SEO Checklist for a New Small Business Website

Before launch: make sure Google can crawl and index the site

Many launch problems are self-inflicted. Staging sites are often hidden from search with a site-wide noindex tag or a robots.txt rule that blocks everything, and those settings are easy to carry over to the live site by accident. Before you go live, check both, and choose one address for the site so that the http, https, www and non-www versions all end up in the same place.

Remember that robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. If you want a page kept out of search results, such as an order confirmation or thank-you page, use a noindex tag and leave the page crawlable so that Google can actually see the instruction. Blocking the same page in robots.txt would hide the tag and could still leave the address indexed.

• Remove any site-wide noindex tag or “discourage search engines” setting from the live site
• Check that robots.txt does not block the whole site with “Disallow: /”
• Serve every page over HTTPS and 301-redirect the other versions to your chosen address
• Make sure real pages return a 200 status and missing pages return a genuine 404
• Use short, readable, lowercase URLs that you do not plan to change

Set up Search Console and submit your sitemap

Google Search Console is free and is where Google reports directly on how it sees your site. Verify the site as a Domain property using a DNS record, which covers every subdomain and both http and https. Then submit your XML sitemap, which most platforms generate automatically at an address such as /sitemap.xml, and reference it in robots.txt with a Sitemap line followed by its full URL.

Your sitemap should list only canonical, indexable pages that return a 200 status, with no redirects, noindexed pages or thin tag archives. Next, run your homepage and main service or product pages through the URL Inspection tool and use Request Indexing. It does not guarantee indexing and has a daily quota, but it can help Google discover the pages of a brand-new site sooner.

Write unique titles, descriptions and headings

Each indexable page needs its own title that says what that page is about. A reliable pattern is main topic, then a qualifier or benefit, then the brand. Google truncates long titles by pixel width, and around 50 to 60 characters usually display in full, so put the important words first. Meta descriptions do not affect rankings but often appear as the snippet, so write them as short adverts of roughly 120 to 155 characters.

On the page itself, use one clear H1 that matches the topic of the title and descriptive H2s for the sections a visitor expects to find. Answer the main question in the opening lines, then add detail. Give meaningful images descriptive alt text, and leave the alt text empty for purely decorative images.

Build internal links and a shallow structure

Internal links help visitors reach the next useful page and tell search engines which pages matter. Keep the structure shallow, with each important page reachable within about three clicks of the homepage, and link from your strongest pages, usually the homepage, to the services or products you most want to rank. Use descriptive anchor text such as “see our EV charger prices” rather than “click here”.

Make sure navigation exists as ordinary links in the page, not only in menus that a script builds after a click. Look for orphan pages, which no other page links to, and connect them with contextual links. Each time you publish something new, link to it from two or three related pages, and link from it to a relevant service page.

Check Core Web Vitals and mobile usability

Core Web Vitals measure real-world page experience, and Google assesses each one at the 75th percentile of page visits, so most visitors need a good experience. A new site rarely has enough real-user data at first, and Search Console may report that there is not enough data for some time. Until it does, use the lab test in PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to diagnose problems, treating the score as a diagnostic rather than the goal.

The fixes that help small sites most are simple. Resize and compress images, serve WebP or AVIF, and never lazy-load the main hero image. Set width and height on images and reserve space for banners and embeds so the layout does not jump. Remove unused plugins, chat widgets and tracking scripts. Google indexes the mobile version of your site, so test key pages on a real phone as well.

Cover the local basics and structured data

If you serve customers in a specific area, create or claim your Google Business Profile, choose the most specific accurate primary category and complete every relevant field. Keep your business name, address and phone number identical on the website, the profile and major directories. Then add LocalBusiness or Organization structured data in JSON-LD, mark up only details that are visible on the page, and check it with Google’s Rich Results Test. Many website builders and plugins add some markup automatically, so check what already exists before adding more, because duplicate or conflicting blocks can cause errors.

The first 90 days after launch

Expect indexing and rankings to take time. A new site often needs weeks before its pages appear consistently and months before positions settle. Rather than checking daily, run a short review every two weeks for the first three months, then monthly, and keep a log of what you change so you can connect actions to results.

Once the basics are in place, the work shifts from fixing to improving: finding the searches you nearly rank for, strengthening the pages behind them and publishing content that answers real questions. The SEO Fundamentals for Small Websites course covers that next stage, including keyword research, page mapping and a monthly Search Console routine.

• Pages report: new “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” or “Not found (404)” entries
• Sitemaps report: the sitemap was read successfully and the URL count looks right
• Performance report: impressions and the queries you are starting to appear for
• Core Web Vitals report: any page groups rated “Poor” once data appears
• Manual actions and security issues: both should be empty