Minimal preparation for the launch of the website

Launching a website doesn't have to be a daunting task. Often, the fear of the unknown and the complexity of technical details can deter individuals and businesses from taking the leap. However, with a streamlined approach and a focus on essential steps, you can launch your website efficiently and effectively, even with minimal preparation.

Robots.txt

Create a robots.txt file in the root of the site. Allow all robots to index the site and also specify the location of the sitemap.xml file.

User-agent: *
Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap.xml

Sitemap.xml

Recommend creating a sitemap index file. The following example shows a sitemap index in XML format that lists two sitemaps:

<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
	<sitemap>
		<loc>https://site.com/sitemaps/articles.xml</loc>
		<lastmod>2024-11-28T00:00:00+03:00</lastmod>
	</sitemap>
	<sitemap>
		<loc>https://site.com/sitemaps/article-categories.xml</loc>
		<lastmod>2024-11-28T00:00:00+03:00</lastmod>
	</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Redirects

Next, you need to select the primary domain name and the primary protocol. Choose a domain without www subdomain and https protocol. Also enable HSTS redirects.

Redirects .htaccess

# WWW redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://site.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# HTTPS redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://site.com/$1 [R=301,L]

HSTS .htaccess

Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" env=HTTPS

Open Graph Markup for page sharing

Add Open Graph Markup to the head section for important pages. This is example for Article Page.

<meta property="og:url" content="https://site.com/article-1234.html" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="When Great Minds Don’t Think Alike" />
<meta property="og:description" content="How much does culture influence creative thinking?" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://site.com/images/facebook.jpg" />

Schema.org using Microdata

Schema.org provides a collection of shared vocabularies webmasters can use to mark up their pages in ways that can be understood by the major search engines: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!

Example for article

<script type="application/ld+json">
	{
		"@context": "https://schema.org",
		"@type": "WebPage",
		"url": "https://site.com/article-123.html",
		"mainEntity": {
			"@type": "Article",
			"@id": "https://site.com/article-123.html,
			"name": "Article Title",
			"inLanguage": "en",
			"dateCreated": "2024-12-04",
			"articleSection": [
				"SEO"
			],
			"image": [
				"https://site.com/images/article.png"
			],
			"author": {
				"@id": "https:/site,com/"
			},
			"headline": [
				"Article Headline 1",                                                    
				"Article Headline 2",                                                    
			]
		}
	}
</script>

Google Analytics

Setup Google Analytics JS code

SEO Tools

1. Add website to Google Search Console
2. Add website to Bing Webmaster Tools