A launch checklist should begin with whether the intended public pages are accessible and indexable. Check that staging restrictions are removed only from the production pages that should appear in search, while private areas remain protected by authentication rather than robots.txt alone.
Choose one canonical URL
Confirm HTTPS, preferred host format, trailing-slash conventions, and internal-link consistency. Redirect retired URLs directly to the most relevant replacement and avoid chains. Test response codes instead of assuming a redirect rule works.
Make discovery clear
Review the XML sitemap, navigation, breadcrumbs, and contextual internal links. A sitemap complements crawlable links; it does not replace them or guarantee indexing.
Validate the final rendered page
Inspect titles, descriptions, canonical tags, language annotations, structured data, mobile behavior, performance, and accessibility on the live-rendered page. Use official search-engine and platform documentation for current requirements.