Launching a new realtor website is a one-time event for most agents. You only get one chance to launch well, and a bad launch can cost you 90 days of SEO progress while you fix issues that should have been caught beforehand.
Here is the 30-item checklist I use when launching a Charcom site for a new founder agent. Most of it applies to any platform you use.
Content (1-10)
1. Hero copy matches your actual practice (not generic template text)
2. Headline includes your name and primary service area
3. Subheadline articulates your differentiation in one sentence
4. About page is a real biography (300+ words), not a 3-sentence placeholder
5. Professional headshot uploaded (recent, outdoor or environmental, 4:5 ratio)
6. Bio mentions specific transaction count or years in business
7. Contact information consistent everywhere (name, address, phone, email)
8. Brokerage name and license number in footer (RECO compliance)
9. At least 3 neighbourhood guides published (1000+ words each)
10. At least 2 blog posts published (proves the site is alive)
Listings and MLS (11-15)
11. MLS feed authorized and first sync complete
12. At least 3 active listings rendering correctly
13. Listing detail pages have full photo galleries, not just thumbnails
14. Listing prices display in CAD with correct formatting
15. Sold listings showing correct "SOLD" badge (not falsely active)
SEO foundation (16-22)
16. Meta title on every page (not the default theme title)
17. Meta description on every page (155 characters max)
18. Custom domain configured with SSL active
19. HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect verified working
20. www-to-non-www redirect verified working
21. sitemap.xml accessible at /sitemap.xml
22. robots.txt allows Googlebot, disallows admin areas
Mobile and performance (23-25)
23. Google PageSpeed Insights mobile score 80+
24. All images compressed (each under 400KB)
25. No horizontal scroll on mobile at any breakpoint
Compliance (26-28)
26. Cookie banner enabled (PIPEDA requirement)
27. Privacy policy, terms, and cookies policy linked in footer
28. Lead form has consent language for PIPEDA + CASL
Conversion (29-30)
29. Test lead submission goes through, arrives in your inbox
30. Calendar booking link works (Calendly, Cal.com, SavvyCal embed)
Post-launch within 7 days
Once the site is live, three more tasks within the first week:
- Submit sitemap to Google Search Console. Verify the domain via DNS TXT or HTML tag, then submit sitemap.xml. Google starts crawling within hours.
- Submit sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing covers about 7% of search market share in Canada (combined with Yahoo and DuckDuckGo). The submission takes 5 minutes.
- Create or update your Google Business Profile. Verify, claim all categories, add 20+ photos, link to the new website URL.
What happens if you skip the checklist
Most launches I have seen that skipped steps had one of these problems within 90 days:
- Site loads HTTP version on some devices because no redirect was set (causes mixed-content warnings)
- Google indexes the brokerage placeholder copy instead of the agent's real content
- Lead form submissions disappear into spam because the destination email was misconfigured
- MLS listings disappear because the feed token expired (no monitoring)
- Mobile load time was 4+ seconds because nobody compressed images
Each of those is recoverable, but it costs weeks of SEO momentum to fix. The 30-item check before launch catches all of them.
Charcom runs this checklist automatically during onboarding. If you launch a Charcom site, items 16 through 25 are handled by the platform; you only need to confirm items 1 through 15 and 26 through 30 yourself.