SEO for a New Website: The First 90 Days

Short answer: In the first 90 days, verify the site in Search Console, submit a sitemap, get a Google Business Profile live, publish one page per service and location, and measure what Google already shows you for. Google gives no indexing timeline, and an Ahrefs study found only 1.74% of new pages reach the top 10 within a year, so plan for brand and local searches first and competitive terms later.

This guide assumes the site is already live. If it replaced an older site, read website redesign without losing rankings first, because missing redirects undo everything below.

What should I do in the first week after launch?

The first week is setup, not content. Everything here is free.

• Verify ownership in Google Search Console. Use the domain property so every subdomain and protocol is covered.
• Submit the XML sitemap. Google's sitemap guidance says a sitemap matters most when a site is new and has few external links, which describes every new site.
• Run URL Inspection on the home page and each service page. Request indexing where the page is not yet known.
• Check robots.txt and the page source for a stray noindex tag left over from staging. This is the most common reason a new site shows nothing after a month.
• Create or claim the Google Business Profile with the exact business name, address, category and website URL.
• Confirm the site passes Core Web Vitals on a phone in PageSpeed Insights. Thresholds are 2.5 seconds for LCP, 200 milliseconds for INP and 0.1 for CLS, per web.dev.
• Install analytics and set an enquiry event: form submitted, WhatsApp click, phone click.

Also check Bing Webmaster Tools. It takes 10 minutes and feeds ChatGPT search and Copilot, which matter for AI answers.

How do I get a new website indexed?

Indexing is Google storing your page so it can be served. Google's how search works page states that indexing is not guaranteed and that not every page Google processes will be indexed.

What speeds it up:

• Links from pages Google already crawls. Your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn company page, industry directories and any supplier or partner pages that list you.
• Internal links. Every page should be reachable within 2 clicks from the home page. Orphan pages get crawled late or not at all.
• Server-rendered HTML. Google processes JavaScript in a separate rendering queue, and its JavaScript SEO documentation says a page may stay on that queue for a few seconds but it can take longer. Pages that arrive as complete HTML skip the wait.
• One version of each URL. Pick www or non-www, https only, no trailing-slash duplicates, and set the canonical tag.

What to expect: the home page is usually indexed within days of a Search Console request. Inner pages follow over 1 to 4 weeks. If a page is still "Discovered, currently not indexed" after 4 weeks, Google has seen it and chosen not to store it yet, which is a content or duplication signal, not a technical one.

How do I choose the first keywords?

Start from what you can win, not from what has the most volume.

The timings are estimates from the pattern of new sites, not a Google figure. Google's own data shows why broad terms are slow: the Ahrefs study published May 2025 found that 72.9% of top-10 pages were more than 3 years old.

How to build the list:

• Write down the 10 questions customers ask you on WhatsApp or the phone each week. Each is a search.
• Add each service you sell, in the words customers use, not your internal names.
• Add each area you serve if location matters to the buyer.
• Check Google Keyword Planner for the phrasing with volume. A free Google Ads account is enough.
• After 4 to 8 weeks, open the Search Console Performance report. The queries where you already have impressions on page 2 are the ones to improve first.

One page targets one search. A page that tries to rank for 6 services ranks for none.

How many pages does a new site need to rank?

Enough to answer each search on its own page, and no more. For most Singapore service businesses that is 8 to 15 pages at launch:

• Home, about, contact.
• One page per service, each 600 to 1,200 words, with price range, process, timeline and who it is for.
• One page per location or industry segment if those change the buyer's question.
• Two or three articles answering the questions from your WhatsApp list.

Google's helpful content guidance lists warning signs for search-engine-first content, including producing many pages on varied topics in the hope some rank and heavy automation without added value. Ten pages that each answer a real question beat fifty thin ones.

Each page should state, in plain text, what you do, where, for whom, and how to contact you. AI search systems lift these facts directly.

When should I expect the first enquiries from Google?

A realistic sequence for a new Singapore business site, from launch:

These are estimates. Competition, page quality and how many referring sites you earn move them in either direction.

Two things shorten the wait. First, the Google Business Profile: for searches with local intent, the map pack appears above organic results and a new profile with correct categories and 5 or more reviews can rank there within weeks. Second, a Google Ads campaign on the service terms while organic builds, measured with the same enquiry events.

What to do at day 90:

• Export the Performance report. Sort queries by impressions, filter to positions 8 to 20. Improve those pages first.
• Check the Pages report for anything not indexed and fix the cause.
• Add one new article a week answering a customer question, each linked from a service page.
• Ask 5 customers for a Google review.
• Re-run the website audit checklist to catch anything that broke since launch.

What cense does

cense builds sites in Next.js with server-rendered pages, a sitemap, security headers and one page per service, so indexing does not wait on a rendering queue. A marketing AI agent then drafts articles nightly from the client's industry and competitor posts, and the client approves each one before it publishes. See SEO and AI search.