🚀 The complete checklist before launching (or relaunching) a website, with a focus on Arabic SEO

🌐 Français · English · العربية

Over 120 points to tick before going live: content, mobile, speed, security, email, technical SEO, Arabic SEO, conversion, legal pages, cookie-free analytics and the first 30 days.

How to use it. Print or copy this list and tick as you go. Items marked 🔴 are blockers: don't launch without them. The free tools mentioned are on oufrid.com and need no sign-up.

1. Strategy and content

[ ] 🔴 One main goal, written in one sentence (e.g. "get 20 quote requests a month"). Every page should serve it.
[ ] Audiences and their languages: who reads in French, Arabic, English, Darija?
[ ] Site structure: list of pages, one page = one topic = one search intent.
[ ] No empty pages, no "Lorem ipsum", no "Under construction".
[ ] 🔴 Complete, consistent contact details everywhere (name, address, phone, email), identical to your Google Business Profile.
[ ] An "About" page with real people, real photos and a real address.
[ ] Texts proofread by a native speaker in each language. Raw machine translation shows, especially in Arabic.
[ ] Visuals: your own photos as much as possible, rights checked for the rest.
[ ] An FAQ that answers real questions (prices, timelines, delivery, returns, areas served).
[ ] Old URLs listed if it's a redesign (see technical SEO).

2. Design and mobile

[ ] 🔴 Tested on a real entry-level phone, not just in the browser's device simulator.
[ ] Text readable without zooming (body text of roughly 16 px minimum).
[ ] Buttons large enough for a thumb and well spaced.
[ ] No horizontal scrolling on mobile.
[ ] Simple mobile menu, with the main call-to-action visible.
[ ] Short forms, with the right keyboard (numeric for phone, email for email).
[ ] Sufficient contrast and recognisable links.
[ ] Alternative text (alt attribute) on meaningful images.
[ ] Keyboard navigation works (Tab) with a visible focus.
[ ] A useful 404 page, with search or links to key pages.
[ ] Favicon and site name correct in the browser tab.
[ ] Share images (Open Graph): a clean preview when the link is shared on WhatsApp or Facebook.

3. Speed

Google measures real-world experience with Core Web Vitals: a good score means an LCP (main content displayed) of 2.5 s or less, an INP (responsiveness) of 200 ms or less and a CLS (visual stability) of 0.1 or less.

[ ] 🔴 Mobile speed test: free speed test.
[ ] Compressed images (WebP or AVIF), correctly sized, lazy-loaded below the fold.
[ ] Image and video dimensions set to avoid layout shifts.
[ ] Fonts: two families at most, in WOFF2, with font-display: swap. For Arabic, load only the weights you use.
[ ] No heavy autoplay video at the top of mobile pages.
[ ] Few third-party scripts: every pixel, chat or widget slows things down.
[ ] Caching enabled (page, browser) and compression (gzip or Brotli).
[ ] CDN if your visitors are in several countries (Morocco, Europe, Gulf).
[ ] Unused plugins deleted (WordPress), not just deactivated.

4. Security

[ ] 🔴 HTTPS everywhere, valid certificate, automatic redirect from http:// to https:// and to a single version (with or without www).
[ ] 🔴 Automatic backups, stored off the server, and a restore tested at least once.
[ ] 🔴 Everything up to date: CMS, theme, plugins, PHP version.
[ ] Unique passwords and two-factor authentication on admin accounts, the host and the domain registrar.
[ ] One account per person, with the minimum role needed.
[ ] No "admin" username and no forgotten test account.
[ ] Brute-force protection on the login page.
[ ] Spam-protected forms (privacy-friendly anti-bot).
[ ] Legitimate licences: no "nulled" (pirated) themes or plugins.
[ ] The domain in your name, with auto-renewal and a valid contact email.
[ ] Basic security headers (HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, referrer policy).
[ ] Uptime monitoring: get alerted if the site goes down.

5. Email: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Since 2024, Gmail requires all senders to use SPF or DKIM, and those sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail to use SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus one-click unsubscribe for marketing email. Even if you send little, set up all three: your quotes and order confirmations will land in the inbox, not in spam.

[ ] 🔴 SPF: a single SPF record listing all your sending services (mailbox, website, email marketing tool).
[ ] 🔴 DKIM enabled on every service that sends on your behalf.
[ ] DMARC published, starting with p=none and a reporting address, then moving gradually to quarantine or reject.
[ ] Website emails (forms, orders) go through a proper authenticated SMTP service, not the server's mail function.
[ ] Send test to Gmail and Outlook: check they reach the inbox.
[ ] Free check of your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNS): domain checker.

6. Technical SEO

[ ] 🔴 The site is no longer blocked: remove the noindex and the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" option left over from staging. It's the most common launch mistake.
[ ] 🔴 A unique title tag per page, descriptive, with the main keyword near the start.
[ ] A unique meta description per page, written to make people want to click.
[ ] One H1 per page, then a logical H2/H3 hierarchy.
[ ] Short, readable URLs, with no dates or useless parameters.
[ ] Internal links: every important page gets links from other pages.
[ ] XML sitemap generated, up to date and declared in robots.txt.
[ ] robots.txt checked: it doesn't block CSS, JS or useful pages. Reminder: robots.txt prevents crawling, not indexing; to keep a page out of the index, use noindex.
[ ] Canonical tag on every page, pointing to the right URL.
[ ] 301 redirects for every old URL in a redesign, with no redirect chains.
[ ] No broken links (404) in the menu, footer and content.
[ ] Schema.org structured data where relevant: Organization or LocalBusiness, Product for a store, BreadcrumbList, Article for a blog. Test it with Google's Rich Results Test. Don't expect miracles: Google heavily restricted FAQ rich results in 2023.
[ ] hreflang for a multilingual site: each version lists all the others and itself, with reciprocal links, plus an x-default version.
[ ] Correct lang attribute on every page (fr, en, ar), and dir="rtl" for Arabic.
[ ] Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools set up, sitemap submitted.
[ ] Full audit before launch: free SEO audit.

7. Arabic SEO: what standard checklists forget

Arabic isn't "translated English". It raises technical questions and, above all, vocabulary questions.

7.1 RTL layout

[ ] 🔴 <html lang="ar" dir="rtl"> on Arabic pages, and CSS that uses logical properties (margin-inline-start rather than margin-left) to avoid maintaining two stylesheets.
[ ] Directional icons flipped (next arrows, breadcrumbs, carousels), but not logos or video play icons.
[ ] Numbers, phone numbers, prices and codes stay readable left-to-right inside Arabic text (test "0612345678" and "250 MAD" inside a sentence).
[ ] RTL forms: labels, error messages, email and phone fields (the latter with dir="ltr").
[ ] Mixed text (Arabic + Latin brand name) checked: punctuation mustn't jump to the start of the line.

7.2 Arabic fonts

[ ] A dedicated Arabic font, readable on screen (for example Noto Naskh Arabic, Noto Kufi Arabic, Cairo, Tajawal or IBM Plex Sans Arabic, all free on Google Fonts).
[ ] Slightly larger size than Latin text: at the same size, Arabic looks smaller.
[ ] More generous line height (around 1.7 to 1.9) for diacritics.
[ ] No Latin font leaving Arabic to the system fallback, which renders differently from one phone to the next.
[ ] Arabic subset and limited weights for speed.

7.3 Keyword research: Standard Arabic, Darija and "Franco-Arabic"

[ ] 🔴 Don't translate your keywords, research them. People rarely type the literal translation of your English or French keyword.
[ ] Standard Arabic (Fusha) versus dialect: the same need can be searched in Standard Arabic or in Darija. Test both phrasings in Google's suggestions and compare the results.
[ ] "Franco-Arabic" queries (Arabizi: Darija written in Latin letters with numbers, 3 for ع, 7 for ح, 9 for ق) are common in Morocco, especially on mobile and social media. Note the ones relevant to your business and use them naturally in an FAQ or in customer reviews, without stuffing.
[ ] French words in Moroccan queries: many Moroccan users search in French even though they speak Darija. Your French page isn't "for foreigners".
[ ] Spelling variants: hamza (أ / إ / ا), ta marbuta (ة / ه), ya (ي / ى). Google often groups them, but check your main queries.
[ ] City names in both scripts (الدار البيضاء / Casablanca / Casa) for local SEO.
[ ] Data sources: Google suggestions and "People also ask", Search Console after launch, Google Trends (term comparison), questions you receive on WhatsApp. Treat volumes with caution: keyword tools cover dialect poorly.

7.4 Arabic URLs

[ ] Pick one rule and stick to it: URLs in Arabic script (Google accepts them, provided they're percent-encoded in the code, which WordPress and most CMSs do) or transliterated into Latin letters.
[ ] Arabic URLs: readable in the address bar and in results, but they become very long (encoded as %D8%…) when copied into a message or an email.
[ ] Transliterated URLs (e.g. /ar/tasmim-mawaqi3/): shorter to share, but less meaningful to an Arabic reader.
[ ] Never spaces or special characters; hyphens between words and short URLs in every case.

7.5 hreflang: `ar` or `ar-MA`?

[ ] One Arabic version for everyone (Morocco, Gulf, Egypt…) → hreflang="ar".
[ ] An Arabic version designed for Morocco (prices in dirhams, delivery in Morocco, some Darija terms) and perhaps another for the Gulf → ar-MA and, for example, ar-AE or ar-SA, plus a generic ar fallback if you can.
[ ] Never MA on its own: Google doesn't accept a country code without a language. Languages follow ISO 639-1 and countries ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2.
[ ] Reciprocal links are mandatory: otherwise Google ignores the tags.
[ ] No automatic redirect based on browser language or IP address: offer a visible language switcher and let Google crawl every version.
[ ] Reminder: Google doesn't detect a page's language from hreflang or the lang attribute, but from the visible content. An "Arabic" page whose main text is in French will be treated as French.

8. Conversion

[ ] 🔴 One main call-to-action visible without scrolling on mobile, with a clear verb ("Get a quote", "Order", "Book").
[ ] A WhatsApp button using the https://wa.me/212XXXXXXXXX format (international number, no + and no leading 0), with a pre-filled message that names the page it came from.
[ ] Clickable phone number (tel:) and stated response hours.
[ ] Trust signals: real reviews (first name and city, with consent), real photos, past work, certifications, physical address.
[ ] Prices or price ranges shown when possible: "price on request" everywhere drives people away.
[ ] Answers to objections near the button: timelines, delivery, cash on delivery, returns, warranty.
[ ] Forms of 3 to 5 fields at most for a first contact.
[ ] A thank-you page after submitting, saying what happens next ("we'll reply within 24 hours").
[ ] For a COD store: a summary of the total amount to have ready, timelines, and a stated phone or WhatsApp confirmation.
[ ] Free conversion audit of your key pages: conversion audit.

9. Legal pages

[ ] 🔴 Legal notice / imprint: publisher identity, contact details, host (mandatory in France).
[ ] 🔴 Privacy policy: which data, why, for how long, which rights (GDPR in Europe, Law 09-08 in Morocco).
[ ] In Morocco, declaration of customer data processing to the CNDP where required.
[ ] Terms of sale for a store, accessible from the home page. In Morocco, Law 31-08 notably requires the seller's identity, physical address, delivery costs and timelines, and the existence of the withdrawal right (7 days after receipt).
[ ] Cookie policy and consent banner only if you use trackers that require it.
[ ] Pages translated into every language of the site.
[ ] Free generator for a first draft: legal pages generator. Have a professional review it for special cases.

10. Analytics without cookies

[ ] Pick a privacy-friendly analytics tool (for example Plausible, Umami, or Matomo configured without cookies). In France, the CNIL exempts some audience measurement tools from consent, under strict conditions.
[ ] Define 3 to 5 conversions: form sent, WhatsApp click, phone click, order.
[ ] Tag your campaign links (UTM parameters) to know where contacts come from.
[ ] Search Console for SEO: it sets no cookies on your visitors.
[ ] If you use ad pixels (Meta, TikTok, Google Ads): consent, and a mention in the privacy policy.

11. Launch day

[ ] 🔴 Full backup right before the switch.
[ ] DNS TTL lowered the day before if you're changing servers.
[ ] Switch at a quiet time, not on a Friday evening.
[ ] Immediate checks: HTTPS, redirects, forms, emails received, test order, WhatsApp button.
[ ] noindex removed (yes, again: it really is the number one oversight).
[ ] Sitemap submitted in Search Console; indexing requested for key pages.
[ ] Google Business Profile updated with the new site address.
[ ] Links updated on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp Business, email signatures, business cards.

12. The first 30 days

When	What to do
Day 1	Check errors in Search Console and form emails; place another test order
Day 3	Track 404s and missing redirects; fix them
Day 7	First traffic review: page views, sources, conversions; rerun the speed test with real traffic
Day 14	Read Search Console queries (including Arabic and Franco-Arabic); adjust titles and descriptions of pages that show up but don't get clicked
Day 21	Ask your first customers for reviews; add the questions you get on WhatsApp to the FAQ
Day 30	Review: goals met? Backup restore tested? Updates done? List of improvements for next month

13. Sources (checked on 18/10/2026)

Need help?

I can run your site through this checklist before launch, or handle multilingual SEO (French, English, Arabic). See the SEO service or get in touch.

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