Checks to Conduct on a Staging Website

Checks to Conduct on a Staging Website

Checking through a staging website ahead of a launch can be quite a task, and if you’ve not done it before it can be hard to know where to start.  That’s why I’ve put this list of checks to conduct on a staging website together. 

Areas to Check on a Staging Website

Don’t think of this as a list of checks that you must complete, rather a suggested and customisable list of things to be aware of on a staging website.

Tracking and Analytics

Google Search Console

Keyword Tracking

Content

Meta and Header Tags

Images

Location

Other Domains and Subdomains

Duplicate Content

Content Size/Low-Quality Content

Schema and Structured Data

Each of the below can be tested against: https://validator.schema.org. There are many benefits to adding schema markup to your websites. 

Company Logo Schema
Sitelinks Search Box Schema
Review Schema
Video Schema
Social Sharing - Twitter Cards and Social Tags
Breadcrumb Schema
crawling and indexing

Crawling and Indexing

Crawl

Indexation

Robots.txt

Redirect non-www pages to www

Parameters

URL Format Rules

URL Format Rules

Redirects

XML Sitemap

Response Codes

  • 200 – OK,
  • 301 – Moved permanently, 
  • 302 – Found,
  • 404 – Not found,
  • 500 – Internal server error.

404 Error Pages

Mobile

International

HTTPS

Cloaking

internal linking on a staging website

Internal Linking

Excessive Internal Linking

Breadcrumbs

eCommerce Banners

Subcategories/Facets/Filters

No Follow Links and Linking to Index Pages

Broken/Redirected Internal Linking

Internal Linking Opportunities

External Links

Disavow

External Links to 404s

First Paint and Interactive

User Experience

Popups

Performance Metrics

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Twitter
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