A practical SEO checklist for a brand-new website

Before launch

Get the fundamentals right while the site is still small — retrofitting them across dozens of pages is the expensive version.

• One unique title and meta description per page.
• A single H1 per page, with real heading structure below it.
• Descriptive alt text on every meaningful image.
• Self-referencing canonical URLs.
• A sitemap.xml and a robots.txt that does not block the site.
• Compressed images and lazy loading below the fold.

Right after launch

Verify the domain in Google Search Console, submit the sitemap, and check the mobile rendering of your most important page. Fix anything reported as crawled but not indexed before writing more content.

Then keep publishing

Pages that answer a specific question your customers ask will outperform generic service copy. Write one per month, link it from a relevant existing page, and keep the older ones accurate.