A website launch is more than uploading files. Before a page goes live, it needs checking for mobile layout, broken links, readable text, favicon, metadata, sitemap, robots file, and social sharing previews — the details that don't show up until someone actually shares the link or Google actually crawls it.
The checklist I run before every launch
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Mobile and desktop layout | Most traffic to a new business site is mobile — a layout bug there costs more than a desktop one. |
| Title, description, canonical | Missing or duplicate tags confuse search engines about which page to index and how to describe it. |
| Open Graph and social preview image | Determines how the link looks when shared on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, or social media — a broken preview quietly kills click-through. |
| Sitemap and robots.txt | Tells search engines what exists and what to skip — an outdated sitemap can leave new pages undiscovered for weeks. |
| Favicon and JSON-LD schema | Small trust signals and structured data that help both browsers and AI/search systems understand the page. |
| llms.txt / full-llms.txt | Increasingly relevant as AI assistants and answer engines read these files to understand a site's structure. |
Why this list matters more than it looks
None of these individually make or break a launch, but together they decide whether the site "feels complete" the first time a client shares it with a customer, or the first time Google actually crawls it. I've seen launches go out with a broken Open Graph image — the site looked fine in a browser, but every WhatsApp share showed a blank preview card, which is a bad first impression for something meant to build trust.
After launch
Once the checklist above is clear, the next step is confirming indexing is actually happening — see how long does SEO take to show results for realistic timelines, and the full website SEO checklist for small businesses in India for the ongoing work after launch day.