We go through the following twelve points before every launch, small sites included. They are ordered by how much damage they cause: what is at the top costs most when missing, and is hardest to repair afterwards.
The three that get most expensive
If you only have time for three things, make it these. All three share a trait: the damage only becomes visible weeks later, and by then it cannot be fully undone.
- 1. A redirect for every old address. Every subpage of the old website needs a new destination. Without the redirect, existing search results and inbound links run into nothing — and the visibility built up over years is gone
- 2. Record the old site completely, beforehand. After launch there is no way to look up which pages existed. Export the list first; do not go hunting for it later
- 3. Check analytics and Search Console on launch day. If broken measurement is only noticed two weeks later, you are missing two weeks of comparison data — precisely the data that would show whether the relaunch achieved anything
Technical
- 4. The site is reachable over https, and http redirects there automatically
- 5. Only one variant of the domain resolves — with or without www, and the other redirects. Both reachable at once means two websites with identical content
- 6. The sitemap is reachable, current, and submitted in Google Search Console
- 7. The test phase is over: the site is no longer blocked from search engines. A forgotten block left over from the build phase is the quietest and most infuriating launch mistake there is
Content and usability
- 8. Every page has its own title and description — no duplicates, no empty fields
- 9. Every meaningful image has alternative text
- 10. The contact form has been submitted for real once, and the message actually arrived. Not assumed: checked
Legal and operational
- 11. Imprint and privacy policy exist, are current, and are reachable from every page. The cookie notice asks before setting non-essential cookies, not after
- 12. Backups run automatically, and somebody knows how to restore one. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a backup
Why the order matters more than the list
Almost every relaunch checklist online is sorted by topic — technical first, then content, then legal. It reads tidily, but it does not help under time pressure, and before a launch you are always under time pressure.
So this list is ordered by how much damage each omission causes. The difference is practical: a missing alternative text can be added four weeks later with nothing lost. A missing redirect costs visibility over those same four weeks that does not come back, because the old search results drop out of the index in the meantime.
So if on the eve of launch you realise you will not get through everything: work top to bottom and leave something at the bottom undone. That is the right decision, not the lazy one.
“Surely the agency handles this”
Usually, yes. The objection is nevertheless why we publish this list: it is useful even if you are not working with us — as a set of questions to put to your supplier.
Two points are especially worth it, because they cannot be settled by assurance, only by looking: ask to see the redirect list before the site goes live — not the promise that it exists, the file itself. And submit the contact form yourself rather than being told it works.
Both take five minutes and cover the two mistakes we see most often in practice.
What to watch in the first two weeks
The work is not over after launch, but it does get quiet. It is worth keeping an eye on three things for the first fortnight: whether Search Console reports new errors, whether the number of indexed pages rises rather than falls, and whether enquiries still arrive.
A short dip in visibility straight after a relaunch is normal, because search engines have to take in the new structure first. What is not normal is a dip that has not recovered after four weeks. At that point, go back and look at point 1.
And one piece of advice we had to give ourselves: resist the urge to start tweaking in week one. If you keep changing things throughout, you cannot afterwards say what worked.
Instead, write down three numbers on launch day: the count of indexed pages, last week’s visitor figure, and last month’s number of enquiries. Without that starting point there is no way to judge four weeks later whether the relaunch achieved anything — and the discussion becomes a matter of feeling rather than measurement.
That is exactly why point 3 sits so high. Everything else on this list can be caught up later; a missing before-figure cannot be reconstructed.
Common questions about going live
Early in the week and early in the day — Tuesday or Wednesday morning. The reason is mundane: if something jams, everyone involved is reachable. A Friday-afternoon launch means, at worst, a weekend with a half-working site.
Take the list of old addresses and open a sample of them in a browser. Each must land on the matching new page without an error — not on the home page. Redirecting every old address to the home page in bulk is the most common botch, and to a search engine it looks like a deleted page.
Usually a few days to a few weeks. You can speed it up by submitting the sitemap in Google Search Console and requesting indexing for the most important pages individually. The timing cannot be promised.
Keep a backup, not the running site. A complete backup from the week before launch is your fallback if something fundamental was missed. Leaving the old site online in parallel is a bad idea — two websites with the same content compete with each other.
First check whether anything is being measured at all: in many cases it is not the enquiry that has gone but the tracking. Then check the redirects and look for new errors in Search Console. Only once both are clean is it worth talking about content.
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