How to do a website health check (+ 17 free tools to use).

A regular service keeps your car in good working order. The same goes for your website. A regular website health check helps maintain performance — so your site continues to produce results for your business.

Keep on top of website checkups and you ensure a positive user experience, which benefits your brand and conversions. You keep your site fast and secure — and improve search engine rankings.

Here, we look at 6 essential website health check tasks along with 17 free tools you can use. This is what we’ll be covering:

• 6 essential website health check tasks
  • 1. Check your site is up to speed
  • 2. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
  • 3. Run a UX audit
  • 4. Review site security
  • 5. Check tracking is set up correctly
  • 6. Run an SEO health check
• How often should you run a site health check?

6 essential website health check tasks

1. Check your site is up to speed

A good website loads within 2-3 seconds. If your website isn’t achieving these speeds, users will likely leave your site in search of a speedier experience elsewhere. You end up with higher bounce rates, which is bad for SEO — and lower conversion rates, which is bad for business.

So assess website speeds as part of your web health check.

Free tools to use

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• GTmetrix
• Pingdom Website Speed Test

How to run a site speed check

Using one of these tools, enter your URL and run the speed test. Then, analyse the results and view page speed recommendations.

Google PageSpeed Insights has a red, amber and green scoring system. It provides results for both desktop and mobile versions of your site.

Green is good. Amber indicates that improvements are needed. Red results require immediate attention.

Ways to improve the speed of your website

Here are a few simple things you can do to improve the speed of your website:

• Compress images and videos
• Upgrade your hosting plan or consider dedicated hosting
• Minify code
• Get rid of unnecessary plugins
• Enable browser caching
• Use a content delivery network (CDN)

2. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

In 2024, 60.4% of global web traffic came from mobile devices. Responsive design is a website essential — and it’s another important task to complete as part of your web health check.

Free tools to use

• Your own smartphone — and those of your friends and family
• Chrome’s built-in tool, which allows you to view your site on the screen size and resolution of different devices
• BrowserStack, which allows you to view your website on different browsers

What to do

Use the tools above to view your website, page by page, on various device screens and browsers. Ensure that it looks good and functions correctly, paying special attention to:

• Links, buttons and any other interactive elements
• Image size and resolution
• Any pop-ups and adverts
• Videos, including header videos
• Menu items

It should be easy for users to interact with your site using a cursor, finger or thumb. Also, check that the text on your website is easy to read on all devices.

Ways to improve website responsiveness

The best websites incorporate responsive design from the very beginning. They’re built with a mobile-first mindset, ensuring that a design works on a small screen before scaling up for larger screens.

However, there are some mobile-friendly fixes you can apply to a finished site, particularly if you have good coding knowledge. Here’s what you can do:

• Ensure you’re using responsive images — these will scale for different screen sizes and resolutions.
• Increase white space around buttons and menu items, making them easier to tap with a finger or thumb.
• Use percentages rather than fixed numbers to indicate the size and spacing of web page elements.
• Check that you’re using the right breakpoints, based on the devices your customers tend to use.
• Review your website copy, using short headings and paragraphs that are easy to read on smaller screens.

3. Run a UX audit

User experience (UX) is another vital consideration for your website. Poor UX is bad for SEO, website conversions and your brand reputation.

Good UX — on the other hand — makes your site easy and enjoyable to use. Customers don’t experience points of friction. They’re more likely to buy from you. And they’re more likely to return to your site again.

You can assess UX as part of your web health check by running a UX audit.

Free tools to use

• Google Analytics
• Crazy Egg (who offer a 30-day free trial)
• Hotjar’s Basic Plan

What to do

Website speed and responsiveness are important elements of UX. We already ticked those issues in steps one and two.

Now, look at the data you’ve gathered through tracking and analytics to understand how users interact with your site. Look for red flags — like high bounce rates, low conversions and pages with low engagement.

Also, perform user testing, asking real users to interact with your site. Then, gather user feedback to identify web pages or elements that cause confusion or frustration.

Ways to improve site UX

If you’ve spotted issues with your UX, look closely at problem pages. Here are some improvements you may like to make:

• Break up website content into short paragraphs and bullet points so it’s easy to read.
• Ensure all pages have a clear and compelling call to action.
• Check and fix any broken links.
• Ensure your web design is consistent — and that it includes enough white space.
• Replace stock images and any outdated images and videos.
• Check you’re following website navigation best practice.
• Optimise your product pages and optimise your checkout process, removing any unnecessary stages.
• Review your 404 page to check that it directs users back to a relevant place on your website.

4. Review site security

A secure website is good for SEO. It also reassures users that your business is reputable, which means they’re more likely to buy from you.

Hackers are constantly coming up with new ways to attack websites. So reviewing site security is another task you need to complete as part of your site health check.

Free tools to use

• SSL Labs Server Test
• Sucuri SiteCheck
• Google Search Console

What to do

You can use the SSL Labs Server Test to check that you have a valid SSL certificate. This tool provides an A to F rating for your SSL setup.

You can use the Sucuri SiteCheck scanner to check a website for malware, viruses, blacklisting status, website errors, out-of-date software and malicious code. Just enter your URL to get a site security overview.

You can use Google Search Console to view any security issues flagged by Google and any web pages that aren’t being served over HTTPS.

How to improve site security

Site security not up to scratch? Here are some things you can do to improve website security:

• Get an SSL certificate for your site (if you don’t already have one) and redirect any URLS that use HTTP to HTTPS.
• Review website software and third-party plugins to check that they have good security ratings and have been recently updated.
web developer to update your code so it provides the best defence against cross-site scripting attacks and SQL injection.

5. Check tracking is set up correctly

Marketing tags are small snippets of code that collect data about user behaviour. These snippets are placed within the code on your website and send customer data to Google Analytics.

Tags tell you how your marketing campaigns are performing and help you better understand your audience — and Google Tag Manager is a great way to keep on top of your tracking requirements.

Free tools to use

• Your website
• Google Tag Manager

What to do

Check if Google Tag Manager is installed on your website. You can do this by checking the source code of your website. To do this:

1. Right click on the background of your homepage
2. Click “View page source”
3. Press Ctrl+F
4. Type in gtm.js.

If Google Tag Manager is installed properly, you’ll find instances of gtm.js in your website code.

How to set up Google Tag Manager

We’ll be honest, this probably isn’t a task you should attempt on your own unless you have in-depth coding knowledge. You’re likely to need the help of a developer to install Tag Manager on your website.

But once it’s set up, you can manage all tracking codes yourself — including codes for Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel — through a single user-friendly interface.

You’ll also be able to create and manage custom events and use other advanced Google Analytics features without ever needing to access the code on your website.

6. Run an SEO health check

Working on your SEO improves site visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). And the higher your website appears in SERPs, the more organic traffic you’re likely to get.

Site speed, responsiveness, security and UX all impact your search engine rankings. But to complete this SEO health check task, you also need to analyse your keywords and backlink profile.

Free tools to use

• Semrush (free version)
• Ahrefs (free version)

What to do

Using one of the tools above, check that your sitemap is formatted correctly.

Also, check your backlink profile. Assess how many backlinks and referring domains you have — and compare these figures to those of your competitors. View your backlink toxicity score. This tells you how many poor-quality links are linking to your website. You can also view lost backlinks.

When it comes to keywords, find out which search terms your website is currently ranking for and what position you’ve earned in SERPs.

Get ideas for new keywords and content, based on gaps in your own content and on the content that performs well for competitors. Also, run a content audit to check that you’re using keywords in relevant places across each web page.

How to improve website SEO

If you’re not getting your site onto the first page of SERPs, there’s a lot you can do to improve your website SEO. Here are some ideas:

• If necessary, update and resubmit your XML sitemap via Google Search Console.
• Find out which content on your site generates the most backlinks — then, create similar content.
• Identify toxic backlinks and take action to address them.
• Identify lost backlinks and try to get them back by contacting the site owner.
• Delete or update pages that target the same keywords.
• Add internal links to your website content where relevant.
• Ensure all web pages answer the user’s query and cover the topic in enough depth.
• Optimise page titles, meta descriptions, alt tags and text with relevant keywords.
• Find new keywords to target and plan useful content around them.

How often should you run a site health check?

You should run a web health check at least once every 3 to 6 months.

But give your site a check-up more regularly than this and you can identify and address potential website issues before they turn into major problems for your business.

Here at Radical, we keep a close eye on client websites. For clients who choose our web support and maintenance package, we perform the following tasks:

• Daily website backups
• Weekly monitoring of website performance to ensure top website speeds, security and usability
• Installation of real-time error tracking, so we can find and fix website issues quickly

We can also help with SEO content creation and uploads.

Of course, it gets to a point in the life of any website when a web health check isn’t enough. Technology moves at lightning speed and older websites can soon start to look dated.

If you’re spotting signs that it’s time to redesign your website, we can help here, too. Our web design and development team are on hand to give your site the refresh or redesign it needs.

Want to get your site into shape? Then get in touch with the Radical team to chat about your project.