5 Resources That Keep Your Website Healthy
(And the Warning Signs They Catch)
Your website is a lot like your car. When it's new, everything runs smoothly. But give it a year of real-world use without maintenance and things start to slip. A sluggish engine here, a strange noise there, and eventually, it may not start at all.
Most business owners don't check on their website until something is obviously broken. The problem is that by the time an issue becomes obvious, it may have already been costing you customers for weeks or months. Slow load times can hurt user experience and search performance. Broken links can erode trust. Downtime can send visitors straight to a competitor.
The good news is that you don't need to be a developer to keep a website healthy. You just need the right resources in your corner. Many of them are free or offer free tiers. Here are five we recommend and use ourselves, along with the specific warning signs each one can catch.
First, Know What "Unhealthy" Looks Like
Before we get to the resources, here's a short list of things to watch for on any business website:
Slow page loads: Especially on mobile devices. If your site takes too long to display its main content, visitors may leave before the page finishes loading.
Pages that shift while loading: Text moves, buttons jump, or images push content around. This is known as layout shift and can create a frustrating user experience.
Broken links and missing images: Every 404 page and broken image is another potential hit to your credibility.
Silent downtime: If your website goes down overnight and nobody is monitoring it, how would you know?
Outdated software: Old plugins, themes, and software can create security vulnerabilities and increase the risk of a compromised website.
Google indexing issues: Important pages may be missing from search results, outdated information may be indexed, or technical errors may prevent Google from properly crawling your site.
Stale content: Old business hours, discontinued services, or an outdated phone number can cost you calls and leads.
Forms that quietly fail: A broken contact form can turn a potential lead into a missed opportunity without anyone realizing it.
Each of the five resources below can catch one or more of these problems. Used together, they provide coverage for many of the ways a website can quietly fall apart.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights: For Slow Loads and Layout Shift
What it catches: Slow load times, layout shift, and mobile performance problems.
Cost: Free.PageSpeed Insights tests individual URLs and provides performance data based on Core Web Vitals and other performance metrics.
Some of the key metrics include:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Measures how quickly the main content becomes visible. A good score is 2.5 seconds or less.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Measures how much content unexpectedly moves while the page loads. A good score is 0.1 or less.
- TBT (Total Blocking Time): Measures how long a page is blocked from responding to user input during loading. A good score is under 200ms.
Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and most important landing pages regularly, checking both mobile and desktop performance. Don't obsess over the overall score. Look for the biggest problems first and prioritize the issues that have the greatest impact on users.
One thing we've learned from auditing client websites is that the score doesn't always tell the whole story. A site can look reasonably healthy at a glance while a specific issue creates a major usability problem. Performance testing helps uncover problems that visitors may experience without ever reporting them.
2. Google Search Console: For Google-Side Problems
What it catches: Indexing errors, sitemap issues, security problems, and real-world Core Web Vitals data.
Cost: Free.
If PageSpeed Insights is a performance test, Search Console is your website's ongoing report card from Google's perspective.
It can show you:
- Which pages Google has indexed and which it hasn't
- Indexing and crawling issues
- Sitemap problems
- Search performance and keyword data
- Security issues
- Core Web Vitals based on real-world user data
That last point is especially valuable. A lab test shows you how your site performs under specific testing conditions. Search Console can show you how your site is performing for actual visitors using different devices and connections.
Check Search Console at least once a month, and pay attention to the notifications Google sends you. They can alert you to problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.
3. A WordPress Management Dashboard: For Downtime and Updates
What it catches: Website downtime, outdated plugins and themes, failed updates, backup issues, and other WordPress maintenance problems.
Cost: Free and paid options are available depending on the platform and features you need.
Downtime is one of the most expensive website problems because it can happen without you knowing.
Your website could go down while you're asleep, away from the office, or focused on other parts of your business. Without monitoring, you may not find out until a customer tells you.
A WordPress management platform such as ManageWP can give you one place to monitor multiple websites, check for updates, manage backups, and keep an eye on site health.
Outdated software also deserves attention. Old plugins and themes can introduce security vulnerabilities, especially when they are no longer maintained by their developers.
There's another important consideration: a website can technically be "up" while an important feature is broken. Your homepage might load normally while your contact form, booking system, checkout, or other revenue-generating pages fail.
That's why it's important to monitor the pages and functions that actually matter to your business, not just the homepage.
4. An All-in-One SEO Platform: For Technical SEO Problems
What it catches: Broken links, redirect issues, duplicate content, missing metadata, crawlability problems, ranking changes, and other technical SEO issues.
Cost: Varies by platform and plan.
Tools such as Semrush can crawl your website much like a search engine and provide a list of technical and SEO issues that need attention.
A site audit can uncover problems such as:
- Broken links
- Redirect chains
- Duplicate page titles
- Missing or weak metadata
- Crawlability problems
- Indexing issues
- Missing image alt text
- Internal linking opportunities
These tools are particularly useful because they allow you to look at the website as a whole instead of checking pages one at a time.
They can also provide valuable information beyond technical issues, including keyword rankings, competitor performance, and pages that may be gaining or losing visibility.
Run a full site audit regularly and after major website changes. Then prioritize the issues based on their potential impact rather than simply trying to eliminate every warning.
5. A Web Agency That Handles Maintenance: For Everything the Tools Can't See
What it catches: Issues that require human judgment, ongoing maintenance, and actual implementation.
Cost: Varies depending on the services provided.
Here's the honest truth about the first four resources: They're diagnostic tools.
PageSpeed Insights can tell you that your page is slow, but it doesn't necessarily tell you the best way to fix the problem.
Search Console can tell you that a page isn't indexed, but someone still needs to determine why and what action should be taken.
A WordPress management platform can tell you an update failed, but someone needs to determine whether it's safe to try again or whether the update could create a larger issue.
An SEO platform can identify dozens of technical problems, but someone still needs to decide which ones actually matter and fix them.
That's where an experienced web team comes in.
A good agency provides:
- Prioritized maintenance: Instead of simply identifying problems, the team determines what needs to be fixed first.
- Ongoing performance reviews: Regular checks help catch problems before they become major issues.
- Human oversight: Tools can't always identify outdated information, confusing navigation, inconsistent branding, or a poor conversion path.
- Problem-solving: When something breaks, someone needs to diagnose the cause and implement the right fix.
- Accountability: Having a team responsible for monitoring your website means fewer problems fall through the cracks.
The tools tell you what's wrong. An experienced web team helps determine why it's happening, what should be done about it, and makes sure the work actually gets completed.
The Healthy Website Checklist
Put everything together, and here's a simple routine for keeping your website healthy:
1. Run PageSpeed Insights: Check your homepage and important landing pages for performance problems.
2. Check Search Console: Look for indexing issues, security warnings, and changes in search performance.
3. Check your WordPress management dashboard: Look for downtime, failed updates, backup problems, and security issues.
4. Run an SEO site audit: Check for broken links, redirects, duplicate content, and other technical problems on a regular basis.
5. Have an expert review the site: Look beyond the numbers and make sure the website is actually working well for your customers.
None of this is complicated. The challenge is making sure it happens consistently.
Your website is one of your most important business tools. Like a car, it performs best when it's maintained before something goes wrong.
If you'd rather have someone else keep everything running, that's what we do.
