Throughout my career as a technical SEO and web performance consultant, I’ve seen countless websites face significant problems due to mistakes made by marketing teams and developers. To protect your business from these costly errors, implementing regular monitoring is absolutely critical.
Based on the size, type, and frequency of changes on a website, I typically conduct daily, weekly, or monthly monitoring for my clients. This precaution has saved my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars, as many seemingly minor mistakes can have substantial impacts on revenue generation.
Why Technical SEO Monitoring Is Essential
A single error in your robots.txt file can lead to the complete deindexing of your business website. If your website serves as your primary sales channel, such an error can reduce your revenue to nearly zero for weeks or months.
Additionally, untested tracking scripts implemented by marketing teams can significantly slow down your website, immediately affecting conversion rates and causing revenue drops. Remember that even small changes can have considerable financial consequences. Just one second added to your current loading time can decrease your conversion rate by approximately 10%, resulting in thousands of dollars lost every month.
I’ve frequently observed content editors adding new banners to homepages, unaware that their 20MB GIF images essentially transport the website back to the digital dark ages for users on slower mobile connections. These visitors won’t even wait until the website loads, they’ll simply just leave.
These issues and other problems appear frequently on the websites I currently monitor. Your business website is unlikely to be an exception, as making these mistakes are quite common .
Starting With Google Search Console
The most valuable data about your website resides in Google Search Console. I always start by reviewing performance data to identify any anomalies that might indicate problems. Comparing current data with previous periods helps reveal long-term issues that require attention.
The Indexing section deserves particular attention. Google provides information about various issues that can help you spot server problems, content issues, and crawling and indexing obstacles. While seeing numerous notifications is completely normal, pay specific attention to error issues, the affected pages, and whether changes occur suddenly or over time. Also verify that your sitemap is processed without issues.
Next, check the HTTPS and Core Web Vitals sections for unexpected changes that might signal recently created performance or security issues. Monitoring Schema Markup for errors is also important, as many websites struggle to maintain its validity.
Additional critical checks include Manual Actions and Security Issues sections, where you might find critical problems requiring immediate action.
Finally, focus on robots.txt errors and Crawl stats. These two sections can quickly help you identify serious issues related to website health and crawling capacity.
Conducting Regular Sample Audits
Another essential component of regular Technical SEO Monitoring is conducting sample audits of your website. For smaller websites, crawl the entire website. For larger websites, examining a sample of the first 5,000 to 10,000 pages usually suffices to identify problems.
Ahrefs Site Audit and similar tools can detect over 150 potential issues your website might face. Ideally, keep errors at zero and warnings to a minimum. However, proper prioritization is crucial to avoid spending excessive time on minor concerns.
I recommend adjusting audit frequency based on how often your website changes. For some clients, daily monitoring is necessary, but for most, weekly checks are sufficient.
If you configure your Google PageSpeed Insights API key within Ahrefs Site Audit, it can even sample performance issues. However, I recommend specialized tools for performance monitoring that offer more configuration options.
Monitoring Performance Metrics
Performance monitoring is the third most critical task and should be conducted frequently. Personally, I prefer DebugBear, which allows the use of real user monitoring (RUM) to gain a complete picture of Core Web Vitals metrics. Remember not to keep the RUM tracking script on your website permanently, as it’s unnecessary. Implementing it once every three months for 1-2 weeks or after significant source code changes is sufficient.
For smaller changes, monitoring your website with the Lighthouse library is ideal. Google PageSpeed Insights uses the same library, but services like DebugBear allow you to configure locations, connection speeds, and even device capabilities to match your average visitors. This approach provides much more accurate lab data than Google PageSpeed Insights, which is limited to low-cost devices.
Monitor these metrics daily from at least two major locations on both mobile and desktop devices. The locations should correspond to your customer base. Within Europe, a single location often suffices, as TTFB (Time To First Byte) differences typically hover around 100ms.
When selecting pages to monitor, focus on your most important pages and a sample of each page type on your website. Monitoring only the homepage is insufficient to get a full view of potential issues.
Conclusion
Implementing regular Technical SEO Monitoring can save your business significant money and prevent major problems before their impact becomes difficult to reverse.
By consistently checking Google Search Console, performing sample audits, and tracking performance metrics, I can create a protective shield around your digital presence. This proactive approach safeguards your business and ensures optimal website performance, which directly influences user experience and conversion rates.
Make this monitoring routine a non-negotiable part of your digital strategy, and you’ll avoid costly mistakes that can consume a significant portion of your current revenue.
The small investment in regular monitoring pays enormous dividends through sustained visibility, performance, and ultimately, business growth.