Launching a new site is the easy part. Getting search engines to read it properly takes a few small files and tags that are easy to forget. Here's the short checklist I run through on every new site, with a free browser tool for each step (no signup, nothing uploaded).
1. Write a real title and meta description for every page
Keep titles under about 60 characters and descriptions under about 155. Put the main phrase people search for near the start, and make every page different.
Tool: Meta Tag Generator
2. Add a robots.txt that doesn't block what you want indexed
The most common mistake is a leftover Disallow: / from a staging site. Allow your public pages, block admin or search-result pages, and point to your sitemap.
Tool: Robots.txt Generator
3. Submit an XML sitemap
List every public URL, then submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing also feeds DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, so it's worth the two minutes.
Tool: XML Sitemap Generator
4. Check how links look when shared
Open Graph tags control the title, description and image on Facebook, LinkedIn and X. A missing image makes a shared link easy to scroll past.
Tool: Open Graph Preview
5. Keep config files valid
A broken XML feed or YAML config can quietly break a build or a sitemap. Validate before you deploy.
Tools: XML Formatter and Validator and YAML to JSON Converter
That's the whole list. None of it takes long, and it saves weeks of wondering why pages aren't showing up. More free tools: Toolverse
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