The Website Launch Checklist: Ship-Day Checks for SEO, GEO, Performance & Legal

Marketing checklists tell you to announce; this one makes sure the site is actually findable, fast and legal when they arrive. It is the technical ship-day list we run before every release — indexation, metadata, structured data, AI-crawler access, performance budgets, redirects and the legal lines most teams discover too late. Print it, run it top to bottom, fix what fails, then launch.

Indexation and URLs

• Canonical URLs set on every template; no parameter duplicates of the same page.
• sitemap.xml returns 200 and lists only canonical, indexable URLs; submitted in Search Console.
• Staging auth and noindex removed from production; the robots meta tag is index,follow where intended.
• Apex/www decided once, 301 (not 302) everywhere else; HTTPS enforced with HSTS.
• 404 page returns status 404 (not a soft 200 shell) — soft 404s poison crawl budgets and look like thin pages.

Metadata and social

• Unique title and description per template, primary keyword early, no year-stamping you will forget to update.
• Open Graph + Twitter cards with absolute image URLs and 1200×630 assets; preview-tested in a debugger.
• Favicon and touch icons at canonical paths (they show up in tabs, bookmarks and AI answer UIs).

Structured data and AI access

• Schema.org on the pages that matter: Organization, Product/SoftwareApplication, BreadcrumbList, FAQ where real FAQs exist; validated, zero errors in Rich Results Test.
• robots.txt deliberately allows or blocks AI crawlers per policy; the decision is written down, not accidental (rules and agents in our AI crawler guide).
• /llms.txt present with the canonical one-paragraph description and 5–15 absolute links (templates and validation).
• The canonical product description used on the site matches the one in directory listings — models reconcile, and contradictions lose (why consistency moves citations).

Performance budget

• LCP under 2.5s on mid-tier mobile over 4G; hero image sized, modern format, preloaded or priority-hinted.
• No layout shift from late-loading fonts or banners (CLS < 0.1); font-display swap with sized fallbacks.
• Third-party scripts audited: each tag has an owner and a removal date; analytics deferred.
• Images below the fold lazy; above the fold never lazy.

Redirects and continuity

• Redirect map for every old URL from prior sites, campaigns and bios; tested one-by-one, not spot-checked.
• No redirect chains longer than one hop; internal links updated to final URLs.
• Backlink audit of your top referring domains: the URLs they point at still resolve (a relaunch silently orphans years of link equity).

Legal and trust lines

• Privacy policy and terms live and linked in the footer; cookie/consent behavior matches what the policy claims.
• Contact/imprint requirements for your jurisdictions present (EU traders: imprint; SaaS: clear pricing page — "prices excluding VAT" surprises are a conversion and compliance issue).
• Accessibility basics: keyboard-reachable controls, visible focus, labeled inputs, contrast on body text — also what AI answer engines quote when describing your product's quality.

After launch (first 72 hours)

• Search Console: coverage and crawl stats clean; no unexpected noindex or 5xx spikes.
• Analytics baseline recorded; referral traffic from launch posts visible and tagged.
• Ask four assistants your brand question once — log what they say about you today, so you have a before/after for every later change (method).
• Submit the launch to distribution channels while momentum exists: directories, communities, newsletters — the pre-launch checklist has the channel list; the where-to-launch guide ranks them.

FAQ

Do I need all of this for a one-page site? The indexation, metadata, AI-access and legal blocks, yes; the rest scales with page count. A one-pager fails launches on missing llms.txt/OG images as often as a big site does.

What breaks most often in real launches? Soft 404s, orphaned backlinks from old URLs, and staging noindex left in production. All three are invisible from inside the team and obvious from a crawler's seat.

Does launch-day SEO differ for AI answers? Only in emphasis: AI surfaces weight third-party corroboration and fact consistency more, so the listing footprint (step: distribution) is part of SEO now, not a separate channel.

Launching a product, not just a site? Get the distribution layer right the same day: submit on aat.ee for permanent dofollow listings across the network.