Brian McCullough
You have worked so hard to get your website to a place where it is ready to launch. Here are some simple steps to help doouble check a few settings and make sure you are launching with more confedance. Don't get caught going live unprepared. Complete this simple 2020 WordPress website pre-launch checklist for the best SEO and website launch, you owe it to yourself.
Yoast is the standard when it comes to good SEO on WordPress websites. Sure there are other plugins but, why waste time researching when you can be entering page title tags and descriptions, improving your website SEO. Download it here.
Don't rush a good thing take your time to get it right. Go to each page and post scroll down to the bottom of the page and add a title and descriptions. As you are doing this be sure to keep a keyword in mind for each page you are working on and try to include that keyword in both the title and description. While you are in here take note of pages with less than a few hundred words of content.
Don't skimp on re-reviewing your website's content. It is recommended that each important page has at least 1,000 words of content. Think FAQ, testimonials, services, case studies, examples and anything else that would help your visitors better understand what they are viewing/reading. Where is a word counter to help.
Also, for the love of G_d please spell check your website here.
Is the contact entry making it to the right person? Do they know what to look out for? Does it have all the correct information on it? Are the correct fields required? is information stored in a database and safe?
It is 2020 and your website should be secured with SSL which means having HTTPS at the beginning out your website. Many website hosts offer SSL as part of their hosting package. We like full-service managed WordPress hosts like Stack Host. Stack Host offers SSL, security scans and nightly back-ups.
Every WordPress installation comes with some dummy content such as Hello World or This is your first post, and Sample Page make sure you delete them.
XML sitemaps are important for new websites as Google has yet to index them. Make sure to sign up for Seach Console.
We are getting close! Minutes before you launch your website, enable search engine visibility by visiting Dashboard > Settings > Reading and unchecking the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Depending on your host you might also need to update your WordPress Address (URL) under general setting.
For this, you will need to login to your domain provider and update eater you DNS, A-record or C-name. it depends on your website host. once you hit save you domain name will begin processing to go live.
