5 Essential Things to Do After Launching a Website

Measure the Website Size and Loading Speed

If you do not know how much your website weighs, you do not really understand its quality. In the past, the ideal page weight was considered to be up to 1 megabyte, but today this benchmark has increased to roughly 3 megabytes.

It is also important to know how long your website takes to load. You can check this in the developer panel, which is available in any browser by pressing F12 and opening the Network tab.

Add the Website to Google Search Console, Yandex Webmaster, and Bing

Read more: How to Get into Google, Yandex, and Bing Search Faster After Launching a Website

If your website is not added to these webmaster tools, it may not appear in search results at all, especially if it is new.

Otherwise, your new pages and updates will appear in search engines with a long delay.

This is because search engines usually learn about changes in two ways:

1. Through a sitemap, which should be uploaded to the control panels.
2. By manually requesting a page update, or reindexing.

The control panel gives you access to detailed data about your website's condition. For example, you can check for errors, track queries, and configure basic settings for Robots.txt and Sitemap.

Add a Sitemap and Robots.txt

Sitemap.xml

A sitemap is a Sitemap.xml file located in the root directory of your website. If you are not sure whether you have one, check whether it is available at this address: example.com/sitemap.xml.

If you cannot open this file or receive a 404 error, it means your website does not have one.

Sitemap.xml is needed so search engines can track changes on your website pages.

For example, when a new page appears on the website, it is automatically added to the sitemap. Search crawlers will be able to discover it easily.

You can add the sitemap through the webmaster panel we discussed earlier. Here is an example sitemap from a Sitemap.xml file:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://dapplics.com/blogs/business/recsys/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-06-23T22:39:04.505Z</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Robots.txt

You can check whether Robots.txt exists by opening example.com/robots.txt. If the file does not open or returns a 404 error, it means your website does not have one.

Robots.txt is used to configure how search crawlers behave on your website.

For example, you can use it to prevent search crawlers from visiting certain pages or sections of your website. You can also allow some crawlers to access certain sections while restricting others.

For example, you can block ChatGPT bots from crawling your website. This can help prevent international AI systems from collecting information from your website. Access for Google or Yandex can be configured in the same way.

Most people want their website to be open and accessible to the entire internet. In Robots.txt, we recommend specifying at least the following settings:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://dapplics.com/sitemap.xml

Notice that Robots.txt includes a link to Sitemap.xml.

Connect an Analytics System: Google Analytics or Yandex Metrika

An analytics system will give you valuable information about your users, including where they come from and how they move through your website.

If your website does not have an analytics system installed, you will not know who visits your resource or how many people use it. We recommend installing at least one popular analytics system:

1. Yandex Metrika - for users from Russia.
2. Google Analytics - for everyone else.

You can use both systems, depending on your preferences. Their capabilities are broadly similar.

By the way, you can find information about duplicate pages in the Google or Yandex developer panel.

Check the Website on All Screen Sizes

It often turns out that not all pages display correctly on phone and tablet screens. You should carefully check every page to make sure it displays without problems on all devices with a minimum resolution starting from 320 pixels. Try changing the zoom level and screen orientation.

You can also check your website visit statistics through your analytics system to see which resolutions visitors use. Remember that 320-pixel resolutions are still relevant.