SEO Checklist for a New Website (Before and After Launch)

Before launch: 10 checks on the staging site

Most new-site problems come from settings that made sense during development and were never switched back.

Two of these cause most "my new site is not on Google" questions: a leftover noindex (check 1) and a robots.txt that blocks everything (check 3). Google has to crawl a page to see its noindex, so never use robots.txt to hide a page you want gone; use noindex for that (Google Search Central).

Launch day: 5 steps in Search Console and Bing

1. Verify a Domain property in Google Search Console. It uses a DNS TXT record and covers http, https, www and every subdomain in one view.
2. Submit your XML sitemap under Indexing > Sitemaps. List only live pages you want indexed. One sitemap file holds up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB (Google, Build and submit a sitemap).
3. Inspect your homepage and 3 to 5 money pages with URL Inspection, then click "Request indexing". There is a daily quota, and asking twice for the same URL does not speed it up (Google, Ask Google to recrawl your URLs).
4. Add the site to Bing Webmaster Tools. It can import your verified sites from Search Console in one click.
5. Save a baseline. Note the date, the number of pages in your sitemap and the number indexed (zero is fine). You will compare against it.

The first 30 days

Google says crawling "can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks" (Google). Use that time well:

• Week 1: open Indexing > Pages. Expect most URLs under "Not indexed" with the reason "Discovered, currently not indexed". That is normal for a new site: Google knows the URL and has not crawled it yet.
• Week 2: link your main pages from the homepage and the menu. Pages with no internal links get crawled last.
• Week 3: get your first real links. Claim your Google Business Profile if you serve a local area, list the business on directories your buyers really use, and ask partners and suppliers to link to you.
• Week 4: check the report again. If key pages are still "Crawled, currently not indexed", Google has seen them and chose not to index them yet. The indexing problems fix guide covers each reason and what to do.

Example: brightsmile-dental.com (a fictional clinic) launches 14 pages. After 2 weeks, 5 are indexed. The 9 others are all treatment pages linked only from a footer menu. Adding a "Treatments" section with links on the homepage gets them crawled the following week.

How long until a new website ranks?

Google gives no fixed timeline. Its SEO Starter Guide says some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging your work (Google, SEO Starter Guide, updated December 2025). In practice, a new site first shows for its brand name and very specific long searches. Broad, competitive searches take longer and need links and content that beats what ranks today.

Do not judge a new site by clicks in the first month. Judge it by indexed pages and impressions. Clicks follow once pages show up for searches.

Mistakes that slow a new site down

• Launching 200 thin pages at once. Ten strong pages beat 200 near-empty ones. Mass-produced pages with little value can break Google's scaled content abuse policy (Google spam policies).
• Leaving the staging site open. A public staging copy is a duplicate of your site. Put it behind a password.
• Changing URLs a week after launch. Every change needs a 301 redirect, and Google has to recrawl both URLs.
• Buying links to "kick-start" rankings. Buying links for ranking is against Google's link spam policy and can earn a manual action.