Launching a site without a technical SEO pass means discovering the problems from Search Console weeks later, after the crawl budget was already spent on broken signals. This is the checklist we run before any launch.
Rendering and indexability
Verify the primary content is present in the initial HTML response, not injected only after JavaScript runs. Fetch pages with a plain HTTP client and read what a crawler reads. Check robots.txt allows the routes you want indexed, and that no stray noindex survived from staging.
Metadata and structure
Every page needs a unique title and meta description written for its actual search intent. One h1 per page, heading levels in order, canonical URLs on every route, and an XML sitemap that lists exactly the canonical set, no redirects, no 404s.
Structured data
Emit only schema the page can prove: organization data with the real address, services actually offered, FAQ markup only where the questions are visible on the page. Validate with the Rich Results test. Invented schema is a liability, not a boost.
Performance
Measure on a throttled mobile profile, not on a developer machine. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, no layout shift from late-loading images (set dimensions), and JavaScript kept to what the page genuinely needs.
The final pass
Crawl the built site with a link checker: no internal 404s, no redirect chains, no orphan pages. Confirm HTTPS on every host with a valid chain, and that HTTP and www variants redirect to the canonical origin in one hop. Then launch, and re-verify the same list against production.