The Pre-Launch Technical SEO Checklist for SaaS Founders

Launch day sends a spike of visitors, crawlers and link previews to your site all at once. If your homepage still carries a noindex tag from staging, or every page shares the same title, that spike is wasted. This checklist covers the technical basics we check before any launch. None of it takes more than an afternoon.

1. Make sure search engines are allowed in

• No leftover noindex. Staging environments often ship with <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> or an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header. It is the single most common launch mistake. View the source of your production homepage and search for "noindex".
• robots.txt is not blocking everything. Open /robots.txt. A line reading Disallow: / under User-agent: * blocks the whole site.
• An XML sitemap exists at a stable URL such as /sitemap.xml, is referenced from robots.txt, and lists only canonical, indexable pages.
• Verify the site in Google Search Console and submit the sitemap. This is also where indexing problems show up first.

2. HTTPS everywhere, one version of every URL

• Every page loads over HTTPS with a valid certificate.
• HTTP requests return a single 301 redirect to HTTPS, not a chain of redirects.
• Pick www or the bare domain and redirect the other to it.
• Consider a Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) header once you are confident HTTPS works everywhere.

3. Unique titles, descriptions and one H1 per page

Each indexable page needs its own <title> and meta description. Duplicates make it harder for search engines and people to tell your pages apart. We cover the details in our guide to title tags, meta descriptions and canonicals.

• Titles: lead with what the page is about, end with your brand.
• Descriptions: one or two sentences that make someone want to click.
• One clear <h1> that matches the page's purpose, followed by a logical H2/H3 structure.

4. Canonical tags on every page

Add a self-referencing <link rel="canonical"> using the absolute HTTPS URL. It protects you when the same page is reachable with tracking parameters (?ref=producthunt) — which is exactly what launch traffic brings.

5. Check server response time

Launch traffic arrives all at once, so a slow origin gets slower. Measure Time to First Byte on your key pages. Google's guidance is that most sites should aim for a TTFB of 0.8 seconds or less. Our TTFB guide explains how to measure and fix it.

6. No broken internal links, and a real 404 page

• Click through your navigation and footer. Every internal link should return HTTP 200.
• Your 404 page should return an actual 404 status code, not a 200 with "page not found" text (a "soft 404").
• See how broken links and 404s affect SEO for what matters and what doesn't.

7. Social previews

Launch links get shared on X, LinkedIn, Slack and Discord before they are ever crawled by Google. Add Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image at 1200×630) and twitter:card. Test the result in each platform's preview tool before launch day.

8. Structured data where it fits

JSON-LD markup such as Organization, SoftwareApplication and FAQPage helps search engines understand who you are and what you sell. Only mark up content that is visible on the page, and validate it with Google's Rich Results Test.

9. Mobile basics

Include <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">, make sure text is readable without zooming, and check that nothing scrolls horizontally on a phone.

The checklist in one place

Once the site is ready, the next step is getting listed. Our Done-For-You Launch Package submits your product to 14 curated startup directories and verifies every listing with our crawler.