Jan 18, 2026
An SEO checklist before a site relaunch
Redirects, indexation, and performance baselines prevent avoidable traffic cliffs when URLs or templates change.
Map every legacy URL to a 301 target before cutover. Crawl the staging site with the same paths you expect in production and fix chains, loops, and soft 404s early.
Capture baseline rankings and landing traffic for priority queries so you can compare pre/post in the same tools. Update XML sitemaps and robots rules intentionally, not by accident.
Core Web Vitals and mobile usability still influence how aggressively search engines trust the new experience—treat them as launch criteria alongside content parity.