Pre-launch SEO checklist
You are about to deploy. Run this checklist before flipping the switch. Every missed item is organic traffic you will never get back. These checks take 15 minutes and save months of recovery.
Critical
— 9 itemsEach page needs a distinct, descriptive title under 60 characters. Duplicate or missing titles tank your click-through rate in SERPs.
Every landing page, product page, and blog post needs a meta description between 120-160 characters. Google may rewrite it, but a good one improves CTR.
Prevent duplicate content issues by setting rel=canonical. This tells search engines which version of a URL is the original.
Set og:title, og:description, and og:image so links shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Slack render correctly. Missing OG images = no clicks.
A misconfigured robots.txt can block search engines from your entire site. Ensure you are not accidentally disallowing important paths.
One H1 per page. It should contain your primary keyword and match user intent. Multiple H1s confuse crawlers about page topic.
Set up Google Search Console
Verify your domain in GSC. This is how you monitor indexation, submit sitemaps, and catch crawl errors. Non-negotiable.
Verify HTTPS is enforced everywhere
All URLs should redirect to HTTPS. Mixed content warnings hurt trust signals and rankings.
Ensure <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> is set. Without it, mobile rendering breaks and Google penalizes you.
Important
— 4 itemsAdd Organization schema to your homepage, Article to blog posts, Product to product pages. Rich results drive significantly higher CTR.
Submit an XML sitemap
Generate and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Include all canonical URLs, exclude noindex pages.
Descriptive alt attributes improve accessibility and image search rankings. Skip decorative images with alt="".
Check for broken internal links
Crawl your site and fix any 404s. Broken links waste crawl budget and frustrate users. Run npx indxel crawl to find them.
Nice-to-have
— 1 itemMissing favicons trigger 404s in your logs and look unprofessional in browser tabs and search results.
Frequently asked questions
When should I run this checklist?
Run it 24-48 hours before launch. This gives you time to fix any issues without delaying your deploy. Better yet, integrate Indxel into your CI pipeline so these checks run automatically.
What is the single most important pre-launch SEO task?
Setting unique title tags on every page. Without titles, Google has nothing to display in search results. Everything else builds on that foundation.
Can I automate this checklist?
Yes. Run npx indxel check --ci in your build pipeline. It validates title tags, meta descriptions, OG images, canonical URLs, structured data, and more. Build fails if critical rules break.
Automate this checklist
Stop checking manually. Indxel validates SEO rules on every build and blocks broken deploys.