Complete Technical SEO Checklist Before Relaunch
Before relaunching your site, use this technical SEO checklist so traffic, rankings and leads don’t crash overnight. A practical guide to safe relaunch.
Edvin John
Published on November 24, 2025

Complete Guide
Technical SEO Checklist for Website Relaunch
Your guide to saving your rankings before they vanish overnight
One Step Before Starting: Why This Checklist Matters
A relaunch (redesign, domain migration, CMS change, merging multiple sites, etc.) is like open-heart surgery for your website. If you do it right, you'll gain power and exponential growth. If you mess it up, years of SEO work can go up in smoke in just a few hours.
This checklist is designed to:
- Prevent catastrophic traffic drops
- Preserve the power of your backlinks and domain authority
- Show Google that you're still the same strong site, just smarter
Quick Summary for the Time-Pressed
If you just want to know what absolutely must be done, keep this list handy:
Before Relaunch
- Complete export of current URLs (crawl / export from GSC)
- Identify money-making and important pages (landing pages, high-traffic blogs, etc.)
- Block staging from Google (noindex or password)
- Prepare 301 redirect map from old to new
- Check HTTPS, primary domain (www / non-www), duplicate versions
During Relaunch
- Activate 301 redirects on all important URLs
- Check for 404s and incorrect redirects
- Update XML Sitemap and submit to GSC
- Check robots.txt to ensure you haven't accidentally noindexed everything
After Relaunch (First Days to One Month)
- Monitor index coverage in GSC
- Monitor crawl errors, 404s, redirect loops
- Check rankings and traffic for key pages
- Quickly fix redirects and missing pages
If you don't do these, you're essentially handing your site over to your competitors with your eyes closed.
From here on, this is the complete, detailed, and strategic version of this checklist 👇
Part 1 – Strategic Prerequisites Before Relaunch
1.1. Define Your Relaunch Goal Precisely
Before you write a single line of code, these questions must be answered clearly:
Why are we relaunching?
- For better user experience?
- For new content structure?
- For domain or CMS migration?
- To increase leads and sales?
Without a clear goal, any technical change can be random and damage your SEO.
✅ Action: Write down three main relaunch goals (e.g., increase conversion rate, improve speed, more logical URL structure).
1.2. Complete Extraction of Current Site Structure (Full Site Crawl)
Before any relaunch, you need a map of the current situation—like before demolishing a building.
Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or other crawlers should capture:
- Complete list of URLs
- Titles
- Meta Descriptions
- H1 tags
- Status Codes (200, 301, 404, etc.)
- Canonicals
✅ Action: Take a complete crawl of the current site and save the output as Excel/CSV. This file will later become your reference for redirects and before/after comparisons.
1.3. Identify Critical Pages
Not all pages have equal value. If you have 5,000 URLs, probably 50-200 of them generate your money, leads, or core authority.
Find these based on:
- Organic traffic (Google Analytics / GSC)
- Conversion rate
- Backlinks (Ahrefs / Semrush / other tools)
✅ Action: Create lists of:
- Pages with high traffic
- Pages with strong backlinks
- Pages with high conversion
These three lists are your red list—these pages must not be damaged or deleted in the relaunch. If they are deleted, they must have a truly good replacement.
Part 2 – Information Architecture and URL Structure
2.1. Final Decision on URL Structure
In a relaunch, typically:
- Categories change
- Article slugs change
- Language/location is added (e.g., /de, /en, /fa)
Golden rule: As much as possible, don't touch old URLs that are working well. If you must change them, the redirect must be flawless.
✅ Action: For each old URL, determine the corresponding new URL (Old URL column, New URL column). Use consistent patterns (e.g., all blogs under /blog/).
2.2. 301 Redirects: Where Most Power Is Lost
The biggest relaunch mistake: "We wanted to change the site theme, but then we found half the URLs were giving 404s."
A 301 redirect is the bridge that:
- Transfers link authority
- Guides Google to the new version of the page
- Preserves user experience
Important rules:
- Don't use 302 instead of 301 (except in special cases)
- Don't create redirect chains (301 to 301 to 301)
- Don't redirect everything to the homepage (Soft 404 for Google)
✅ Action:
- Build a Mapping file (Old URL → New URL)
- Test on staging to ensure no unnecessary 404s
- After relaunch, verify redirect accuracy with a new crawl
Part 3 – Crawl and Index Control: Don't Let Google Get Lost
3.1. Staging: This Is Not Google's Place
The staging site (test version) must either:
- Be password protected
- Be blocked with noindex
- Be blocked in robots.txt
If staging gets indexed:
- Content becomes duplicated
- Signals get split
- The wrong version might rank
✅ Action: Make sure staging isn't indexed (check with site:staging.yourdomain.com).
3.2. robots.txt: One Small File, One Big Risk
Before relaunch:
- Check the robots.txt file
- Make sure you don't have something like Disallow: / on staging that accidentally gets transferred to production
This is a classic scenario: A developer copies the staging file to production, and suddenly the entire main site is closed to Google.
✅ Action: After relaunch, manually open and read robots.txt. Make sure important pages aren't blocked.
3.3. Index / Noindex / Canonical Tags
In a relaunch, changing themes or CMS might cause:
- All pages to get noindexed
- Canonical to incorrectly point to another page
- All pages to canonical to the homepage (!)
✅ Action:
- On several dozen random URLs, view the source and check the <meta name="robots"...> and <link rel="canonical"...> tags
- Make sure main pages are: index, follow
- Fix duplicate and incorrect canonicals
Part 4 – Speed, Core Web Vitals, and Technical Optimization
A relaunch usually means new design, new images, scripts, and fonts... If you're not careful:
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) will explode
- LCP will slow down
- Mobile users will bounce completely
✅ Key Actions:
- Test speed and Core Web Vitals before relaunch (old version)
- Test new version speed on PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse
- Reduce image sizes (WebP/AVIF, lazy loading)
- Remove unnecessary scripts (useless sliders, outdated tracking scripts)
- Enable GZIP/Brotli, server-side caching, and HTTP/2 or HTTP/3
Every millisecond of speed after relaunch is a strategic advantage over competitors.
Part 5 – Metadata, Content Structure, and Headings
Many relaunches make this mistake:
- They change the design
- They mess up headings and titles
- Previous Titles and Meta Descriptions that worked well get deleted
5.1. Title and Meta Description
- For important pages, if the current Title ranks well, change it carefully
- If you want to change it, make it better—not just prettier
- Optimize Meta Descriptions so CTR doesn't drop after relaunch
✅ Action:
- For critical (red list) pages, keep the current Title and Meta or write a better version
- Make sure the actual HTML output shows this Title and Meta (some themes change them automatically)
5.2. H1 to H3 Structure
Simple rules:
- Each page has only one H1
- H2s for main sections
- H3s for subsections
The relaunch shouldn't turn the H1 into a logo or menu! This is a classic disaster in new themes.
✅ Action:
- Manually check several important pages: What is the H1? Is it really the main title of that page?
- Be careful that changing the Frontend doesn't destroy the heading structure
Part 6 – Schema and Structured Data
If before relaunch you had:
- FAQ Schema
- Article, Product, LocalBusiness, Breadcrumb, etc.
And after relaunch these disappear, essentially part of your presence in search results has been removed.
✅ Action:
- List previous schemas (with test tool or crawl)
- Implement their equivalents in the new version
- Verify their accuracy with Rich Results Test or similar tool
This work results in stars, FAQ under results, and Breadcrumb paths in search results—meaning you take up more space on the results page.
Part 7 – sitemap.xml and robots.txt After Relaunch
7.1. XML Sitemap
The sitemap must:
- Only include valid 200 URLs
- Have the correct version (HTTPS, primary domain)
- Be updated after relaunch and submitted to Search Console
✅ Action:
- Generate new Sitemap and place it at /sitemap.xml
- Submit or update it in GSC
- Make sure http, staging, or 404 URLs aren't in it
7.2. robots.txt (After Relaunch)
After finalizing the relaunch:
- Check robots.txt again
- If you had Disallow for staging, remove it on the main site
- Add the sitemap link in robots.txt (optional but useful)
Part 8 – Post-Relaunch Monitoring: Where Professionals Separate from Amateurs
The relaunch isn't finished when the site goes live—the critical phase has just begun.
8.1. Monitoring with Google Search Console
In the 2-4 weeks after relaunch, check these sections every few days:
- Coverage / Indexing
- Crawl Errors
- Pages with Redirect
- Excluded pages
✅ Action:
- If you see many new 404s, quickly fix them in the redirect Mapping
- If critical pages go from Indexed to Excluded, investigate why (noindex? wrong canonical? redirect?)
8.2. Monitoring with Analytics
- Overall site traffic
- Traffic to important pages
- Conversion Rate
It's natural for a relaunch to cause some fluctuation, but:
- If you see a 5-10% drop → manageable
- If you drop 30-40% → something is seriously wrong (usually redirects or Indexing)
✅ Action: Monitor the organic traffic chart for at least 4 weeks after relaunch. If a key page suddenly drops, examine that page and its related redirects line by line.
8.3. Server Logs and Real Errors
If you have access to logs or server monitoring tools, watch for:
- 500 errors
- Timeouts
- Excessive crawling on bad URLs
These things usually aren't visible in SEO tools but affect rankings and Crawl Budget.
Part 9 – Compressed Checklist Version for Project Use
You can print this section or put it in your team's task manager 👇
Before Relaunch
- Complete site crawl and export all URLs
- Identify critical pages (high traffic, strong backlinks, high conversion)
- Design new URL structure
- Prepare 301 redirect Mapping (Old → New)
- Check HTTPS, www/non-www, duplicate domain versions
- Block staging (noindex / password / robots)
- Record current speed and Core Web Vitals status
During Relaunch
- Apply redirects on server/CMS
- Test redirects with a quick crawl
- Check robots.txt
- Check canonical, meta robots, H1, Title on several dozen sample URLs
- Implement main schemas (Article, Product, FAQ, Breadcrumb, etc.)
- Generate sitemap.xml and place its link
After Relaunch (Week 1 to 4)
- Submit sitemap to Google Search Console
- Monitor Coverage/Indexing and fix 404s and errors
- Monitor traffic and rankings of critical pages
- Recheck speed and Core Web Vitals
- Fix redirect Mapping based on new errors
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