SEO Launch Checklist: Indexability, Meta Tags & Sitemap

SEO basics are invisible on launch day

A missing meta description or an accidentally noindexed page doesn't break anything a visitor can see — the site looks completely normal. It just means Google shows a worse (or no) result for you, silently, for as long as the mistake goes unnoticed. That gap between “looks fine” and “is actually discoverable” is exactly what technical SEO checks exist to close.

The order that actually matters

Indexability comes first, because nothing else in this list matters if the page can't be indexed at all — a straynoindex tag left over from staging, or a robots.txt rule that's broader than intended, quietly removes a page from search entirely. After that: a title tag and meta description that describe the page (not just the site name), a canonical URL so duplicate versions of a page don't split your ranking signal, and a sitemap your robots.txt actually points to.

Common mistakes we see

• A launch-blocking noindex left in from staging. The single most common and most damaging SEO mistake we see — the page works, looks right, and simply isn't eligible to rank at all.
• Generic or missing meta descriptions. Google will write its own summary from page content if yours is missing or weak — usually a worse result than one you wrote deliberately.
• No canonical tag on pages with multiple URLs. The same content reachable at a bare domain and awww. version, or with and without a trailing slash, without a canonical pointing search engines to one of them.
• A sitemap that exists but isn't linked from robots.txt. Search engines can still find it, but it's a free, easy signal left unset.
• Link text that says “click here.” Descriptive link text is a small but real signal about what the linked page is about — generic link text throws that signal away.

How to check it yourself

View your page source (or use your browser's dev tools) and search for “noindex” — if it's there on a page that's meant to rank, that's the first thing to fix. Then visit /robots.txt and /sitemap.xmldirectly to confirm both exist and the first actually references the second. Finally, search Google forsite:yourdomain.com and check whether the pages you expect to see are actually indexed.