SEO for a New Website: What to Do in Month One

en 2026-09-24 7 min read

Month one of SEO for a new website is a one-off job, not a subscription. Our SEO foundation covers the core of it for EUR 450-750, and if you are comfortable in a Google account you can do a good part of it yourself.

The goal is modest: Google can find, read and index every page you care about, and you can measure what happens next. Rankings for the searches that bring in new customers come later, because they depend on things a first month cannot buy, such as pages worth reading and links from other sites.

What to do in month one, in order

The order matters, because the early items can quietly cancel out everything after them.

1. Check the launch did not block Google. A site is built on a staging address that is kept out of search on purpose, with a robots.txt rule or a noindex tag. If either one reaches the live site, nothing below does anything. Open yourdomain/robots.txt, then search the source of your homepage for "noindex".
2. Settle on one address. The http and https versions, with and without www, should all redirect permanently to the same one.
3. Verify Search Console and submit the sitemap. Use a domain property verified through DNS, so it covers every version of the address. Bing Webmaster Tools can import the same setup.
4. Read the page indexing report. "Discovered, currently not indexed" is normal on a new site for a while. A page excluded by a noindex tag or a redirect you did not intend is not. URL Inspection also shows the page as Google rendered it. If your text is missing there, the site depends on Google running its JavaScript correctly, which is one reason we build with Next.js and send the finished page as HTML.
5. Write a real title for every page. The title tag is the headline of your result in Google, unless Google decides to rewrite it. "Home" tells nobody anything. Say what the page offers and, if you serve an area, where.
6. Link your own pages to each other. A service page that nothing links to is hard for Google to find, and the missing links suggest it does not matter.
7. Redirect the old site, if there was one. Every old URL with visitors or links from other sites needs a 301 redirect to its closest new page. Of everything on this list, this is the item that can throw away what the old site had earned.
8. Claim your Google Business Profile, if you serve a local area. For local searches, profiles appear in the map results, apart from the ordinary list of websites. Keep the name, address and phone number identical to the site.
9. Make analytics count enquiries, not only visits. Record form submissions, phone clicks and bookings as events, and send a test through each one. With visitors in the EU, your consent banner decides what analytics may record.

What to ignore in month one

Each of these costs time or money and tells you very little while the site is new.

• Daily rank tracking. A new site's positions jump around, and a tool checking from one location is not what your customers see. The performance report in Search Console, read once a month, tells you more.
• Authority scores. Domain Authority and Domain Rating are made up by tool vendors from link data. Google does not use them, and a new site with no links scores low on them by design.
• A perfect Lighthouse score. Fix what is actually slow on a phone. Google looks at speed data from real visitors, not at the Lighthouse number.
• Bought links and bulk content. Paying for links and churning out thin pages to catch searches both break Google's spam policies, and cleaning up afterwards is harder than never starting.
• A monthly retainer before there is data. SEO growth at EUR 500-800/mo covers technical and on-page work, service and location pages, internal links and reporting. It needs Search Console data to act on, so the foundation comes first.

What EUR 450-750 covers, and what moves it

Where a foundation lands inside that range depends on the site. A step 01 landing page has one title to write, one page to index and one form to track. A step 03 business website with 4-7 pages, a booking flow and an old site behind it has more titles, more events to test and a redirect map to check. You get a fixed quote once we have looked at the site, and the foundation ends with a written 3-6 month plan you can follow without us.

How month one fits around the build

SEO is cheapest to get right before launch, while page addresses are still easy to change. Build time comes from the step: 1-2 weeks for a step 01 landing page, 2-3 weeks for a step 02 mini-site, 3-6 weeks for a step 03 business website. The five steps and their prices show what each one includes.

Titles, addresses and the redirect map are settled during the design and build. Search Console can be verified through DNS before the site is live. On launch day the staging block comes off, the redirects go live, the sitemap goes in and a test enquiry goes through every form.

Two things depend on logins only you have: access to wherever your domain is registered, for the DNS verification, and the owner's claim on the Google Business Profile. This is the part that waits on you, so find both before launch week.

When to spend less

• If the site is a landing page for paid ads, search traffic is not its job. Check robots.txt, verify Search Console, write a proper title, and stop there.
• If customers come through referrals and already know your name, Search Console and a claimed Google Business Profile, set up yourself, may be all you need.
• If you are comfortable in a Google account, much of the list above needs only free tools. Pay for the parts that need a developer, such as redirects and analytics events.

And if the service pages are not written yet, do not hire us yet. No amount of setup makes a vague page rank. Write what you do, for whom and where, then come back.

Questions buyers ask

How long until my new website appears in Google?

Nobody can honestly give you a date. A submitted sitemap, links from profiles you already own and a request through URL Inspection all help Google discover the pages. Appearing for your own business name comes before ranking for competitive searches, which depends on your pages and on links from other sites.

Should I start a blog in month one?

Only if your service pages are already clear and complete. Articles help when they answer questions your buyers search for and link through to the page that sells. A blog started only to look active produces thin posts that Google has no reason to index.

Does the SEO foundation guarantee rankings?

No. It removes the technical reasons Google might skip your pages and gives you the measurements and a 3-6 month plan to act on. What ranks after that depends on the pages, the competition for your searches and who links to you.

Do I have to pay monthly for SEO?

No. The SEO foundation is paid once. SEO growth at EUR 500-800/mo is there when you want ongoing service and location pages, internal linking and reporting, and the written plan is yours to follow without us if you prefer.

If you are launching soon, tell us what the site is and when it goes live, and we will tell you what month one needs.