A Technical SEO Checklist for New Websites

New websites rarely fail at SEO because of content. They fail because of plumbing: pages Google cannot find, duplicate versions of the same URL, images that take four seconds to load, and structured data nobody validated. This is the checklist we run before every launch. It takes half a day and it saves months.

1. Make sure the site can be indexed at all

Start at the top. Check that the site is not blocking crawlers: no leftover Disallow: / in robots.txt from staging, no "discourage search engines" checkbox left enabled, and no noindex meta tags on pages that should rank. It sounds obvious; it is still the single most common launch-day problem we find.

Then verify the opposite problem: every important page must be reachable. Crawl the site with a tool (or a careful manual walk) and confirm internal links, not just the sitemap, connect every page you care about.

2. Pick one canonical URL and commit to it

Search engines treat http://example.com, https://example.com, and https://www.example.com as different sites until you tell them otherwise. Redirect every variant to your single preferred form, set a matching canonical tag on each page, and make sure internal links use the final form directly instead of hopping through redirects.

3. Fix speed before you fix anything cosmetic

Performance is a ranking input and a conversion killer. The short version:

• Resize and compress images; serve them at the size they are displayed.
• Load CSS and JS in the smallest files your design allows.
• Enable caching on the server, not just in the browser.
• Check Core Web Vitals with real field data after a few weeks of traffic — lab scores are a proxy, not the verdict.

Aim for a fast worst-case mobile device, not a fast office laptop.

4. Give every page a title worth clicking

Templates produce titles like "Home - Acme Ltd". Rewrite them: unique, specific, front-loaded with the words a customer would use. The same goes for meta descriptions — they do not directly rank you higher, but they decide whether people click when you do rank.

5. Add structured data by hand

Structured data (JSON-LD) tells search engines what your organization is, what your pages are about, and how your site search works. At minimum ship Organization and WebSite site-wide, plus Article on posts, BreadcrumbList where breadcrumbs exist, and FAQPage where a real FAQ is visible. Validate everything; a broken schema is worse than none.

6. Submit a sitemap — then stop worrying about it

A clean XML sitemap that contains only canonical, indexable URLs, submitted through your search console account, is enough. Re-submit when you add sections, not every day. Watch the coverage report for surprises: pages Google found that you did not list, or listed pages it refuses to index.

7. Plan the redirects you will need on day one

If the new site replaces an old one, map every old URL to its new home and implement 301 redirects before launch. Every unmapped URL is a small amount of trust thrown away — and a 404 a customer may hit from an old bookmark or link.

8. Set up measurement before you need it

Install analytics with conversion events that map to real business actions — enquiries, sign-ups, calls. Traffic without conversions is a hobby, and you want the baseline in place the day you launch, not the day you wonder why the phone stopped ringing.

The honest summary

None of this guarantees rankings — nothing does. It removes the self-inflicted problems that keep good sites down and gives every future effort a fair chance. Work the list, launch, then put your energy into the part that actually compounds: being genuinely useful to the people you want to reach.