These days, the success of many businesses depends in large part on the strength of their online presence. Your website is typically the base of this presence, which is why it is so important to not only build a great experience from the start, but to also maintain that experience with regular technical checks.
Through regularly scheduled site audits and content optimization, you can push your business ahead of online search competitors and in turn create more opportunities for yourself.
TL;DR: Key Takeaways
- Don’t Let Content Get Orphaned: Broken or missing internal links prevent both users and search bots from finding your best pages.
- Speed is Still a Ranking Factor: A slow site hurts user experience and causes AI crawlers to time out before indexing your content.
- Schema is for the Machines: Structured data is a key aspect of how generative AI models read and verify facts about your business.
- Accuracy Matters: Keeping on-page statistics and details current ensures AI platforms cite you correctly.
Why Regular SEO Health Checks Improve Your Website’s Performance
Many website owners are familiar with the term “SEO,” but few understand the full scope of what it encompasses. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important foundation of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, and regular site health checks are a key part of that “optimization” piece. Let’s take a look at a few typical SEO hygiene issues and why they should be addressed.
Scan Your Website for Internal Link Issues
Ultimately, if your site has issues with internal linking, there is a chance search engines won’t find all of your content. Or perhaps you have some orphaned pages that were created and forgotten about (promos, events, email landing pages, etc.) with no active links other than a reference on your sitemap.xml file. Also, keep in mind that an excessive amount of dead/404 or redirected internal links (especially on larger sites) wastes your potential crawl budget on empty pages. If AI bots hit too many dead ends, they are trained to move on prematurely, leaving your pages out of their knowledge graphs.
Regularly Test Your Site and Page Speed for Issues
A slow site is no fun for search crawlers and, more importantly, no fun for visitors. Google decided long ago that user experience is so important it remains a core ranking factor. Furthermore, modern AI crawlers often have strict time-out windows; if your site doesn’t load quickly, they simply won’t read it. Whether it’s updating your CMS’s plug-ins, optimizing your JS and CSS files, compressing your image assets, or auditing your hosting situation, keeping your site zippy is mandatory.
Is your Schema Markup Up to Date?
If you don’t use schema for various elements of your site, start there. But even after you’ve got your markup in place, be sure to regularly check for the latest formatting standards and review new content areas that may have been added or overlooked.
Pro-Tip: Schema is the Language of search crawlers. Schema markup has become more than just a “nice-to-have.” It is the most direct way to help search engines and even some search-centric AI platforms (like Google’s AI Overviews and Bing’s CoPilot) understand the exact context of your page. Clear structured data is what helps these platforms to determine if they should consider your business when a user asks a highly specific, intent-based question.
Audit and Review Your On Page Content
Cross-links, code, UI, and UX are plenty of reasons to regularly monitor your site’s general health. But another often overlooked aspect of site health is what’s actually on the page. Make sure you provide a great experience for all visitors by using the alt text attribute on key imagery. Test any on-page elements like share tools, calculators, or booking widgets to make sure they function as intended.
And of course, if the content piece is evergreen, review any stats, dates, prices, or general references to make sure they are current. If an AI agent scrapes an outdated price or a dead outbound link from your site, it can lead to inaccurate citations across the web, eroding trust in your brand.
Make On-going SEO Maintenance Part of Your Marketing Initiative
Regularly conducting an SEO health check ensures that your site remains up-to-date with industry best practices and standards. Keeping your site’s code and user experience clean helps to improve visibility across major search engines and AI platforms, which means more potential customers for your business. Regular checks proactively uncover technical issues before they become serious problems down the line.
While all these maintenance items may sound daunting, like most things in SEO, it’s more about due diligence and knowing what to look for. Years ago, I learned how to do basic maintenance items on my car, like changing the oil, or replacing spark plugs. I also learned that after spending an afternoon trying to track down error codes on my Fiat’s dashboard, I would much rather pay the trained professionals at Firestone to do it for me. Not just because I’m lazy, but because I know they will be more efficient and thorough, ensuring an optimal driving experience.
Whether you want to get your hands dirty under the hood of your website or connect with our team of digital marketing specialists for the assist, make the most of your online presence today by planning those regular website health audits.
*This article has been updated with new information for 2026
