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Monitoring Site Health: A Guide to Regular Audits with Glimpse

by Ashish Sontakke

A single audit is a snapshot. Regular audits are a trend. Here's how to use Glimpse for ongoing site health monitoring that actually catches problems before they hurt your traffic.

Why Regular Audits Matter

Sites change constantly:

  • Deployments introduce new pages and break old ones
  • Content updates can orphan pages or create redirect chains
  • CMS migrations often break canonicals
  • Plugin updates might change meta tag output
  • Team members make changes without SEO awareness

A site that scored 85 last month could score 45 today. Without regular audits, you won't know until Google does—and by then you've lost traffic.

Setting Up Your Baseline

Before you can track progress, you need a starting point.

Run Your First Audit

  1. Go to get-glimpse.com
  2. Enter your domain
  3. Run a complete audit
  4. Note your health score

Document Key Metrics

Record these numbers:

  • Health score: Your overall grade
  • Issue counts by category: Redirects, links, indexability, etc.
  • Critical issues: 4xx/5xx errors, broken redirects
  • Structural issues: Orphan pages, redirect chains

This baseline is your reference point.

Fix Critical Issues First

Before establishing a monitoring routine, address the blockers:

Priority 1: HTTP Errors Every 4xx or 5xx page is broken. Fix or redirect them.

Priority 2: Broken Redirects Redirect chains that end in errors waste crawl budget and frustrate users.

Priority 3: Redirect Chains Flatten chains to single hops. Update internal links to point to final destinations.

Re-audit after fixes to confirm improvement.

Audit Frequency

Match your audit frequency to your site's change velocity:

| Site Type | Recommended Frequency | |-----------|----------------------| | High-traffic blog (daily posts) | Weekly | | E-commerce (frequent catalog changes) | Weekly | | Marketing site (occasional updates) | Bi-weekly | | Documentation site | After each deployment | | Static sites | Monthly |

More changes = more frequent audits.

What to Check Each Audit

Don't just look at the score. Review these areas:

1. Score Delta

Compare to your previous audit:

  • ±5 points: Normal fluctuation
  • -10+ points: Something broke—investigate
  • +10+ points: Fixes are working—document what you did

2. New Critical Issues

Sort issues by severity. Look for new:

  • 4xx/5xx errors
  • Broken redirects
  • Canonical problems

These didn't exist last time. What changed?

3. Issue Trends

Is your redirect chain count going up or down? Are orphan pages accumulating?

Trends matter more than absolute numbers.

4. Recently Added Pages

If you published new content:

  • Is it in the audit results?
  • Does it have proper meta tags?
  • Is it linked from somewhere?

New pages without internal links become orphans.

5. High-Value Pages

Always verify:

  • Homepage
  • Pricing/signup pages
  • Top landing pages
  • Conversion funnels

These pages can't have issues.

Building a Monitoring Workflow

For Solo Developers

Weekly routine (15 minutes):

  1. Run audit on Monday morning
  2. Compare score to last week
  3. Check for new critical issues
  4. Fix anything urgent
  5. Add non-urgent issues to backlog

Monthly routine (1 hour):

  1. Review issue trends across all audits
  2. Prioritize backlog
  3. Fix accumulated medium-priority issues
  4. Document improvements

For Teams

Assign ownership:

| Role | Responsibility | |------|---------------| | Developer | Fix broken pages, redirect chains, technical issues | | Content team | Ensure new posts have meta tags, aren't orphaned | | SEO/Marketing | Run audits, track trends, prioritize backlog |

Integrate with deploys:

Run an audit after every production deployment. If the score drops significantly, investigate before moving on.

Using Issue Drill-Down

Glimpse shows you exactly which pages have each issue. Use this for efficient fixing:

Example: Fixing Orphan Pages

  1. Click "Orphan pages (12)" in the issues panel
  2. See all 12 URLs listed
  3. For each one, decide:
    • Add internal links pointing to it
    • Remove from sitemap if it shouldn't exist
    • Redirect if it's outdated
  4. Re-audit to confirm they're no longer orphaned

Example: Fixing Redirect Chains

  1. Click "Redirect chain (8)"
  2. See the chain details: A → B → C → D
  3. Update your internal links from A to D
  4. Consider removing intermediate redirects
  5. Re-audit to confirm chains are flattened

Tracking Long-Term Progress

Glimpse stores your audit history. Use it to:

Identify Regression Points

Score dropped from 75 to 52 three weeks ago? Check what deployed that week. Common culprits:

  • CMS updates
  • Theme changes
  • Migration scripts
  • Bulk content imports

Prove ROI

Show stakeholders the improvement:

"We went from 41/100 to 78/100 over six weeks by fixing 45 redirect chains and resolving 12 canonical issues."

Numbers convince better than words.

Catch Patterns

Do scores drop after Thursday deployments? That's a process problem. Maybe Thursday deploys skip the QA environment.

Common Issues and How to Fix Them

Redirect Chains Keep Growing

Cause: You're creating redirects for old URLs without updating internal links.

Fix: When you redirect a page, also update all internal links pointing to it. Don't just add redirects forever.

Orphan Pages Accumulating

Cause: Content is being published without being linked from anywhere.

Fix: Establish a process—every new page must be linked from at least one existing page before publishing.

Canonical Issues After Migration

Cause: Old canonical tags weren't updated when URLs changed.

Fix: Audit all canonical tags. Each should point to itself (self-referencing) unless there's a specific reason otherwise.

Score Keeps Fluctuating

Cause: Inconsistent practices. Some deployments are clean, others break things.

Fix: Add audit checks to your CI/CD pipeline. Fail builds that introduce critical issues.

Quick Audit Checklist

Run through this after each audit:

  • [ ] Health score compared to last audit
  • [ ] Any new 4xx/5xx errors? → Fix immediately
  • [ ] New redirect chains? → Investigate source
  • [ ] New orphan pages? → Add internal links
  • [ ] Critical issues count → Should be trending down
  • [ ] High-value pages verified → No issues on important pages

Takes 5-10 minutes. Catches problems early.

What's Coming

We're building features to automate monitoring:

  • Scheduled audits: Set weekly/monthly schedules
  • Email reports: Get summaries delivered to your inbox
  • Slack/Discord alerts: Instant notification when score drops
  • Webhook integration: Trigger audits from CI/CD pipelines
  • Trend dashboards: Visualize score and issue history

For now, calendar reminders work. Set one and make auditing a habit.

Start Now

Your first step: run an audit today. That's your baseline.

Your second step: put a recurring calendar event for your next audit.

Your third step: when that reminder fires, actually run the audit.

Consistency beats intensity. A 5-minute weekly check beats a 2-hour monthly scramble.

Ready to establish your baseline? Run your first audit at get-glimpse.com.

Questions about monitoring workflows? Email ashish.so@redon.ai