Pre-Launch SEO Checklist: 12 Mistakes to Catch Before a Site Goes Live
Most launch-day SEO problems are not clever technical issues. They are leftovers from the build: a setting that kept search engines out while the site was in staging and never got switched back. These twelve checks catch the mistakes that most often keep a new site out of Google or split its signals between several addresses.
Mistakes that keep the site out of Google
Start here. If any of these is wrong, nothing else on the list will matter until it is fixed.
- Remove leftover noindex. Staging sites are often set to noindex. Open the page source of the live homepage and search for a robots meta tag. If it contains noindex, Google will drop the page. Check key inner pages too, because some tools apply the setting per page type.
- Check robots.txt. A line such as Disallow: / blocks all crawling. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt after launch and confirm it allows the pages you want found, and points to your sitemap.
- Do not rely on robots.txt to hide staging. A blocked URL can still appear in results if other sites link to it. Protect staging with a password, and use noindex only as a backup.
- Make sure the sitemap lists the right URLs. Your sitemap should contain the live address of every page you want indexed. A sitemap full of staging addresses or redirecting URLs sends mixed signals.
Mistakes that split or confuse signals
- Fix canonical tags. A canonical link that still points to the staging domain, or to the homepage on every page, tells Google that the live page is a copy. Each page should point to its own live address.
- Pick one version of the address. http and https, and www and non-www, should all redirect to one preferred version with a permanent (301) redirect.
- Redirect old URLs. If you replaced an existing site, map the important old addresses to their new equivalents with 301 redirects, or the old rankings and links are lost.
- Give every page its own title and meta description. Duplicate or missing ones make results harder to read and harder to click.
Mistakes that hurt quality and trust
- Run a broken link check. Dead internal links frustrate visitors and waste crawling effort. Fix them before launch.
- Add a helpful 404 page. Visitors who mistype an address should land on a page with navigation back to the main sections, and the server should still return a 404 status.
- Check images. Compress large images and add short, accurate alt text to meaningful images.
- Connect measurement. Add the site to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap on launch day, and set up your analytics so you can see what happens next.
A quick way to check most of this
You can check these by hand, page by page, but it is easy to miss one. Nyrolo's free audit crawls a bounded number of pages and reports broken links, missing titles and descriptions, canonical and social tags, robots.txt and sitemap presence, and security headers, with fix steps for WordPress, Webflow, Shopify and custom code. It reads the HTML the server sends, so it cannot see problems that only appear after JavaScript runs.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my site is blocked from Google?
Check for a noindex robots meta tag in the page source, check robots.txt for a Disallow rule covering the page, and use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console, which tells you whether Google can index the page.
How long does Google take to index a new site?
It varies from a few days to several weeks. Submitting a sitemap and linking to the site from other places can help Google find it sooner, but nobody can promise a specific timeline.
Should I use robots.txt or noindex to keep staging out of Google?
Use a password on the staging site. Robots.txt stops crawling but does not always stop a URL from appearing, and noindex only works if Google can fetch the page.
Keep reading
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Nyrolo runs a bounded pre-launch audit and gives you a 0-100 score, a verdict and fix steps for WordPress, Webflow, Shopify and custom code.
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