Website Health
What It Is, Why It Matters, and Why It Needs Ongoing Attention
Your website is one of your hardest-working business assets.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t raise its hand when something starts to go wrong.
Most websites don’t suddenly “break”. They drift.
A plugin updates and quietly conflicts with something else.
A page is removed without a redirect.
Images creep up in file size.
Technical warnings appear… and get parked for another day.
The problem isn’t that websites fail, it’s that they quietly stop pulling their weight.
That’s why website health matters. And why it needs regular attention, not just a once-a-year check-in.
What Do We Mean by “Website Health”?
Website health isn’t about how your site looks.
It’s about how well it functions behind the scenes, technically, structurally and in the eyes of search engines.
A healthy website is one that:
- Is easy for search engines to crawl and understand
- Loads quickly and consistently across devices
- Has a clear, logical structure
- Keeps technical errors under control
- Actively supports your SEO efforts
An unhealthy website can still look perfectly fine, but behind the scenes it’s quietly accumulating friction: broken links, slow pages, duplicated content, unclear hierarchy and missed optimisation opportunities.
And unless you’re actively monitoring it, you won’t see any of this happening.
Why Website Health Slips Over Time (Even on Good Sites)
We often hear:
“But nothing’s changed.”
And technically, that may be true, the website itself might be exactly the same as it was a year ago.
But the environment around it never stands still.
Browsers update. Search engines refine how they crawl and interpret content. Best practice evolves. And increasingly, how websites are evaluated is changing, not just whether they work.
A good example of this is AI-driven search visibility.
Until recently, website health focused almost entirely on traditional SEO signals: crawlability, speed, structure, keywords and links. Now, tools are beginning to show how websites appear, or don’t appear, within AI-powered search experiences, including whether a site is being mentioned, cited or surfaced in AI-generated results.
This simply wasn’t something most businesses were monitoring a year or two ago.
The website hasn’t changed.
The expectations placed on it have.
Which means businesses relying on last year’s assumptions risk becoming invisible in tomorrow’s search results, without ever realising why.
That’s why website health isn’t a fixed checklist. It’s a moving target.
Why We Use SEMrush (and Have Done for Years)
We use a range of tools, but SEMrush has been a constant in our toolkit for years, because it gives us clarity, not noise.
It allows us to:
- Monitor technical health in a structured, prioritised way
- Understand how search engines interact with a site
- Track performance trends over time
- Identify issues early, before they impact visibility
We don’t use tools to generate reports for the sake of it.
We use them to create clarity, prioritisation and informed decisions.
I’m also a SEMrush Ambassador, which reflects how embedded the platform is in our day-to-day work. This isn’t a tool we dip into occasionally, it’s one we actively rely on across multiple client websites, week in, week out.
How SEMrush Helps Us Monitor Website Health
One of SEMrush’s most valuable tools is the Site Audit.
In simple terms, it crawls your website in much the same way a search engine does and highlights issues across areas such as:
- Crawlability and indexing
- Site structure and internal linking
- Page speed and performance
- Technical SEO best practice
It doesn’t just list issues, it prioritises them.
That means we can distinguish between:
- Issues that genuinely need urgent attention
- Improvements that will strengthen performance over time
- Lower-priority enhancements that can be planned sensibly
Not everything needs fixing immediately. Knowing what matters most is what keeps a website healthy without becoming reactive.
Website Health in Practice: A Real-World Example
To bring this to life, here’s a snapshot from a recent client website health review.
When we first reviewed the site in October, its overall health score sat at 75%. Nothing was “broken”, but several technical issues had quietly built up over time.
After completing the initial round of website health work, that score increased to 85%. And following a further round of refinement and clean-up, the site is now sitting at a very respectable 95% website health.
The important part?
This wasn’t about redesigning the site or adding huge volumes of new content.
It was about:
- Resolving technical errors
- Improving structure and internal linking
- Tidying up legacy issues that had been overlooked
- Bringing the site back in line with current best practice
This is exactly how good websites stay good, through steady, informed maintenance rather than dramatic overhauls.
Going Beyond the Audit: The SEMrush Tools We Use Most
While site audits form the backbone of website health monitoring, SEMrush is most powerful when its tools are used together.
Position Tracking
Rather than obsessing over individual rankings, we track patterns and trends. This allows us to spot gradual improvements, early warning signs and correlations between changes and performance.
It’s about direction of travel, not daily fluctuations.
Organic Research
This gives us a clear picture of how a website is performing in real search conditions: which pages are driving visibility, where opportunities are being missed, and how competitors are positioning themselves.
It’s particularly useful when reviewing service pages or planning future content.
On-Page SEO Checker
This is where technical SEO and content meet. It highlights improvements around keyword relevance, structure, readability and internal linking.
Often, small, sensible refinements here deliver disproportionately strong results.
Backlink Monitoring
Links still matter, but quality matters far more than volume. Regular backlink monitoring helps protect domain authority, flag potential risks early and support sustainable growth over time.
Practical Website Health Advice (That Actually Helps)
When we talk about website health, we’re really talking about ongoing stewardship, not occasional check-ups.
In practice, that means:
- Running regular site audits (monthly is a sensible baseline)
- Fixing technical errors before investing heavily in new content
- Monitoring trends over time rather than reacting to one-off changes
- Updating plugins and themes carefully and checking the impact
- Never removing pages without considering redirects
- Treating image optimisation and internal linking as ongoing tasks
A well-maintained website doesn’t shout.
It simply performs, quietly and consistently.
Website Health Isn’t Glamorous. It’s Essential.
Website health doesn’t come with flashy campaigns or big announcements.
But it underpins everything else.
Time and again, we see that the websites performing most consistently aren’t the newest or flashiest, they’re the ones that are quietly monitored and maintained.
That’s why we keep such a close eye on website health, for ourselves and for our clients.
If you want to understand not just how your website looks today, but how it’s holding up against evolving search expectations, we’re always happy to take a look and tell you honestly what matters, and what doesn’t.
No panic. No fluff.
Just practical insight and a healthier website as a result.
Website health isn’t about quick fixes, it’s about ongoing clarity and informed decision-making. If you’d like to learn more about how we approach website health audits and our broader SEO services, you can find everything here.
Or, if you’d prefer a conversation, you can contact The Last Hurdle on 01604 654545 or email [email protected]
