Workflow
Website Health Audits
A practical order for reviewing a website’s health: reachability, redirects, DNS, HTTPS and security headers, email setup and speed, with the tool to use for each step.
A website can look fine in your browser while parts of it quietly fail: an old domain that no longer redirects, an expiring DNS setup, missing security headers, email from the domain landing in spam. A health check walks through the layers in an order that finds the expensive problems first.
The layers, in order
- Reachability: do your important pages return 200 and load in a reasonable time?
- Routing: do old URLs, the bare domain and www all end up on the right page in one hop?
- DNS: are the records correct and consistent across public resolvers?
- Security: is HTTPS enforced, and are the main security headers set?
- Email: do SPF, DKIM and DMARC let the domain’s email be delivered?
- Content: are pages missing titles or descriptions, and are internal links broken?
Keep a baseline
Save the results of the first check. The next time traffic drops, a page breaks or email starts bouncing, you’ll be able to see what changed instead of starting from scratch.
Where each check lives
- Pages and redirects: URL Intelligence, with your most important URLs
- Crawl for broken links and missing metadata: the site crawler
- Records and resolver agreement: DNS Lookup
- HTTPS and headers: Web Security Workbench
- Email authentication: Email Domain Health
- Overall technical risk signals: Website Trust Inspector
Limits to keep in mind
These checks look at your site from the outside. They don’t replace server monitoring, analytics or a code-level security review.
Priorities depend on your business: a broken checkout page matters more than a broken link in an old press release.
URL checks, crawls, the Web Security Workbench, Email Domain Health and the Trust Inspector need a free account and use your daily allowance.
Common questions
- How long does a website health check take?
- Running the checks is quick for a small site. Most of the time goes into deciding what to fix and who should fix it.
- Do I need technical knowledge?
- You can run every check without it. Fixing DNS, server headers and email records usually needs whoever manages your hosting or domain.