Website health check.

I can check the health and performance of your WordPress site.

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Why do you need a website health check?

If you feel that your site should be doing better than it is, a website health check can uncover the cause.

Search changes over time, so a site that performed well six months ago may not perform well today.

A website health check will provide you with information about your site and why it might not perform as well as you would like.

If your site seems to run slow, doesn’t generate the leads you think it should, or you just feel that something is not quite right, I can help you first uncover the issues and then fix them for you.

Get a website health check

Is a website health check different from a website audit?

Yes, the two are not the same, as an audit is often an automated check, whereas a website health check is a deep dive into your site.

The main difference is that a site audit is automated, whereas a website health check is me going through every aspect of your site.

I offer free website audits for clients who want to get an overview of their site.

These are automated, and I use tools like ahrefs, SEM Rush, and GT Metrix, but these tools only go so far.

You’ve probably run one of two of these yourself but found that the results don’t give you the information you need, which is where a website health check comes in.

I will personally go through your entire website to explore why it is not performing as well as it should be and provide a detailed report on what’s going on and what needs to be done.

What does a website health check involve?

Whereas automatic audits benchmark your site for known issues, a health check goes into much more detail.

Audit apps know what the technical aspects of your site should look like—easy things like missing ALT tags or meta descriptions, for example.

A health check of your site is a human (me) review of your installation, theme, plugins, hosting, caching, branding, tone of voice, image choices, page structure and so on.

All of the stages of a website health check are explained below.

The stages of a website health check.

Here are the things I look at, check and report-back upon when running a health check on your WordPress site.

Core WordPress review.

Checking your WP install for issues and updates.

This is really one of the basics, but I make sure I check the health of everything.

Theme and plugin review.

What theme are you using, and is it any good? The theme set-up, code, optimisation and appropriateness for your site?

Plugins and their version numbers, plugin compatibility and effectiveness.

PHP review and compatibility check.

The older your PHP version, the slower, and less compatible it is, so I check that your server is running the right version and your plugins can work with this.

Security assessment.

Belt-and-braces security check for all aspects of your site, from your hosting to your login credentials.

User access & permissions.

User enumeration checks, user checks and permission settings for your site.

Database and file checks.

How big is your database? Are there orphaned or out-dated tables? I will check your database via phpMyAdmin and make sure everything is up to scratch.

Broken links & redirects.

These all get a once-over, too, to make sure you don’t have any broken links or too many redirects.

Performance check.

Measuring the site speed, TTFB, server and everything else that relates to the speed and performance of your site.

Mobile compatibility review.

I’ll check everything using a cross-browser app that allows me to check your site across multiple devices (not just my iPhone).

SEO health.

This is a top-level check of your rankings, on-page SEO, and everything else that can affect them, including internal and external linking, content length and keyword density.

Accessibility.

Can users with additional needs access and use your site effectively?

Image optimisation.

Are you serving up 20MB images on the front end? I will check all the images used on the site for optimisation.

Caching and CDN.

Are you using a Content delivery network and caching effectively? These will both get a checkover.

SSL and HTTPS verification.

Is everything locked down and secure for both you and your visitors?

Error log review.

I will look over your server error logs to delve into any issues found there.

Design review.

Is everything looking professional and appropriate? Design can turn a visitor off in less than half a second, so this needs to be spot on.

Branding alignment.

Is your branding consistent? I will look over the colours, fonts, logos, and other visual aspects of your branding to ensure they are all correct.

Image selection & quality check.

Your image choices speak volumes: are they professional and unique to way too stock-image?

Page structure & flow.

Is your page content consistent and structured for the visitor? Do you have all the content elements needed for SEO success?

The tone of voice.

Is your page content consistent and structured for the visitor? Do you have all the content elements needed for SEO success?

Effectiveness of calls-to-action.

Are your calls to action as good as they can be? If you are getting traffic but not converting, this can be part of the problem.

UX (user experience) review.

I will evaluate your journey elements, such as your navigation and interactive elements.

Content relevance & value.

I’ll check the quality and readability of your content from a visitor’s and bot’s perspective to ensure it’s not letting you down.

Emotional impact.

How you resonate with your visitors is crucial, so I will assess initial impressions and emotional engagement.

What do you get?

I will check everything and come back to you with a full report on your site.

Every aspect of the stages above will be checked, and feedback will be provided together with the next steps; if you want me to sort it out for you, I will add an estimate of the time required.

You are welcome to take this report and give it to your current SEO or marketing person to implement or have me do it—either way is fine with me.

The report will be lengthy as I cover a lot of stuff. Still, my suggestions will also be in priority order and categorised so you can easily see what you can do yourself and what you might need help with (such as development work or improving technical SEO).

This effectively creates a to-do list for your site and a price list for me to do the work.

What does a website health check cost?

As you can see from the above, there’s much to go through, so it takes time.

I am not cheap, but you have probably tried that route already.

My charges for a complete website health check are £720 inc VAT.

Balance this against what your site should be doing. New business enquiries will increase if you get your website working as it should.

Your investment can be returned quickly depending on what a new piece of business is worth to your small business.

If you would like me to only do certain aspects of the health check, that is not a problem; we can reduce the checks and charges accordingly.

No site or business I work with is the same, so I always have questions to ask and take a quick 15-minute look over your site free of charge as part of the proposal process.

Once I have done this, I will send you a full proposal for the work, and we can then have a short online meeting to discuss the next steps.

Get started

Automatic site audits are great, but nothing beats a human review of your site.

I run many free audits for clients, which often lead to more questions than answers.

A human-run health check goes above and beyond what automated checks can do and gives you everything you (or I) need to get your site performing as it should be.

Get started with a website health check

Why am I the right person to do your website health check?

I’ve been designing, building and optimising WordPress sites for over 15 years.

What I bring to the party is a wealth of experience in all the areas you need to look at:

Branding and design
WordPress development
Search engine optimisation
Technical optimisation
Copywriting
Running a small business

I have been working in all these fields for over 25 years, so I’ve not read a few blogs and become a self-professed expert.

My businesses generate all their revenue and new business leads through organic SEO (one of which has a six-figure turnover), so I am better placed to help you than many SEO experts with less experience.

You can do it cheap, or you can do it properly.

I work best with clients who realise the potential of SEO to drive business growth; I am not interested in ‘average positions’ or ‘numbers of visitors’; I am interested in getting your site ranking for the keywords that bring you new leads.

Website health check FAQs

Below, I’ve covered some of the most commonly asked questions about my website health check. If you have a different question, get in touch.

How long does the health check take?

Doing it correctly is a solid day-and-a-half, so these projects must be booked into my workflow.

When we have an initial chat, I will give you some dates to get on the calendar.

Lead times are generally no longer than two weeks.

Do I fix anything whilst doing the checks?

No, this does not include fixing issues that I find.

Your report will detail everything I find, the priorities for the fixes and the costs I will charge if you want me to fix them.

Can you fix the issues yourself?

Yes, I am pro DIY SEO in most cases; it’s probably more budget-friendly if you fix 100 missing ALT tags than paying me to do it.

The report will highlight what you can do and what I (or your current SEO) should do.

Do I mind if you share the report with your current SEO?

Not at all, but bear in mind, if I find a tonne of stuff they should have sorted before I got to your site, they may downplay the results to suit their own ends.

If I find issues, what are the timescales for fixing them?

If you want me to fix what I find, I will schedule the work into the current workflow; it could be next week or the week after; on occasion, it might be this week, but it won’t be tomorrow.

What if I find you have a webshite?

Occasionally, the sites I check are so bad that there’s no helping them. This is a rare occurrence and usually only happens on older sites where the code is no longer compatible with newer versions of PHP.

Will there be any additional costs?

No, not if you don’t want me to do anything further than just the health check.

That said, I may find that your theme or plugins lack licences, so if this is the case, I recommend you buy them (for tens, not hundreds of dollars).

Can you cherry-pick services?

Sure, if you only want me to do X, Y and Z, that’s no problem and I can give you a cost to do just that. I am completely flexible.

I’ve had audits before; why is yours better?

It’s run by a human, not a machine, and I have 25+ years of experience in everything that might be affecting your site, not just SEO and code. I am a designer and copywriter and have built my own businesses on the back of optimisation and organic SEO.

What happens when the fixes are done?

We wait; SEO changes and optimisation take time to bed in. I suggest a two–to four-week hold on the site to asses how the changes bed in.

The health check and subsequent fixes are designed to improve what you already have; once done, we can move on to new SEO.

We’re a really small business; can you do this any cheaper?

No, but we can spread the cost over a few months if that would help.

You don’t have to do everything in one go for a website health check (although I do advise it) but I am happy to be flexible to help you.

Interested in a website health check?

If you would like to have a more in-depth chat about what I can do, get in touch below.

I can walk you through the process, the work I do, and the results you can expect.

This initial call will call you nothing, and I will even take a quick look at your WordPress admin if you are happy to give me a login for your site.

SEO tip: You may have noticed I have used the words ‘health check’ and ‘health check’ on this page. Both are correct but have slightly different usages: one more technical and one more physical. Therefore, I am optimising the page for both as users may search for either one.