Vorlagen
Website Launch SEO Checklist
One item on this list has removed more sites from Google than everything else combined: the staging noindex that shipped to production.
Starte ein frisches DomainLens-Audit und nutze den Report als Prioritätenliste.
Before launch
Check the noindex twice, on the built artefact rather than in the source. It is invisible to visitors, silent in monitoring, and removes the entire site from search until someone notices.
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| No staging noindex in the build | The single most expensive launch mistake |
| robots.txt is the production file | Staging files block everything |
| One canonical hostname chosen | Expensive to change once indexed |
| HTTPS with auto-renewal that reloads | An expiry is an outage |
| Titles and descriptions on every template | Not just the home page |
| Canonical tags emitted | Most frameworks do not add them |
| 404 route returns 404, not 200 | Prevents unbounded soft 404s |
| Sitemap generated from content | Not hand-maintained |
| Analytics and Search Console ready | Data starts when you verify |
If URLs are changing
A launch that changes URLs is a migration and deserves the migration process. See the migration checklist and the URL mapping template .
- 1Build a complete inventory of old URLs from a crawl, Search Console, analytics and the sitemap.
- 2Map every one to a new equivalent, or mark it explicitly as retiring with a 410.
- 3Implement 301s that land directly on the final URL, without chains.
- 4Record current rankings and traffic for top pages so you can tell later whether anything broke.
- 5Keep the old sitemap available briefly so Google recrawls and discovers the redirects.
Check the built artefact, not the source
Almost every item on the pre-launch list can pass in the repository and fail in production. An environment variable that was not set, a build step that used the wrong config, a CDN serving a cached version of a file you replaced — each produces a site that is correct in source control and wrong on the internet.
So run the checks against the deployed URL from outside your network, not against a local build or a staging host. Your own machine may resolve DNS differently, may be inside a firewall exception, and will almost certainly have cached assets a first-time visitor does not have.
The staging noindex is the case that makes this rule worth following literally. It is usually injected by an environment flag rather than written in the templates, which means reading the source will not find it and only fetching the live page will.
The first hour after go-live
- 1Fetch the home page and a template page with curl; confirm 200 and no noindex.
- 2Fetch /robots.txt and confirm it is the production version.
- 3Fetch a nonexistent path and confirm it returns 404.
- 4Confirm the non-canonical hostname redirects in one hop.
- 5Check the certificate is valid and the chain is complete.
- 6Submit the sitemap in Search Console.
SITE=https://example.com
curl -sI $SITE/ | head -n 1
curl -s $SITE/ | grep -oE '<meta name="robots"[^>]*>'
curl -s $SITE/robots.txt | head -n 5
curl -sI $SITE/definitely-not-a-page | head -n 1
curl -sIL http://www.example.com/ -o /dev/null \
-w '%{num_redirects} hops -> %{url_effective}\n'The first two weeks
For a brand-new site rather than a relaunch, the expectations are different — see the startup checklist .
- Watch the Pages report for unexpected exclusions, particularly noindex and soft 404.
- Confirm key pages are indexed with URL Inspection rather than assuming.
- Watch server logs for Googlebot hitting old URLs and confirm the redirects fire.
- Check Core Web Vitals once field data begins accumulating.
- Expect fluctuation; treat a sustained decline past six weeks as a problem rather than settling.
- What is the most common launch mistake?
- A staging noindex shipping to production. It is invisible to visitors and removes the whole site from search until someone checks.
- Should I submit the sitemap immediately?
- Yes, once you have confirmed the site is indexable. Submitting a sitemap for a noindexed site achieves nothing.
- How soon should I expect traffic?
- A relaunch on an established domain recovers within weeks. A new domain takes months regardless of how clean the launch was.