New website SEO checklist: get a new site indexed and ranking

What should you check before a new website goes live?

Before launch, check that every page is ready to be understood on its own. Work through each page template and the most important individual pages:

1. One clear H1 per page that says what the page is about, followed by logical H2 and H3 headings.
2. A unique title tag and meta description on every page, with the main phrase near the start.
3. Short, descriptive URLs in lower case with hyphens, such as /services/teeth-whitening/.
4. A self-referencing canonical tag on each page, so duplicates (with tracking parameters, for example) point back to the main version.
5. Descriptive alt text on meaningful images, and images compressed and sized for the space they fill.
6. Internal links from the homepage and navigation to every important page, with link text that describes the destination.
7. Structured data for your organisation, services, breadcrumbs and articles, tested in Google’s Rich Results Test.
8. Social sharing tags (Open Graph title, description and image) so links look right when shared.
9. A helpful 404 page that returns a real 404 status and links visitors back to key pages.
10. HTTPS everywhere, with no pages or images loading over plain HTTP.

How do you keep your rankings when you redesign a website?

Keep your rankings by giving every old URL a permanent 301 redirect to its closest new equivalent, and by keeping the content that earned those rankings. A redesign that changes URLs without redirects throws away the trust those pages built up.

• Export your current URLs from your sitemap, a site crawl and Search Console’s Performance report, so you catch pages that receive search traffic.
• Build a redirect map in a spreadsheet: old URL, new URL, status code. Map one to one wherever possible.
• Do not redirect everything to the homepage. Google tends to treat mass redirects to an unrelated page like a missing page.
• Keep winning content, even if you rewrite it. If a page ranks for a valuable search, its replacement should cover the same ground.
• Update internal links to point straight at new URLs rather than relying on redirects.

Keep the redirect map after launch. It is the quickest way to diagnose a page that has lost traffic, and you will need it again if URLs change in future.

What are the technical SEO checks on launch day?

On launch day, confirm that search engines can reach, read and index the live site. Run these checks within the first hour:

Speed problems are far easier to fix before visitors arrive. The usual causes are oversized images, heavy video, too many third-party scripts and fonts loaded without care.

How do you make a new website ready for AI search?

A new site is AI-ready when AI crawlers can reach it and its pages state facts clearly enough to quote. Build this in from the start rather than retrofitting it:

• Crawler access. Decide your robots.txt policy for AI user-agents, such as OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot for OpenAI, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and ClaudeBot for Anthropic, rather than leaving it to defaults.
• Answer-first pages. Open each key page with a direct answer to the question it targets, then the detail.
• Specific facts. Starting prices, timelines, locations, languages and opening hours, stated plainly.
• An llms.txt file summarising the business and its key pages; see llms.txt explained for what it can and cannot do.
• Consistent entity details across the site, your Business Profile and social profiles.

Our guide on how to show up in Perplexity and AI Overviews goes further.

What should you do in the first 30 days after launch?

The first month is about confirming that Google is indexing what you expect and fixing anything it reports. A simple weekly routine works:

1. Check the Page indexing report in Search Console and investigate any important pages that are not indexed.
2. Inspect your key pages with the URL Inspection tool and request indexing for any that are missing.
3. Watch for 404 errors and redirect chains, especially after a redesign, and fix them promptly.
4. Update every external link you control: your Google Business Profile, social profiles, directory listings and email signatures.
5. Ask recent customers for reviews to start building reputation around the new site.
6. Publish your first genuinely useful articles, answering the questions customers ask before buying.
7. Compare impressions and clicks week by week in Search Console to see which pages are gaining ground.

For the non-SEO side of going live, such as forms, legal pages and backups, use our broader website launch checklist.

How long does a new website take to rank?

There is no fixed timeline. Google often discovers and indexes a new site with a submitted sitemap within days to a few weeks, but ranking well for competitive searches usually takes months. Searches for your own business name tend to come first, followed by specific, local and long-tail searches, with broad competitive terms last.

A redesign of an established site with careful redirects can keep most of its visibility, though some movement while Google re-crawls is normal. Be wary of anyone who promises a date or a position.

Which SEO mistakes are most common at launch?

Nearly all launch mistakes come from the staging site or from missed redirects. The ones we see most often:

• A noindex tag or “Disallow: /” left over from staging.
• The staging site itself left public and indexed, creating a duplicate. Password-protect it instead.
• Old URLs returning 404 errors because no redirect map was made.
• Duplicate title tags copied across every page of a template.
• Uncompressed hero images and videos slowing the first impression.
• Missing hreflang on bilingual sites, covered in our bilingual website SEO guide.

At PJW Partners, we have launched 50+ websites, and this checklist is built into every one. Most of our sites go live in 3 to 6 weeks, with the SEO foundations in place from the first day; see what is included. If you are about to launch or relaunch, tell us your timeline and we will help you go live without losing ground.

Questions