If you're launching a brand new site, or launching a refresh of an existing site, it is absolutely essential that you include your SEO early in the planning process so you can avoid common SEO pitfalls in your site launch. 

We recently hosted an HubSpot User Group event that was focused entirely on this topic: SEO Site Launch Checklist. We have a recording of the event for you below, as well as the checklist itself.

Watch the Recap: Your SEO Will Thank You

SEO Site Launch Checklist

To get the real value of the SEO Site Launch Checklist, you'll want to watch the video where we dig into our most frequently asked questions and discuss different use cases that we've seen work well (and those that didn't!). 

If you'd like the nitty-gritty, here's the list!

Pre-Launch Planning

Document Current Pages & SEO Elements

• Crawl the old site and the new site currently in development (ex. ScreamingFrog).
• Document all SEO elements and status codes from old site.
• Create a redirect map from the old site to the new site.
• Migrate SEO elements and page content for all pages to the new pages in staging.

Baseline SEO Metrics

• Measure baseline data for all pages:
• Keywords
• Traffic
• Conversions
• Other key metrics

Tracking & Triggers

• If new domain, set up properties in Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Search Console
• Google Analytics/Tag Manager goals and events & tags should be documented

Identifying Opportunities for Improvement

• Internal redirects
• www/non-www & http/https versions
• Canonical tags
• XML sitemap & robots.txt files 
• Noindex, nofollow tags 
• 404 errors
• Core Web Vitals

Further reading: Are you looking to improve Core Web Vitals on your HubSpot site?

Just Before Launch

• Apply redirects from redirect map
• Update XML sitemap to match new site
• Be sure to include images, PDFs and videos in new sitemap
• Add the sitemap to the robots.txt file
• Remove any rules in the robots.txt file blocking site from being crawled

Post-Launch

• Review technical items including:
  • robots.txt to ensure content is not being blocked
  • Test canonical tags and redirects
• Check all tracking is working properly
• Submit new XML sitemap to Google Search Console to re-crawl all pages
• Crawl new site to identify any missing SEO elements or errors
• Check load times to optimize post-launch
  • FREE HubSpot CMS Site Grader Tool
• Add in additional redirects that show in Google Search Console or in the crawl

Reporting

• Business KPIs vs SEO KPIs
• Measure new site performance:
• Keyword rankings
• Organic traffic
• Traffic changes from other sources
• Perform a technical audit of new site to identify issues with:
• SEO elements
• Site speed and performance
• Core Web Vitals
• Mobile friendliness
• Indexing 
• Status codes

Send me the checklist!

Want this checklist in your email?

Help!

Need a hand ensuring that your site launch maintains your existing SEO value? Contact us.