A Wix Agency's SEO Handoff Checklist: 10 Things to Check Before You Launch

Before handing a Wix website to a client, agencies should run through a short SEO checklist covering title tags and meta descriptions, image alt text, clean URLs, heading structure, mobile performance, sitemap submission, 301 redirects, internal linking, structured data, and Search Console verification. Skipping even one of these at launch is one of the easiest ways a new site loses the search visibility the old one had. This Wix SEO checklist for agencies covers all ten, in the order they're easiest to forget under a launch-day deadline.

SEO handoff work tends to fall through the cracks for a predictable reason: it rarely shows up in a visual review. A client can see that the homepage looks right, that the contact form works, and that the site loads on their phone. They can't see a missing meta description or a 404 where an old page used to rank. By the time a drop in traffic shows up in analytics weeks later, it's much harder to trace back to a specific launch-day gap, and far more work to fix than it would have been to check before launch.

The 10-Point Wix SEO Handoff Checklist

Use this as a final pass after design and functionality review, right before the site goes live — not as a substitute for a broader on-page SEO strategy.

1. Titles and meta descriptions. Every page has a unique, manually written title tag and meta description — nothing left on Wix's auto-generated default text.

2. Image alt text. Every meaningful image has descriptive alt text, not a leftover filename like IMG_4821.jpg.

3. Clean, relevant URLs. Page slugs reflect the page's actual topic in plain language, rather than an auto-generated string of numbers and dashes.

4. Heading structure. Each page has one H1, and headings follow a logical order — never skipping from H1 straight to H4 just because it looked right visually in the editor.

5. Mobile performance. Pages are checked on an actual phone, not just previewed on a wide desktop screen, since mobile load times and layout often differ from the desktop preview.

6. XML sitemap submission. The sitemap isn't just generated — it's actually submitted to Google Search Console after the site goes live, and indexing is requested for key pages.

7. 301 redirects. Every URL from the old site that had traffic, backlinks, or search rankings is redirected to its new equivalent, rather than left to return a 404.

8. Internal linking. Key pages link to each other using descriptive anchor text — not repeated 'click here' links that tell search engines nothing about the destination page.

9. Structured data. Relevant schema markup — FAQ, Organization, LocalBusiness, depending on the site — is present and validates without errors.

10. Search Console and Analytics verification. Site ownership is verified, tracking is confirmed live, and indexing has been requested for key pages before telling the client the launch is complete.

None of this depends on which page builder the site runs on. The specific steps for fixing a missing redirect or writing a meta description look slightly different in Wix than on another platform, but the checklist itself — write titles, check mobile speed, submit the sitemap, redirect old URLs — applies to any agency launching any website, with or without additional tools layered on top.

For agencies that want ongoing blog content without adding that work to their own plate, Growth OS is a Wix app that writes and publishes SEO-structured blog posts for a single site at a time. It's installed per site rather than run from a shared agency dashboard, so it fits alongside this checklist rather than replacing any part of it — see how Growth OS writes SEO blog posts without making anything up for more on how it handles sourcing and fact-checking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to redo this checklist for every client site?

Yes. Even a small redesign on an existing domain can have old URLs, existing backlinks, or already-indexed pages that need redirects — this checklist is a per-launch habit, not a one-time setup.

What's the single most commonly missed step?

301 redirects. Agencies tend to focus on how the new site looks and forget to check which URLs from the old site were actually indexed or linked to before launch.

Does this checklist still matter if I'm using an SEO automation tool?

Yes. Tools like Growth OS handle ongoing content, but they're writing into whatever foundation the site already has — a clean checklist underneath makes anything built on top of it work better.

How long does a full SEO handoff check take?

For a typical small-business site, well under an hour once it becomes a standard step in the launch process rather than an afterthought.

Arcknet handles both the agency side of this work and ongoing SEO for Wix sites — see examples in our portfolio, get in touch for a quote, or look at our broader digital marketing services if SEO handoff is one piece of a larger project.