A launch-day SEO checklist for new websites

A new website can look perfect and still be invisible to search engines because of one forgotten setting. This checklist covers the basics we verify on every launch.

Technical foundations

• The site is served over HTTPS.
• Pages are indexable: no accidental noindex tags and nothing important blocked in robots.txt.
• An XML sitemap exists and is submitted to Search Console.
• Every page has a canonical URL.
• Old URLs redirect to their new equivalents with permanent (301) redirects.
• The site is fast and works well on mobile.
• A helpful custom 404 page guides visitors back.

On-page basics

• A unique title of about 60 characters and a description of about 150 to 160 characters on every page.
• One h1 per page, followed by a logical order of h2 and h3 headings.
• Descriptive internal links with meaningful anchor text.
• Useful alt text on meaningful images.
• Short, readable URLs.

Structured data and metadata

In Next.js, set metadata per page, and add JSON-LD for your organisation and for page types such as articles, services and FAQs.

export const metadata = {
  title: "Website Development | DEVNTOM Solutions",
  description: "Fast, search-ready websites built with Next.js.",
  alternates: { canonical: "/services/website-development" },
};

Content

• Each page targets one clear topic and answers the question behind the search.
• Important pages are linked from the main navigation or from related pages.
• There is no leftover placeholder text or thin, duplicate content.

Tracking and local search

• Connect Google Search Console and your analytics before launch.
• Create or update your Google Business Profile, with the same name, address and phone number as your website.

After launch

Check indexing and crawl errors in Search Console during the first weeks, fix anything flagged, and keep publishing helpful content around the questions your customers actually ask.