1. Teacher: Alison Roberts Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE
BSBEBU401A Review and Maintain a Website Search Engine Optimisation and Change
Teacher: Alison Roberts
Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE

2. What is SEO?
An important website statistic is where visitors are not coming from.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to how well a site is designed to be ranked in a Search Engine’s Results Page (SERP)
Ranking refers to where a site appears when it is returned in a listing after a user has entered in a search string.

3. Recommending changes
Without the data you can only make educated guesses about what needs to be changed
Your recommendations should follow some form of change management process
It is important to make yourself aware of the technology and methods used in designing and modifying websites

4. Implementing a change management system
A change management system is a way of logging information or reporting a request for change
Request for change need to be:
In writing - no matter the source in order to maintain change history
Be controlled – make sure the changes have a positive effect on all existing sites and systmes
Usually done via a change request form or via a helpdesk

5. Expected impact of the change
Some website changes may be minor and only fix a small problem, other changes may have a strong and direct impact on users
It is important to clearly understand what the impact will be to the user so that you can include training and help references in your change-process to minimise impact
Impacts can be assessed also in terms of time, cost and resources.

6. Review costs implications
Cost in staff time to design, plan and implement the change
External web designer or programmer may need to be contracted
Up-skilling of staff if changes are made in- house
New or additional hardware/software may be a requirement to host the modified website

7. Review Cost Implications
You may have a support or maintenance contract with a web design agency or hosting provider.
This might be based on number of requests or time taken to make changes
Ensure cost involved matches Return on Investment (ROI) – will not having the modification reduce the effectiveness of the website?

8. Balance between efficiency and risk
Too many people involved in the approval process it can take an inefficiently long time to make small modifications
Too few people made aware of the proposed change then potential problems may be overlooked

9. Risk management
A risk is something that may happen and if it does, it will have a negative impact on existing sites and systems
Any change to a live website comes with a level of risk
The level of risk will depend on the complexity of the intended change and how wide the impact of the change is within the website

10. 3 stages of risk management planning
Risk identification
need to identify and name the risk,
should be defined in two parts – cause and impact
Risk quantification
Need to assess the probability of the risk occurring as well as the likely impact if the risk does occur
Risk response
Avoid the risk
Transfer the risk
Mitigate the risk
Accept the risk

11. Tools to reduce the impact of risk
Backup – integral part of the process
Roll-back path – how will changes be undone if the are unsuccessful
Standby operations – for high availability run a duplicate website
Optimise the current website – deleting unnecessary files, performing server maintenance, installing updates and patches

12. Documenting expected outcomes
Changes can have a flow on affect where one change leads to many more. You need to:
record reasons for changes
document the consequences of a change
Make sure the changes are agreed to before they are put into practice

13. Approval/Non Approval
Once recommended changes have been defined decisions need to be made as to whether the changes are viable or not.
Factors affecting if a recommend change will be implemented include:
Cost
Technical difficulty
Expected return from making the change
Staff capabilities

14. Inform users of changes
Communicate with users
what the changes will be
why the changes are being made
how the changes will affect website usage
when the changes will occur
and reassure them that the changes are being made to improve their website usage experience
Provide training and help where necessary