canonicals tell search engines which URL version to index when parameters or trailing slashes create duplicates.
- How to check or fix it
- In Screaming Frog, open the Canonicals tab and check for missing, non-indexable or cross-domain canonical targets.
- important
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Several live versions of the same page split links and create duplicate content.
- How to check or fix it
- Request each variant with curl -I and confirm a single 301 hop ends at the preferred HTTPS URL.
- important
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Launch traffic is the baseline for every later report, and lost data cannot be recovered.
- How to check or fix it
- Open the site with GA4 DebugView or Tag Assistant and trigger form submissions and other conversions.
- important
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Heavy images and scripts added late in a build often push pages past the 2.5s LCP and 200ms INP thresholds.
- How to check or fix it
- Run PageSpeed Insights on the home, a category and a content page, and fix any failing metrics before promotion.
- nice
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Structured data helps search engines connect the site to your brand name and logo.
- How to check or fix it
- Add JSON-LD for Organization with name, URL and logo, then validate it in the Rich Results Test.
- nice
Why and how
- Why it matters
- Soft 404s, where an error page returns 200, clutter the index and confuse crawlers.
- How to check or fix it
- Visit a made-up URL and check the status in DevTools Network. Add links to the home page and main sections on the error page.
Checklist complete. Re-run it after your next release or major change, and use the related lists below to keep going.
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Common questions
How long does a new website take to appear in Google?
Pages can be indexed within days when the site is crawlable and has a sitemap, but there is no guaranteed timeline. Rankings for competitive terms usually take months to build.
Should I launch with all pages or add them gradually?
Launch with the pages that serve real user needs and are finished. Thin or placeholder pages are better left unpublished until they have useful content.