Your New Website’s First SEO Checklist

1. Walk through the site as a customer

Create a Google Sheets checklist with these columns: Page | Check | Status | Next action | Owner | Due date. Use Done, Needs work or Not applicable as statuses. Copy each check below into its own row.

• ☐ List your homepage, main service or product pages and contact page.
• ☐ Open the site on your phone. Read a product description and use the menu without zooming.
• ☐ Submit a test enquiry and confirm it reaches the right inbox.
• ☐ Check the information a customer needs before buying. A local café needs an easy-to-find menu, address and opening hours.
• ☐ Record broken pages or browser security warnings and send screenshots to your website provider.

2. Check whether Google can access your pages

Google Search Console is a free tool for checking your website’s presence in Google Search. Add your site and verify ownership. Indexing means Google has added a page to its search database. Follow the [official setup guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/search-console-start).

1. ☐ Use URL Inspection, the page-address checking tool, on your homepage and main sales page. Record their indexing status.
2. ☐ Run Test Live URL to check the current page. Passing this test does not guarantee a search appearance.
3. ☐ Ask your website provider to investigate unexpected noindex instructions, which tell Google to exclude a page. Also check whether robots.txt access rules prevent Google from reading it.
4. ☐ Find your sitemap, a file listing page addresses, through your website platform or provider. Submit it in Search Console’s Sitemaps section.
5. ☐ After fixing access problems, request indexing for the important page and note the date.

Use the [URL Inspection guide](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289?hl=en) to interpret errors. A sitemap or indexing request cannot guarantee inclusion. Repeated requests will not speed things up. See [Google’s crawling guidance](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl).

3. Make each page useful, then track progress

• ☐ Give each key page one customer question to answer, such as “Can you deliver lunch to our office?”
• ☐ Write a clear page title and meta description, the short summary Google may use in search results. Google can display different wording.
• ☐ Explain who the offer suits, how ordering works and what determines the price.
• ☐ Link related pages using helpful labels such as “Delivery options”.
• ☐ Add alt text, a short written description, to informative images. Describe what matters without stuffing in search phrases.

Check the [Google SEO Starter Guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide) for practical guidance on page content, titles and links.

1. Once a week, record impressions and clicks in Search Console. Impressions count appearances in search results; clicks count visits through those results.
2. Review which searches lead to which pages. A new site may have too little data to draw useful conclusions.
3. Keep a separate enquiry record. Search Console does not count sales. Ask new customers how they found you.
4. Choose one improvement for the following week. If customers repeatedly ask about delivery, make the answer easier to find.

Use the [Search Console reporting guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/search-console-start) when reviewing performance. Keep a dated change log so you can compare results with the work you completed.

Go further with the AI Builders community

For real examples, peer feedback and discussion, visit the Azerbaijani AI Builders community through its [resources page](https://abcommunity.org/resurslar). Share the result of your checklist: one change you made, what happened and the question you still need help with.