Testing and search engine optimisation is the final phase of the basic web design process. It is simply to make sure that you will get the most out of your website and exactly what you paid for. At this phase in the process, your website will be in a working state and nearly ready to go live. But before this can happen, a number of tests and optimisation tasks need to be performed.
Testing
Firstly, your website will be run through a series of tests to ensure that it’s doing exactly what you asked for and that there are no broken links or errors appearing. Errors on a website, whilst usually minor, can be very off-putting to your users and even have a negative effect in search engines.
Search Engine Optimisation
Secondly, search engine optimisation (SEO) tasks will be performed. SEO for your website can be quiet basic or very advanced depending on your website requirements and budget.
Usually the amount of SEO you need directly correlates with how much your business relies on your website for income. For example, an online business such as an e-commerce store would require the maximum amount of online exposure as possible, whereas a bricks and mortar business like a doctor’s surgery might only require very basic SEO. The reason for this is that the surgery’s clients will already be aware of the local surgery presence and simply only use their website as a reference.
There are Two Main Types of SEO
- On-site SEO
- Off-site SEO
On-Site SEO
Most digital agencies will generally include some on-site SEO as part of a website project; however this can be very basic as complex SEO strategies are a very time consuming and a costly process.
Basic SEO tasks will commonly include the adding of, or the ability to add, page titles and descriptions to each page on your website. These page titles and descriptions are used by the search engines to help determine how relevant your pages are to the key phrases that are being searched.
Other common on-site SEO tasks are website validation and keyword optimisation. Validation is a way of making sure that all of the code on your website is clean, clear and tidy. The cleaner the website code is, the easier it is for the search engines to read it and therefore the more accurate the results will be for the website.
Keyword optimisation is a very complex SEO service that involves a process of analysing your business and its competitors to determine the ideal and most optimal keywords to appear in the search engines. Once identified, these keywords can then be targeted in the content on your website. These more complex SEO services are found as part of digital strategy packages.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO is a much more long term process and is commonly done on a monthly basis. It can include such things as press releases, articles, content creation and another great strategy for marketing is through social media marketing. This type of marketing is more beneficial to target once the website is live.
With the testing and search engine optimisation complete, your website is now ready to go live!
