The SEO Website Launch Checklist for Web Agencies

Launch day is when a client judges their new website, and when a lot of SEO quietly goes wrong. A staging setting left on, a missing redirect or a canonical pointing at the test domain can undo months of rankings in a week. This website launch checklist covers the SEO checks every web agency should run before and after go-live, so the client's new site starts stronger than the old one, not weaker.

Before launch: on the staging site

1. Crawl the old site first

Before anything changes, audit the live site and keep the results. It gives you a list of every URL that currently exists (you'll need it for redirects) and a baseline score to compare against after launch. It's also useful when a client later asks why traffic changed.

2. Map every old URL to a new one

Any page whose address changes needs a 301 redirect from the old URL to its closest equivalent. Put the old URLs from your crawl in a spreadsheet next to their new addresses. Redirect to the most relevant page, not the home page, and avoid chains where one redirect leads to another.

3. Write unique titles and meta descriptions

New templates often launch with the site name as every page title, or with no meta descriptions at all. Check each important page has its own title (about 50–60 characters) and description (about 120–155 characters).

4. Check headings and content

Each page should have one clear H1 that describes it. Watch for placeholder text, empty pages and thin pages that were "to be finished later".

5. Fix images

Large uncompressed images are one of the most common causes of a slow new site. Compress them, add width and height attributes so the page doesn't jump while loading, and give meaningful images alt text.

On launch day

6. Remove the staging blocks

The single most damaging launch mistake is going live with the staging site's search engine block still in place. Check that:

• robots.txt doesn't contain Disallow: / for all user agents,
• pages don't have a noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header,
• the CMS setting "discourage search engines" (or similar) is switched off.

An audit flags these as Directives: Noindex and Response Codes: Internal Blocked by Robots.txt, so you can confirm nothing important is hidden.

7. Check canonicals point at the live domain

Canonical tags copied from staging often still point at staging.example.com. Every canonical should use the live domain, usually with each page pointing at itself. If you need a refresher, see what a canonical tag is and when to use one.

8. Make sure everything is on HTTPS

The whole site should load over HTTPS, with HTTP addresses redirecting to it. Look for Security: HTTP URLs and Security: Mixed Content, which shows images or scripts still loading over HTTP.

9. Test the redirects

Test a sample of old URLs from your spreadsheet, including the most visited pages and any with links from other sites. Each should land on the right page with a single 301.

After launch

10. Crawl the new site

Run a full audit of the live site within an hour of launch. Look first for:

• Response Codes: Internal Client Error (4xx): broken links, usually from menus or content still pointing at old URLs,
• Response Codes: Internal Redirection (3xx): internal links that go through redirects and should be updated to the final address,
• Canonicals: Missing and Directives: Noindex.

11. Tell Google about the new site

Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console. If the domain changed, use Search Console's Change of Address tool too. Google's guide to site moves and migrations covers this step by step.

12. Compare before and after

Compare the post-launch audit with the one you ran on the old site. A higher score and fewer issues is a simple, visual way to show the client what they've gained. If anything got worse, you'll catch it before they do. Keep an eye on Search Console for a few weeks, since some ranking movement is normal while Google recrawls the site.

Make the website launch checklist part of every project

Agencies that run this website launch checklist on every project avoid the awkward "our traffic has dropped since the new site" call. They also get something to show the client: a before-and-after report that proves the new site is technically sound.

FormedEasy runs the crawling and checking in one go, so the audit steps on this list take minutes rather than an afternoon. You can audit a client site for free and see it on your next launch.