Launching a website? Bravr CEO Shahin Fard looks at some key factors that should be on every pre-launch checklist.
Whether you are launching a new website or redesigning an existing one, it can be a daunting and pulse raising task. Undertaking the appropriate pre-launch checks is the best way of ensuring a smooth launch.
With that in mind, I have compiled an exhaustive pre-launch checklist, starting with SEO.
Please bear in mind that this checklist is primarily aimed at:
- More technical users
- Those who operate using a LAMP environment. Principles still apply for Microsoft users, however the explanations may not apply to your environment.
Website crawl
Any broken links should be addressed before pushing the website live, using redirects to a parent page or homepage.
SEO friendly URLs
We still recommend URLs are clean and descriptive, not too long and close to the site root.
Canonical (www)
In test environments you may only have an IP address. If this is the case, you may need to add two entries to your hosts file to point to the development IP.
Canonical (tags)
More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
HREF Lang
More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Robots.txt
Xml Sitemap
It is worth paying the XML configuration a little attention. There is no point generating entries for redundant pages, or setting everything to daily. It is a pointless waste of crawler resources and bandwidth.
We find that Excel is good for comparing the XML sitemap against the website crawl. It’s a sanity check for XML sitemap generation to ensure all pages are being generated.
Tip: Use “Show duplicate values” in Excel and Autofilter to show non-listed pages.
Redirects (redesign only)
We take the following steps:
1. Crawl the OLD website and extract the full list of all URL’s
2. Use Excel concatenate to pair the new URL (IP/staging domain) with the OLD extracted URL
3. Export the list as a text file and run through a website crawler or our tool: Check My URLs
The next is to check external inbound links:
1. Grab a list of all external inbound links from GWT, Majestic, Moz etc
2. Use Excel concatenate to pair the new URL (IP/staging domain) with URL the inbound link is pointing to.
3. Export the list as a text file and run through a website crawler or our tool: Check My URLs
Tip: Check for double/triple redirects. Avoid more than two redirects from source URL to final destination URL as search engines will give up. Pay special attention to URLs without end slashes as often these are redirected twice.
Titles and Meta Data
Semantics and Headings
Next Steps
While the above guide covers the SEO elements that must be checked before a website launches, there are a multitude of other factors that must be reviewed to ensure that your website does not encounter any usability, accessibility or technical issues post-launch. Over the coming weeks, I will be adding to this guide to create an exhaustive pre-launch checklist.
Our commitment to performing pre-launch checks is why so many clients turn to Bravr for the design and development of robust and high-performing websites.
Contact us to discover how Bravr can improve your web presence.