Website Launch Checklist – 10 things to check before going live.

Website Launch Checklist – 10 things to check before going live.

   SEO    February 7, 2021  |  0
make a checklist and check it twice

So you have a personal website that you’ve spent hours/weeks/months of your precious time working on filled with your blood, sweat, and tears and you’re ready to launch. You may be ready to flip the switch and set everything live but if you are anything like me you have a nagging feeling in the back of your head that you are forgetting something and things could go very wrong. The good news is that I have some solid tips that can help you mitigate any problems you might have and set up your website for the best possible launch.

I want to preface this list by saying it is not at all comprehensive. Your website hosting and CMS may not allow certain actions to be taken. This is just a general list that I have tried to generalize to accommodate any and all website launches. If you have any specific questions please feel free to contact me.

First, the technical stuff…

Getting logins for registrar, hosting, and CMS

Lets start off my getting the most frustrating part out of the way. You want to make sure that you have all of your logins for domain registrar, hosting, and CMS stored in a secure place. You also want to make sure that you have addressed any domain based emails you may have. Emails, domain, and hosting tend to be the most difficult part of launching a website so having a gameplay in place prior to switching go will help you transition smoothly and allow for limited downtime. Contacting your registrar for information is the first place to start and they can help you understand which steps to take. Please keep in mind that during the website launch, typical propagations may take between 24-48 hours (4 – 6 hours is the usual but may vary depending on your registrar, hosting provider, CMS, etc.) during which your email may be delayed or even down. Please take the necessary steps to update your customers that response times may be slow.

Domain emails

If you are new to setting up domain emails I would highly recommend GSuite (now known as Workspace) by Google. Having worked with a variety of email providers I’ve found that Google offers the most features, stability, and security for what you pay, plus your emails still work through Gmail which most people are already familiar with.

Website Hosting & backups

As far as your hosting goes, right before you set up your site make sure you ask your hosting provider to ensure that they store backups and create a plan for how they can be retrieved. A good hosting company should store backups of your site every 24-48 hours just in case you encounter a crash or a hack, this is incredibly important and could potentially save you thousands of dollars in repairs and lost revenue.

Second, the website branding

Double check your content & proof read

  • I cannot emphasize this first point enough proofread every. single. sentence. I am the biggest culprit of finding small errors in tense, punctuation, or their/there/they’re months after my content has already indexed. All messaging should be consistent throughout the website and create a seamless brand voice and style that is replicated throughout all pages and blogs.
  • Double check the site for any lorem ipsum filler content and that anything referenced from an outside source is properly formatted and cited with the correct author.
  • Content should also be broken up to be read easily by users. I’ve found that more people tend to read through short paragraphs and bullet points because they are easier to comprehend over large blocks of run on sentences.

Images

  • Ensure that all photos belong to you, are in the public domain, or are stock images. Any image does not belong to you and used without permission can get you in major trouble with a lawsuit.
  • If you have used stock images, make sure that they are purchased and any placeholder images with watermarks have been replaced on your website.
  • Make sure that all images are optimized with alt tags.
  • Compress your images and use appropriate image sizes. Using images that are too large can have a negative effect on website load time.

Check for aesthetics and mechanics

  • Does your site look cohesive? Are there any gaps in the layout? Making sure that your website is organized well for the user will ensure that they browse your site for a longer period of time.
  • Looking though heading tags to make sure they are in the correct descending order (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6). These help keep your content organized for both your users as well as for search engines crawling your age
  • All text formatting looks correct and easy to read. Choosing font colors that are visually appealing and making sure that your content flows nicely around any images will help dissuade readers from clicking off the page
  • Check that all website colors convey your brand identity (ideally two to three different colors are chosen and accent colors are chosen based off main colors). If your website reminds the user of their myspace page from 2005, it may be time to streamline your color options.
  • Any pages that require a password, a sign up, or are otherwise hidden behind a prompt have been “no indexed” and removed from all sitemaps.
  • All unnecessary themes have been deleted (this is common with many CMS’ like WordPress). Extra themes take up needless space and can slow your site down.
  • Double check your plugins! Remove any plugins that you won’t be using to ensure that they aren’t needlessly slowing down your website. When choosing plugins ensure that they are updated regularly and have plenty of good reviews, this should avoid any conflicts.
  • Add a favicon. While such a small part of a website, favicons have taken on a new importance as they are displayed in Google SERPs and on browser tabs/bookmarks.

User Experience

  • Check that all contact forms are placed correctly on the website and that all necessary fields are included. For your own peace of mind, adding a recaptcha can help prevent spam messages.
  • Make sure that all landing pages (if any) are brought over to the new site. These can be hard to miss as they are not usually listed in your navigation. If your old website has a sitemap, that is a great place to compare and contrast old website pages to your new website
  • Ensure that all scripts and code (CSS, JavaScript) are optimized & minified across the site to not create a lag in load time.
  • Check that all internal links are working and set up at appropriate points in the content. They must be relevant to the content anchor and take the user to a relevant page.
  • Remove any blank, duplicate or unnecessary pages or if they will be used in the future, they can be saved as drafts (seasonal pages can be redirected via a 302)
  • Check that all video and audio files work correctly and are optimized for mobile as well as desktop.
  • All premium content such as whitepapers, e-books, or case studies are stored in the proper library or database and are accessible.
  • Social media icons are sized and placed correctly on the site, are set to open in a new tab and access the appropriate accounts.
  • Your company logo should be visible on all pages and linked back to the home page.

SEO

  • You will want to ask your hosting provider to launch the site on this specific canonical chosen (www or nonwww) and have them perform a find and replace on the website upon launch to ensure all URL’s throughout the website and in the code are uniform. This will ensure there are not duplicates of your website being indexed by google under two separate domains.
  • Perform an audit on all meta data to ensure it has been brought over from the old site and updated on the new site appropriately.
  • Perform a ranking report on your current live website prior to launch to give you a good benchmark before the new website launches. This may help you catch any severe slips in rankings after and correct accordingly.
  • Double check that all SEO scripts are brought over (Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google remarking tags and tags associated with Ads, any UX tracking you may be using, and schema markup script. If you were organized and set everything up in a tag manager I applaud your moxie and encourage you to double check all URL’s that they are pointing to the correct canonical/SSL)
  • Setup a dynamic xml sitemap and check it over. If you are utilizing WordPress and use a plugin for this (i.e. Yoast) you may want to remove any blank sitemaps or any unnecessary sitemaps that you don’t want indexed.
  • Double check that all published and drafted blog posts have been brought over to the new site.

301 redirects

A part of SEO so utterly frustrating and detail packed that it deserved its own category.

  • Use a website crawler (like screaming frog, deep crawl, or SEM rush) to go through your current live site (if applicable) and grab a master list of URL’s and meta data. This will be extremely helpful for making sure all meta data including h1s, titles/descriptions are brought over as well as provide you with a list of URL’s that need to be redirected.
  • In addition to running a website drawler, I also grab all of the URL’s that are currently indexing in Google. You can do this by typing the site index command into google search box (site:yourwebsiteurl.com) and using the link clump browser extension to copy every single URL and paste them into your spreadsheet. Just make sure to delete any duplicate URL’s. I also check search console for any URL’s that may be 404ing to determine if they should be redirected or if they should simply die off.
  • Double check that all URL extensions on the new site make sense and they are filed correctly under the appropriate categories (e. g.: /available-puppies/ instead of /page2/, no query strings if possible or underscores in URLs). A clean URL is easier for the search engines to rank especially if it contains the same keywords as your page.

When mapping out your 301 redirects

Make sure you check with your hosting company or CMS representative for redirect URL formatting instructions. For example, for my WordPress CMS I use the plugin Redirection which asks for my urls to be set up relative to absolute. EX. /my-URL-extension (relative URL) gets redirected to https://lisabrownschidle.com/my-new-URL-extension/ (absolute URL)

Some other things to note are:

  • Make sure correct canonical (www/non-www) and HTTPS is included in your absolute URL (if your CMS requires it)
  • Ensure there aren’t any re-direct loops in document. I’ve accidentally made this mistake often. you want to make sure that you aren’t redirecting URL’s if they are the exact same (EX. /contact-us/ to https://lisabrownschidle.com/contact-us/) If this happens the page will end up in an infinite loop while trying to load and eventually time out. Only redirect URL’s if the new website URL is different from the old site URL. If they are the exact same then leave them alone and DO NOT redirect.
  • Finally, once all URL redirects have been mapped out you can finally implement into website.

Important law stuff

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and therefore I am not allowed by law to offer advice on any details regarding the information below. Before you launch a website I would first consult with a lawyer that specializes in Data Protection Law to help you navigate the specific language that should be included on a privacy page or any other legal document included on a website that does business in the United States and overseas. There are many nuances to these laws and therefore hiring a professional to help you navigate through the specific language you should and should not use is of upmost importance to avoid any lawsuits.

  • Make sure you have a privacy page. The specific language used can be supplied by a lawyer who specializes in Data Protection Law.
  • Ensure you have a cookie consent pop up.

 

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