Why these checks
The list covers the problems we most often see on launch day, grouped by who usually owns them. Items marked as launch blockers in the result (forms, noindex, robots.txt, redirects, HTTPS and tracking) are the ones that can quietly cost enquiries or rankings, so they appear first in the “still to do” list.
The ones people forget
- Noindex left on from the development site. Google will drop the whole site.
- Forms sending to an old or test email address. Submit a real test and check it arrives.
- Redirects missing for old URLs. Validate your map with the Redirect Map Validator.
- Tracking not firing conversions, so the first month of data is lost.
- No restore tested for backups. A backup you cannot restore is not a backup.
Launch day order
- Final content freeze and backup of the old site.
- Switch the domain, confirm HTTPS and redirects.
- Remove noindex, check robots.txt (the Robots.txt Tester helps), submit the sitemap.
- Test every form and conversion event on the live site.
- Crawl the site for broken links, then monitor daily for two weeks.
The full explanation of each step is in our website launch checklist guide.