Complete Website Launch Checklist: SEO, Images & Performance

Launching a website is exciting, but rushing to go live without proper preparation leads to poor search rankings, slow page loads, and a unprofessional first impression. This checklist covers the five critical areas you must address before launch: meta tags for SEO, favicons for branding, robots.txt for crawler control, image optimization for speed, and performance testing to verify everything works. Every step uses free tools that run in your browser.

1. SEO Foundation: Meta Tags

Search engines need clear signals about what each page is about. Without proper meta tags, Google guesses — and it often guesses wrong. Before launch, generate meta tags for every important page on your site.

Use the Meta Tag Generator to create:

• Title tags: 50-60 characters per page, unique for each page, containing your primary keyword. This becomes your search result headline.
• Meta descriptions: 150-160 characters that summarize the page and encourage clicks. Think of these as ad copy for your search listings.
• Open Graph tags: Control how your pages appear when shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms. Include OG title, description, and a 1200x630 preview image.
• Canonical URLs: Prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the preferred URL for each page.

For a complete guide to meta tags, read our HTML Meta Tags SEO Guide.

2. Branding: Favicons

A missing favicon is one of the most visible signs of an unfinished website. That tiny icon appears in browser tabs, bookmark lists, mobile home screens, and even Google search results. You need multiple sizes to cover all platforms.

Use the Favicon Generator to create all required sizes from a single source image:

• 16x16 and 32x32: Desktop browser tabs
• 180x180: Apple touch icon for iOS
• 192x192 and 512x512: Android Chrome and PWA
• Site manifest file: Required for progressive web app support

Start with a square image of at least 512x512 pixels. Simple, bold designs work best at small sizes. Add the generated HTML to your site header template so every page includes the favicon references.

3. Crawler Control: Robots.txt

Your robots.txt file tells search engines which parts of your site to crawl and which to skip. Without it, crawlers may index admin pages, staging content, duplicate pages, and other areas that should not appear in search results.

Use the Robots.txt Generator to create a proper file:

• Allow public content: Your main pages, blog, products, and other public sections.
• Block private areas: Admin panels, login pages, cart pages, internal search results, and API endpoints.
• Reference your sitemap: Add a Sitemap: directive pointing to your XML sitemap so crawlers can discover all pages efficiently.
• Remove staging rules: If you used a robots.txt to block crawlers during development, make sure you update it for production. This is one of the most common launch-day mistakes.

For more on robots.txt strategy, read our Robots.txt Guide.

4. Speed: Image Optimization

Images are typically the largest files on any web page. Unoptimized images are the number one cause of slow page loads, and slow pages lose visitors and search rankings. Every image on your site should be optimized before launch.

Use the Image Compressor to process all images:

• Photographs: Compress JPEGs to 75-85% quality for a 60-80% file size reduction with no visible quality loss.
• Hero images: These are above-the-fold and impact your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score directly. Optimize aggressively.
• Thumbnails: Small preview images can tolerate higher compression (70-75%) since details are less visible.
• Background images: Decorative backgrounds often do not need high quality. Compress to 65-75%.

Before compressing, verify that images are not larger than their display containers. There is no reason to serve a 4000px image in an 800px space. Use the Image Resizer to scale images down first.

5. Verification: Performance Testing

After optimizing everything, test your site to confirm the improvements are real and no issues slipped through. A speed test before launch establishes your performance baseline and reveals any remaining bottlenecks.

Use the Speed Test along with these checks:

• Test key pages: Check your homepage, main landing pages, blog index, and a typical blog post. Each has different content and may have different performance profiles.
• Check mobile performance: Most of your traffic will come from mobile devices. Test on a throttled connection to simulate real mobile conditions.
• Verify Core Web Vitals: Focus on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Google uses these metrics for ranking.
• Check for broken images: Open every page and verify all images load correctly. A broken image is worse than no image at all.
• Validate favicons: Open your site in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Verify the favicon appears correctly in each browser tab. Test on an iPhone and Android device by adding the site to the home screen.

The Pre-Launch Checklist Summary

1. Generate and add meta tags (title, description, OG tags) for every page.
2. Create favicons in all sizes and add the HTML to your header template.
3. Set up robots.txt with proper allow/disallow rules and sitemap reference.
4. Resize and compress every image on the site.
5. Run speed tests on key pages and verify Core Web Vitals pass.
6. Test all pages in multiple browsers and on mobile devices.
7. Verify robots.txt does not block public content (common staging leftover).
8. Check that all meta tags render correctly in search and social previews.

Conclusion

A thorough pre-launch checklist is the difference between a site that ranks, loads fast, and looks professional from day one, and one that spends months recovering from a poor first impression. Each step takes just minutes with the right tools, and the collective impact on your site's success is enormous.