Don’t Launch a Digital Ghost Ship: My Pre-Flight Technical SEO Checklist
I once launched a beautiful new website and then spent two weeks wondering why it was getting less traffic than a lemonade stand in Antarctica. It turned out I had left a tiny line of code in place that basically told Google, “Nothing to see here, move along.” I had built a ghost ship. It was floating on the internet, but nobody, especially not search engines, knew it was there.
Launching a website without a solid technical SEO foundation is like trying to bake a cake by just throwing ingredients at the wall and hoping for the best. It’s messy, and you won’t like the result. To save you from my past pain, I’ve put together the ultimate SEO checklist I now use before any new site goes live. Let’s make sure your rocket ship actually reaches the moon, or at least the first page of Google Search.
Phase 1: The Pre-Launch Blueprint (Don’t Build on a Swamp)
Before you write a single line of code or choose a single color palette, you need to get these basics right. This is the foundation of your digital house.
- Sensible Site Structure: I plan my site structure like a family tree. The homepage is the great-grandparent, main categories are the grandparents, and so on. A logical hierarchy makes it easy for both users and search engines to understand what your site is about. This is crucial if you ever plan to scale with something like programmatic SEO.
- Clean URL Slugs: Your URLs should be short, descriptive, and readable by humans. Avoid ugly URLs like `yoursite.com/p?id=123x_v4`. Instead, aim for `yoursite.com/services/technical-seo`. It’s a small thing that makes a big difference.
- One WWW vs. Non-WWW Version: Decide if your site will live at `www.yoursite.com` or `yoursite.com`. Pick one and stick with it. Then, make sure the other version permanently redirects (using a 301 redirect) to your chosen one. This prevents duplicate content issues.
- HTTPS Everywhere: This isn’t optional anymore. An SSL certificate encrypts data and tells users your site is secure. Browsers will flag sites without one, and Google prefers them. It’s the digital equivalent of putting locks on your doors.
Phase 2: The Core Engine Check (Can Google Find and Understand You?)
This is the nitty-gritty part. These checks ensure that search engine crawlers can efficiently find, crawl, and index your content. This is the heart of any good technical site audit.
Crawlability and Indexability
- Check Your Robots.txt File: This little text file is the bouncer for your website, telling search engine bots which areas they can and cannot enter. Make sure you aren’t accidentally blocking important pages or CSS/JS files that are needed to render the page correctly.
- Create an XML Sitemap: Think of this as a treasure map you hand directly to Google. It lists all the important URLs on your site that you want to be indexed. Once your site is live, submit this map via Google Search Console.
- Hunt for Rogue ‘noindex’ Tags: A ‘noindex’ tag tells Google to ignore a page completely. These are useful for thank-you pages or internal admin areas, but disastrous if left on your homepage by mistake (ask me how I know).
- Handle Your JavaScript: If you’re building a sleek Single-Page Application (SPA), you have to be extra careful. Google has gotten better at rendering JavaScript, but it’s not perfect. Ensuring your important content and links are accessible is a whole adventure in SPA SEO.
On-Page Signals
- Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Every page needs a unique title tag and meta description. These are your sales pitch on the search results page. They don’t have to be perfect at launch, but they can’t be blank.
- Header Tags (H2, H3, H4): Use headers to structure your content logically. They help users and search engines skim your content and understand its hierarchy. Don’t just make text bold and big; use the actual header tags.
- Image Alt Text: Describe your images using alt text. This is crucial for accessibility and helps search engines understand what your images are about, giving you a chance to rank in image search.
Phase 3: The Post-Launch Shakedown
You’ve launched! Pop the champagne, but don’t go on vacation just yet. Now we monitor and refine.
- Set Up Google Search Console & Analytics: This is non-negotiable. Google Search Console is how Google communicates with you about your site’s health. Analytics tells you what actual humans are doing. Install both on day one.
- Check Site Speed: A slow website will sink your rankings faster than an anchor in a bathtub. Test your site’s performance with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. If you’re seeing red, it’s time to dive into optimizing your Core Web Vitals.
- Verify Mobile-Friendliness: More than half of all web traffic is mobile. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your site looks and works great on a tiny screen.
- Implement Basic Schema Markup: Schema is a type of code that helps search engines understand your content better. You can use it to specify that a piece of content is a recipe, an article, or a local business. It’s like giving Google a labeled diagram of your website.
- Run an Accessibility Check: A website that’s hard to use is a website that people will leave. Ensuring your site is accessible to people with disabilities is not only the right thing to do, but it also improves the user experience for everyone. Don’t build a digital obstacle course; build an inclusive space. A good accessibility checklist is a great place to start.
This might seem like a lot, but tackling these technical SEO items before launch will save you countless headaches down the road. It turns your website from a hopeful message in a bottle into a guided missile aimed straight for the top of the search results. It’s a fundamental part of the whole quest to tame the SEO beast. Now go forth and launch with confidence!