Take a client's site live

When a client says yes, three steps turn their preview into a live website: attach their domain, confirm where enquiries go, then run go-live SEO. Choosing the domain and handling renewals are covered in Domains.

Attach the domain

On any host, you can ask Klaudius to attach the domain and walk you through the steps.

Vercel

Register the domain at any major registrar and set its nameservers to:

• ns1.vercel-dns.com
• ns2.vercel-dns.com

DNS changes can take up to 48 hours, but usually take under an hour. Then the client's Vercel project picks up the domain; if it isn't attached to the project yet, ask Klaudius to attach it. End to end, it's about ten minutes, and the client never touches a registrar dashboard. With the nameservers on Vercel, Klaudius can also add DNS records itself later, such as the ones booking emails need.

Cloudflare Pages

Add the custom domain to the client's Pages project (Workers & Pages → your project → Custom domains → Set up a domain). If the domain is registered with Cloudflare or its nameservers are there, the DNS record is added in one click; otherwise, add the CNAME Cloudflare shows you at your registrar.

Netlify

Add the custom domain to the client's site (Site configuration → Domain management → Add a domain). Netlify then shows you the DNS to set: point the registrar's nameservers at Netlify's, or add the records it lists at your current registrar.

Your own server

Your server has to serve the client's files at the new domain, which is a change to your server's configuration.

Confirm the contact form's email

Every site has a contact section. If Klaudius had the business's email address when it built the site, the form sends enquiries there through the visitor's own email app. If it didn't (the lead came in by phone, say), the form is built as a preview: it shows a thank-you message so the owner can see how it will work, but it isn't connected to an inbox yet. Connecting it is part of going live.

So ask the client which inbox enquiries should go to before the site goes live. Go-live SEO checks this too: it asks you for the inbox and wires the form, or makes that the first item on its closing checklist.

Run go-live SEO

Once the domain shows the client's site, pick Apply SEO under Client add-ons on the Runs page, choose the client, enter their live domain and press Start. From the real gathered content, it adds sharing tags, a sitemap, structured data telling Google and AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) what and where the business is and when it's open, and an FAQ written the way people ask. It notifies the search engines that accept a direct notice, lifts the preview's "skip this site" setting, removes the visit counter, and checks that both the www and bare domain lead to the site.

• It works on every host, unlike the editor, booking and live-rating add-ons.
• Run it after the domain is attached. Every tag hangs off the final address, so running it early means running it twice. For a client staying on the free host address, leave the live domain blank.
• A booking-mode preview has to lose its demo booking page first. Install the real booking system, or have Klaudius point the booking buttons at the client's own booking platform.

The line for the client: their site is set up properly for Google and for AI assistants, which most competitors' sites aren't.

Your sign-in checklist

Go-live SEO ends with a few steps behind sign-ins, about ten minutes in all. Klaudius can talk you through each, or do the clicking in a browser once you've signed in.

1. Google Search Console (your Google account or the owner's). Add the domain as a property, verify it with the DNS record it shows you, then submit sitemap.xml under Sitemaps. It's the only way to ask Google to index the site directly.
2. Bing Webmaster Tools. At https://www.bing.com/webmasters, Import from Google Search Console verifies in one click; then submit the sitemap. ChatGPT Search draws on Bing's index. Then claim the business at https://www.bingplaces.com.
3. The Google Business Profile link. When the owner adds the site to their Google listing, give them the tagged address Klaudius gives you, so visits from the listing can be measured. The name, address and phone on the site must match the listing exactly.

Google usually takes days to first index a new site after the Search Console step. A one-page site ranks for its own town; ranking across many towns needs pages of their own, which you can offer later.

Read more on the blog: The moment a client says yes: go-live SEO in one go.