Case: a 7-box pre-publish QA gate dropped post-launch errors 92%

Case: a 7-box pre-publish QA gate dropped post-launch errors 92%

Prior launches shipped broken canonicals, missing titles, and orphan pages — caught only after indexing. Instituted a blocking checklist run on every batch:

☐ Step 1: title present and under 60 chars (gate: 100% of batch)
☐ Step 2: canonical self-referencing or intentional (gate: 0 missing)
☐ Step 3: >=5 internal inbound links per page (gate: 0 orphans)
☐ Step 4: unique-token ratio >55% (gate: sampled 200)
☐ Step 5: schema validates, 0 errors (gate: 100 sampled)
☐ Step 6: word count >200 (gate: 0 below)
☐ Step 7: in correct segmented sitemap (gate: count matches)

The job hard-fails the batch if any box fails. Over 6 months: post-launch SEO defects fell 92%. Mean time-to-detect a template bug went from 11 days to pre-publish.

Guardrail: the gate must block deploy, not just warn.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.