SEO Go-Live Sweep & Post Live Check Process
Last updated: March 21, 2025
What is the Go-Live Sweep?
All sites that go live will need to have a go live sweep. This process involves checking the new site for url structure, adding redirects and troubleshooting any redirect problems once the site is live.
A Project Coordinator will notify the SEO Owner in AirTable when a project is ready to go through the go live sweep process. Each of the processes in the sections below will need to be complete in order before the project coordinator can take the site live. Click into the sections below for detailed steps on the go-live SEO sweep process.
Check URL Structure and Nesting
Check Site Structure
Scan through each page and see if pages are being properly nested. If a website has multiple locations, it probably makes sense to nest the activity types under each location.
Example: /oahu/surfing/2-hr-surf-lessons/
If the company has one location, nest activities by activity type.
Example: /surfing/2-hr-surf-lessons/
If the client has a bunch of random unrelated tours, you can nest them under
/tours/
If you believe the URL structure can be improved, please don’t hesitate to say something/change it.
Add Redirects
If a site has URLs that have changed from their old site to their new FH Site, redirects should be implemented to make sure a site doesn’t lose any authority. If there are only a handful (1 – 5 pages) that need redirects these can easily be entered manually. For sites that have more pages, it is easier to export the redirects from the pre-sweep and import them to the WordPress backend.
Formatting your Redirects for WordPress Import – This is the beginning of the standard site go-live process
Before starting this process, double check that the URLs on the new site are only changed from their previous address when there is something clearly gained from it, like targeting a relevant keyword.
For example, if you’ve created an About Us page and their old page’s URL was www.domain.com/about/, check that the page you created is still www.domain.com/about/, not www.domain.com/about-us/.
Keeping URLs the same when possible can help SEO and reduce the need for an unnecessary redirect.
To format redirects from the pre-sweep and prepare them for importing into WordPress, follow these steps:
- Open the pre-sweep and navigate to the “FH.ME URL Matching” tab. Then on the top Menu Bar click on the “Pre Sweep” and then the “Redirects” dropdown to run the script.
The script will find & replace fareharbor.me with the root domain, as opposed to doing this manually. See screenshot below for end result of what this will look like.
Once your sheet has been formatted you’ll need to export as a CSV. To do this, go to the Google Sheets menu and click File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv). Save this somewhere that you will be able to find it.
Importing Redirects to WordPress
Once you have a correctly formatted CSV with your redirects open the WordPress backend of the website and follow these instructions:
In the backend of WordPress navigate to Tools > Redirection in the left hand menu.
At the top of the page click the “Import/Export” hyperlink.
Click the “Add File” button.
Select your CSV file that contains your redirects and click “Open”.
In the “Import to group” field select “Redirections” and click “Upload”.
Once the redirects are uploaded click “OK”.
Confirm that your redirects have been imported by clicking the “Redirects” hyperlink at the top of the page.
If the redirects have been imported correctly you’ll see them populated here.
After importing, review the existing redirects.
Once the site structure has been checked and the redirects have been added to the site, reassign the site to the Project Coordinator in AirTable and leave a comment, tagging them that the website is ready to go live. The remaining tech audit steps will need to be completed after the site is live on the clients domain.
Manually Adding Redirects to Wordpress – This is a rare case scenario, for singular pages or one-offs. This is not the standard process for site go-lives.
To manually add a redirect to a site navigate to the backend of the site and follow these instructions:
Before beginning please note that you do not need to add any redirects for pages where the URL structure will remain the same. This includes the home page.
In the WordPress dashboard menu go to Tools > Redirection.
Click “Add New” at the top of the page to add a new redirect.
Enter the relative source URL to the input. This is the URL that needs to be redirected. Only include the relative URL in this field. ex.
/tours/key-west-craft-cocktail-pub-crawl/, nothttps://www.keywestfoodtours.com/tours/key-west-craft-cocktail-pub-crawl/Next, enter in the target URL. This is the URL that we want to redirect the source URL to. This should be the full URL. ex.
https://www.keywestfoodtours.com/tours/key-west-craft-cocktail-pub-crawl/Make sure the group selected is “Redirections” and click the “Add Redirect” button.
Perform the Tech Audit
The tech audit needs to be done once the site is live on the domain. Once the site has propagated the Project Coordinator will submit a workflow in the #checks_fhs slack channel tagging the SEO Owner. Once you have been tagged in the live check, follow the steps below to make sure all URLs and links are working correctly.
SEMRush
We’ll utilize SEMRush to check if the new site is displaying any errors now that it is live.
Open SEMRush and click on the “Projects” option in the left menu.
- FHS team use your SEMRush login through Keeper
Once there, you’ll see a page that displays all of your projects. There are two types of projects on this page “My Competitors” and “My Projects”. Scroll down to until you see the section with the title “My Projects” (see image below).
We’ll need to add a new project. To do this click the “+ Create Project” button and enter in the domain of the site that needs to be checked as well as a name for the project.
Note: If you are unable to add a new project, message the SEO Manager and wait for next steps from them.
Once the new project has been created it should open automatically. If it does not open automatically it will populate in the list under “My Projects”. Navigate to it in the list of projects and click on it to open. You should see a screen similar to the image below.
Next you will need to create a Site Audit report by clicking “Set Up” under the Site Audit box. Make sure to set the limit of checked pages to an appropriate amount of pages for the website. Generally 1000 pages will be plenty for FareHarbor sites. For the crawl source select “Website”. Deselect the “Send an email every time an audit is complete” checkbox. Once all your options have been selected click “Start Site Audit”. Depending on the size of the site the report will take a few minutes to run.
Once the report has finished running, open the project and you should see a screen similar to the one below. Click the button that says “View Full Report”.
The report will display three graphs at the top of the page labelled Errors, Warnings and Notices. We’ll need to correct all the Errors that we are able to. Click on “Errors” to see the details. Each of these errors will need to be corrected to complete the Tech Audit.
The amount of possible errors that you can run into will vary greatly however, the most common ones will be errors that involve duplicate content and redirect issues. The report is fairly user friendly in helping solve these errors but in certain cases you may need to do a little research. For help with redirect loop issues see the section below. If you’re not sure how to correct a certain error please reach out to an SEO team member for guidance.
Once all errors have been corrected you can click the “Re-run campaign” button in the top right corner of SEMRush to run the report again. If all errors have been corrected, the Errors graph will now show “0”.
Fixing Redirect Loops in the Go-Live Sweep
One common error that can arise when doing the final tech audit is a redirect loop. Usually when this happens the page in question will receive If there is a redirect chain or loop, identify the links that are causing the loops. For redirect chains, make sure that you take the first redirect link in the chain and change it to the last link in the chain (If A > B > C, then A > C).
For example, domain.com/activities/ is redirected to /domain.com/tours/ which is redirected to the final destination domain.com/dolphin-tours/. When we implement the redirects when the site goes live, we want to make sure to redirect domain.com/activities/ to whatever the current URL will be. If you are redirecting domain.com/dolphin-tours/ to domain.com/dolphin-activities/, we want to make sure to redirect the original URL domain.com/activites/ to domain.com/dolphin-activites/, eliminating all of the redirects in between.
Make sure to pay attention to the backslashes as they can also cause redirect loops. Go into the WordPress backend to fix or add redirects.
Final Steps
After the tech audit is complete, the WCS/WD will navigate back to the #checks_fhs slack channel and post the link to the completed tech audit, tag the Project Coordinator or Project Manager and tag the SEO specialist assigned to the project card.
This will signal the SEO specialist to perform the final check of redirects and ensure tech audit errors have been addressed. If there are any corrections to be made, the SEO specialist will implement them directly.
After all other checks have been made by the Onboarding Team the Project Coordinator will call the project live
* The Project Coordinator or Project Manager can move forward calling the site live before the final SEO check is complete