A new site can launch looking perfect and still be invisible to search engines for months. Most of the reasons are technical and easy to fix before launch, and much harder to fix after. This is the checklist every site we build goes through.
Can search engines reach it?
- robots.txt allows the pages that should rank
- An XML sitemap lists every public page and is submitted
- Every page returns the right status code, including a real 404
- Redirects from the old site are mapped one to one
Is it fast on a real phone?
We test Core Web Vitals on a mid-range Android phone over a slow connection, not on a developer laptop. Images are sized and compressed, fonts load without shifting the layout, and nothing blocks the first paint.
Test like a visitor
If the site feels slow on a three-year-old phone, it is slow. Lab scores on a fast laptop hide the problems real users have.
Does it explain itself?
Every page gets a unique title and description, one clear H1, and a canonical URL. Organisation, breadcrumb and article schema help search engines understand what the site is and who runs it.
After launch
We connect Search Console on day one and check coverage and errors weekly for the first month. Most launch issues show up there before they show up in traffic.
- SEO
- Launch
- Performance
