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Microsite SEO checklist

Before you write a single page

Decide who the site is for and what it is about. Write both in one sentence each, then keep them on screen while you work.

Then list the pages. A home page, the thing you do, some proof, and a way to get in touch is a fine start.

Write your page titles before you write the pages. If two titles could be swapped without anyone noticing, you have two versions of one page.

Pick one topic per page. A genuinely useful page answers one question well, and two topics on a page means neither is easy to find.

The checklist itself

Run this on every page before it goes live.

None of it needs a tool. A spreadsheet with a row per page and a column per item will keep you honest while the site is small.

• One clear title that reads like a sentence a person would say.
• A description that matches the page instead of selling it.
• One H1, then headings in order, with no skipped levels.
• An answer in the first two lines, so the page can be quoted.
• Internal links a reader would actually follow.

What to check once it is live

None of these items are advanced. They are the ones that get skipped when a site is built in a hurry, and they are the ones people notice first.

Look at what the page shows a crawler, not what it shows you. Check the rendered title and description, and confirm every page can be reached without digging.

Then leave it alone for a while — constant edits make it hard to tell what changed anything.

Set a reminder for a few months out and read the site as a stranger would. Fix broken links, thin pages, and anything you would be embarrassed to read out loud.

Ask someone outside the business to find one thing on the site. Watching them look is worth more than any report you could run.

How Microsite Generator handles this

Every site is scored against the platform's publish check, which has 51 checks in nine groups, so the boring items are caught before you publish.

The compliance gate then does the harder job. The platform's page generator refuses pages that are a template with the town swapped, and edits that make pages too alike are refused too.

Those checks run on every site, so a page you added last week is held to the same standard as the ones you launched with.

Pages that pass are individually built and checked against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards. Copies do not get through.

Updated September 2026