The 5-Item Pre-Launch SEO Checklist Most Sites Skip

These don’t take long. They rarely get done. They compound quietly over time. Here they are.

1. Canonical URLs on Every Page

Most static site generators and frameworks don’t automatically add per-page canonical tags. Without them, URL variants — query strings, trailing slashes, protocol differences — can fragment your search authority across multiple versions of the same page.

In Next.js App Router, the fix is two lines per page:

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  alternates: {
    canonical: "/your-page-path",
  },
};

Set metadataBase in your root layout and Next.js handles the absolute URL construction automatically. Ten seconds per page. Do it before launch, not after.

Important note: Your privacy policy, admin routes, and any pages that shouldn’t appear in search results should get robots: { index: false } instead of a canonical.

2. Robots Meta — Explicit Is Always Better

The default crawling behavior is usually fine, but explicit metadata is cleaner and gives you precise control:

// Root layout — global default
robots: {
  index: true,
  follow: true,
  googleBot: { index: true, follow: true, "max-image-preview": "large" },
},

The max-image-preview: large instruction tells Google it’s allowed to show full-size image previews in search results — particularly relevant for content-heavy or visually rich sites. Most sites never set this. It’s a free improvement.

3. Open Graph Meta on All Interior Pages

One shared OG image in your root layout is a reasonable baseline. What breaks social sharing: interior pages with no OG override, which means the platform’s crawler finds no image and renders a blank preview card.

The fix is a fallback in your root layout metadata plus image overrides on high-value interior pages. Any page that might get linked directly — an about page, a specific service page, a news article — should have a purpose-built OG image or at minimum an explicit OG override.

Run a quick audit: share three or four interior pages in a social card debugger before you launch. See what renders. Fix anything blank.

4. rel="noopener noreferrer" on All External Links

If you’re opening external links in a new tab (target="_blank"), this attribute is a security and performance requirement — not optional. Without rel="noopener", the opened page can access your page’s window.opener object.

Search your codebase for target="_blank" and confirm every instance includes rel="noopener noreferrer". This is a one-time grep, five minutes, done.

5. Image alt Text — Every Image, No Exceptions

Run a quick search for alt="" or missing alt props across your components. Every image needs descriptive, contextually accurate alt text.

This matters for three reasons:

1. Accessibility — screen reader users depend on alt text to understand visual content
2. SEO — search engines use alt text to understand image context and rank in image search
3. AI visibility — AI search tools use image descriptions to build page context, especially for people, places, and visual proof points

Alt text shouldn’t be keyword-stuffed. It should describe what the image actually shows, clearly and briefly. “Judge Patrick King speaking at the Madison County Courthouse” is correct. “Best judge Illinois circuit court 2026 election” is not.

None of these take more than 20 minutes combined. All of them compound over time. None are optional on a site you care about.

The pattern is consistent across every site audit: the technical fundamentals get skipped in the rush to launch, and then they become months of catch-up work. Thirty minutes before go-live prevents all of it.

Check the list. Ship clean.