SEO for a new website: a checklist for the first 90 days.

Google's SEO Starter Guide is reassuring on one point: Google is a fully automated search engine, and you usually do not need to do anything except publish your site. Most new pages are discovered through links. The catch is that a site can be published and still be telling search engines to stay away.

Remove the launch blockers

Sites are often built behind a password or a “hide from search” setting, and it is easy to launch with the setting still on. Check yours first.

Set up Search Console

Add and verify the site in Google Search Console, then submit your sitemap. Most platforms generate one automatically; our explainer on sitemap generators shows how to find and check it.

Inspect the pages that matter

Use the URL Inspection tool on your homepage and your most important pages. It shows whether Google can index each one, and you can request indexing for a single page. For many pages at once, a sitemap is the better route.

Keep one version of every page

The site should load on one address: https, with one hostname. The other versions should redirect to it. Google's guidance on consolidating duplicate URLs explains the options.

Test the measurement

Decide which action counts as success, whether that is a call, a form, a booking or a purchase, and complete it yourself to make sure it is recorded. A site that launches without working measurement spends its first 90 days producing opinions instead of data.

In most cases, a new site needs fewer, better pages rather than more of them. For a typical small business, the first ten look something like this:

• The homepage. Who you serve, what you do and what to do next, in the first screen. Our guide to homepage SEO covers the details.
• One page for each service or product. Each built around the words customers use for it.
• An about page with real people. Names, faces and experience give readers and search engines someone to trust.
• A contact page with consistent details. The same business name, address and phone number you use everywhere else.
• Two or three answer pages. The questions customers ask most before they buy.

Give each page its own descriptive title, following Google's title guidance, and link the pages to each other with ordinary crawlable links. A page nobody links to is a page that is hard to find.

With the core pages live, add the answers. Keep a running list of the questions customers ask by phone, email and in person, and turn the frequent ones into short pages or FAQ sections with a direct answer at the top.

If customers visit your location, or you travel to them, set up a Google Business Profile. Google's guidelines say profiles are for businesses that have a physical location customers can visit or that travel to customers where they are, and that the name should match the one you use in the real world. A business that only operates online meets neither condition.

A new domain has no reputation yet, so it needs other sites to mention it. Start with the relationships you already have: suppliers, partners, local associations, industry directories and anyone who would recommend you in person. Earn those mentions rather than buying them. Google's spam policies treat buying links for ranking purposes as link spam.

Then review. In Search Console, look at which pages are indexed, which searches you appear for and which pages earn clicks. Google's starter guide notes that some changes take effect within hours and others can take several months, and it suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change helped.

Ninety days is enough to know whether the site is technically sound, indexed and starting to appear for relevant searches. It is not enough to judge the full potential of a competitive market. How Google ranks pages depends on hundreds of factors, including the searcher's location, language and device, so nobody can promise a position by a date.

What you can control is the foundation: access, clear pages, answers, consistent details and earned mentions. If you would rather have a team handle the launch, our SEO service starts with the same checks.