Should I do SEO before launching?

Only the parts that are expensive to change later: the domain, the URL structure, one language, and pages that arrive as HTML. Plus an hour of setup. Writing content before you know your buyers' words usually means rewriting it.

Does the domain extension affect SEO?

Google has said the ending itself does not affect ranking. A country-code domain signals that country and cannot be targeted elsewhere, which matters if you sell internationally. Generic endings carry no country signal, so pick one you will keep.

Should I launch with a blog?

No. Launch with the pages people search for by name: what it does, what it costs, who you are, how to start. Write guides once you know which questions your buyers ask, which takes a handful of conversations.

How do I stop Google indexing my staging site?

Password-protect it, which stops crawlers and everyone else. A robots.txt disallow prevents crawling but a linked URL can still be indexed without its content, and a noindex on a blocked page cannot be read. The real risk is the opposite: the block shipping to production.

How long until a new site appears in Google?

Days to a few weeks for discovery and indexing, with no promise from Google. A sitemap and one link from a page Google already crawls speed it up. Ranking for anything competitive takes months.

SEO before you launch: what to get right while the site is still small

Four decisions are expensive to change after launch: the domain, the URL structure, the language, and whether your pages arrive as HTML. Everything else can wait. Here is the short list that is worth an hour before you ship, and the long list you can ignore until somebody is actually visiting.

By Théophile Louvart, founder of Porteur · Updated 15 September 2026 · Markdown

The four decisions that are expensive later

Everything on a website can be changed. These four can only be changed with redirects, lost history and weeks of fluctuation, so they are worth thinking about while nothing is at stake.

Decision	What to choose	What changing it later costs
The domain	One you will keep. A country-code domain (.fr, .de) signals that country and cannot be geo-targeted elsewhere; generic ones (.com, .io, .ai) carry no country signal and Google has said the ending itself does not affect ranking.	A full site move: a redirect map, the Change of Address tool, months of brand queries moving.
The URL structure	Short, lowercase, hyphenated, words rather than ids, a folder per real section (/guides/, /tools/).	A 301 for every page, updated internal links, and a period where Google holds both versions.
One language or several	Start with one. Add a second when Search Console shows demand from that country and you can support it.	hreflang on every page, a sitemap per language, and translations to maintain forever.
How pages are rendered	HTML that already carries the content. Server rendering or static generation.	Google reads script-built content in a second pass, and the AI crawlers that answer questions do not run scripts at all.

The pages that must exist on day one

Not a library. These are the pages people search for by name as soon as they hear about you, and the ones assistants read when asked about your category.

The home page, with a title that says what the product does and for whom rather than the brand alone.
Pricing, with the price visible. It is one of the first things anyone searches with your brand name.
What it does: one page per real capability, not eleven feature pages made from a template.
An about page with a real name, where the company is, and how to reach a person.
Terms and privacy, because buyers check and because they are part of trust.
Documentation or a getting started page, if the product needs setup. Docs are what developers and assistants cite.

That is six to ten URLs. Resist the pre-launch blog: you do not yet know which words your buyers use, and pages written before you know are the ones you rewrite.

The hour of setup, in order

Remove the staging block
Check robots.txt and the meta robots tag on the live site. A Disallow: / or a noindex carried over from staging is the most common reason a new site never appears.
Verify Search Console and Bing
A domain property verified by DNS covers every subdomain and both protocols. Bing takes a one-click import from Search Console and answers Copilot and part of the others.
Publish a sitemap and submit it
List only the URLs you want indexed. Submit it in both tools. It speeds discovery; it does not make a page rank.
Set titles and descriptions per page
A distinct title for each of your six to ten pages, the subject near the front, about sixty characters.
Redirect to one host, in one hop
Pick www or not, http goes to https, and every variant lands on the final URL directly rather than through a chain.
Add Organization markup and Open Graph tags
Who publishes the site, the logo, the social profiles, and the image people see when the link is shared.
Get one link
A profile you control, a directory that fits, a partner. Google finds new sites through links from pages it already knows.

That is the hour. Nothing on the list requires a subscription, and none of it changes once done.

What to ignore until you have visitors

The pre-launch checklists people publish are written for sites with traffic. Half of it is meaningless on a site with none.

Not yet	Because	When it matters
Keyword research tools	You have no data and no ranking pages to compare against.	When Search Console shows you which queries you already appear for.
A blog	You do not yet know the words your buyers use.	After ten conversations with users, or after the first non-brand impressions.
Core Web Vitals field data	It needs real Chrome users, and you have none.	Once traffic arrives. Until then one lab run is enough to catch the obvious.
Link building campaigns	Nothing to link to yet.	When you have a tool, a study or a page worth citing.
Rank tracking	You rank for nothing.	When you have pages on page two of something that matters.
Structured data beyond Organization	Most rich results need content you do not have.	When you have products, articles or reviews to mark up.

What to do on the day

The launch is a link and mention event, not a ranking one. Nothing you do that day changes a position, and everything you do that day can earn the links that eventually do.

Make sure the pages are live and indexable before you send anyone. A launch pointing at a noindexed site wastes the only day people are paying attention.
Check the social preview, because every share that day is drawn from your Open Graph tags.
List where your buyers actually are, not everywhere. A handful of relevant places beats forty directories.
Expect the traffic to be brief. What remains is the mentions and the listings that keep ranking for your product name.

The first check, a week later

Search for your domain
A site: search on your domain shows roughly what Google holds. Zero results a week after launch usually means a block or no links, not a ranking problem.
Inspect the home page
The URL Inspection tool says whether the page is on Google, when it was crawled, and which canonical Google chose.
Read the Page indexing report
Reasons under Not indexed tell you what Google did with the rest. Discovered and not yet crawled is normal for a new site.
Do nothing for a fortnight
Search Console data lags about two days, and a new site takes days to weeks to be crawled and indexed. Changing things daily makes the cause of any movement unknowable.

Questions

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