Find out what's actually slowing your website down, before it costs you.
Most website problems don't show up until they've already cost you rankings, leads or trust. A website health check finds them first, in plain English, with fixes ranked by impact.
For Marketing Leads, Site Owners & Agency Partners
You don't need more data. You need to know what's actually wrong.
Whether you're a marketing lead justifying spend to a sceptical board, a business owner who's noticed traffic quietly dropping, or an agency partner triaging a client's site, you need one thing: a clear, prioritised picture of what's actually wrong.
We check speed, security, backlinks, internal linking and usability in one pass, then hand you a single report ranked by what to fix first. No jargon, no 40-page PDF you'll never open, no reused audit template.
Why Teams Come to Us for a Health Check
“Our site's slow and nobody's told us why.”
Our page speed audit tests real load times across devices, not a generic score, then hands you fixes ranked by impact, not a tick-box list.
“We're not sure if we've been hacked.”
Our website security audit checks for malware, vulnerabilities and suspicious code, then walks you through exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, in plain English.
“Backlinks feel like a black box to us.”
Our backlink audit service maps every link pointing at your site, flags the ones actively hurting you, and tells you which to disavow, keep or chase more of.
“People land on our site and just leave.”
Our internal link audit and usability check show exactly where visitors get stuck or drop off, so you can fix the paths that are actually losing you leads.
The Gecko Way™
Our approach to successful projects
For a health check, gathering starts with access rather than assumptions: analytics, Search Console, hosting details and whatever monitoring you've already got running, plus honest answers about what's actually worrying you, a specific ranking drop, a hosting bill that's crept up, or a "we think we might have been compromised" gut feeling. We also ask what "healthy" would look like for your business, because a health check isn't generic; a charity worried about accessibility and a consultancy worried about lead capture need different things measured. This stage takes a short call and access to your existing tools, not a lengthy workshop, because the point of a health check is speed, not ceremony. This is also where we pull baseline Core Web Vitals scores and check Google Search Console, so everything that follows is measured against real numbers in Google Analytics, not guesswork.
This is where the actual checking happens: page speed audit tools run against real devices and connections, not just a lab score; a full crawl to catch broken links, redirect chains and orphaned pages; a backlink audit against your link profile to flag anything toxic; a security scan for malware, outdated plugins and exposed vulnerabilities; and a usability pass that follows the paths your actual visitors take, not the ones you assume they take. We don't run one tool and call it an audit. Each check exists because it answers a specific question about why your site might be losing rankings, visitors or trust, and we only flag what's genuinely worth fixing. In practice that means running Google Lighthouse and a proper vulnerability scanner alongside manual review.
Findings turn into a single prioritised report, not a stack of disconnected tool outputs you have to piece together yourself. Every issue gets ranked by actual impact and effort, so you can see straight away what'll move the needle fastest, a slow homepage costing you conversions, versus what can wait, a handful of low-value backlinks. We write it in plain English throughout, because a report nobody in your business can act on is just a longer way of saying "your site has problems." If fixes need code changes, server access or design work, we say so plainly, rather than burying it in a footnote. You'll get this as a single website health report, not a folder of exported spreadsheets, with a plain summary up front for anyone who won't read past the first page.
We talk you through the report on a call, not just email it over and disappear. That means explaining why a page speed score matters commercially, what a suspicious redirect chain could mean for your security, or why three of your backlinks are actively working against you, in terms that make sense whether you're technical or not. You should walk away able to explain the top three issues to your own board or team without needing us in the room, because a health check that only Gecko understands hasn't actually helped you. Questions are welcome at this stage, and we'd rather you push back than nod along.
Some clients want us to fix everything on the list; others just want the report and their own developer takes it from there. Both are fine, we build the plan either way. If you'd like us to handle the fixes, we prioritise the ones with the biggest impact first and keep you updated as each one's ticked off, not silence until it's all done. If you're taking it in-house, we hand over clear, specific instructions rather than vague recommendations, so nothing gets lost in translation. Either way, we're happy to re-run key checks a few months later to prove what actually changed. We can also set up ongoing performance monitoring and scheduled security updates afterwards, and where fixes need input from your development team, we're happy to work directly with them rather than just handing over a document.
What's Included in a Website Health Check
Page Speed Audit
A page speed audit tests how your site actually performs, on mobile and desktop, on a decent connection and a patchy one, rather than relying on a single lab score that doesn't reflect what your visitors experience. We check load times, render-blocking scripts, oversized images and server response times, then rank every fix by how much it'll actually move your numbers, not by how technical it sounds. Some fixes take five minutes; others need a proper look at your hosting or your CMS setup.
We tell you which is which. The goal isn't a perfect score for its own sake, it's fewer visitors giving up and leaving before your site's even finished loading. Slow load times don't just frustrate visitors, they measurably affect conversion rates, so we treat performance issues as a revenue problem, not just a technical one. We also check your current content delivery setup, since caching and delivery are often the hidden reason a site feels sluggish even after the obvious fixes are done.
Website Security Audit
A website security audit checks for the things that quietly put your site, and your reputation, at risk: outdated plugins and dependencies, weak or exposed admin access, missing SSL configuration, and any code that shouldn't be there. If we find signs of existing malware or a previous compromise, we tell you straight away rather than waiting for the full report, because that's not something worth sitting on.
You'll get a clear list of what's vulnerable, what's actively been exploited if anything has, and what needs fixing first. This isn't a scan you run once and forget; we'll also flag what should be monitored ongoing, so the same gap doesn't reopen six months later. This includes a manual code review alongside the automated scan, since the most damaging vulnerabilities often hide in custom code no scanner will flag.
We also check your SSL certificate is valid and correctly configured, along with security headers and login protection, the kind of security requirements most sites overlook until something goes wrong.
Backlink Audit
A backlink audit service maps every link currently pointing at your site, the good ones building genuine authority and the toxic ones actively dragging your rankings down. Spammy directories, expired domains repurposed for link farms, and negative SEO attempts all hide in a backlink profile most sites have never actually looked at.
We flag which links to disavow, which relationships are worth nurturing, and where there's a genuine gap you could be filling with outreach. You'll come away knowing exactly where your current authority is coming from, rather than just a vague sense that "backlinks matter," and a specific plan for strengthening the profile. A stronger, cleaner backlink profile feeds directly into SEO performance, keyword visibility and, over time, your SERP rankings.
Internal Link Audit
An internal link audit looks at how pages on your own site connect to each other, not just how the outside world links in. Orphaned pages nobody can reach without knowing the exact URL, dead-end pages with no next step, and important pages buried four clicks deep all quietly waste the authority you've already built.
We map your current structure, flag where it's leaking value or confusing visitors, and recommend a specific set of changes: which pages to link more, which to prune, which need a clearer path from your homepage. Done properly, this is one of the fastest wins available, because you're not creating new content, just making better use of what's already there.
Poor internal linking is also a common cause of indexing issues, since search engines struggle to find and prioritise pages that aren't well linked to from elsewhere on the site.
Usability & UX Review
A website usability check follows the actual paths your visitors take, not the paths you assume they take. We look at how easy it is to find key information, whether forms and calls to action are genuinely clear, and where people seem to hesitate or bail out entirely. This isn't a subjective opinion on whether your site "looks nice", it's a specific list of friction points backed by how real behaviour compares to what you'd expect, alongside practical fixes for each one.
Sometimes it's a button that's easy to miss. Sometimes it's a form asking for more than it needs. Either way, you get a plain answer to why visitors are landing and leaving. As part of this, we also look at navigation flow and real behavioural data from your site visitors, alongside a check against web accessibility standards, since accessibility barriers often overlap with the same friction points that push people away.
We test across genuinely different browsers and devices rather than just the one most of the team happens to use, because a smooth user experience on one setup can be a broken one on another.
Broken Link & Redirect Check
A broken link and redirect check crawls your entire site to find 404s, redirect chains and loops, and links pointing at pages that no longer exist, all of which quietly damage both user experience and search performance. We've seen sites carrying redirect chains four or five hops long, left over from redesigns years ago, silently slowing every page they touch.
You'll get a full list of what's broken, where it's linked from, and the specific fix for each one, whether that's a straightforward redirect, an update to the link itself, or removing a dead page altogether. It's unglamorous work, but it's often responsible for more lost traffic than anything more dramatic further up this list. Regular broken link checks are worth repeating periodically, not just once, since new dead links appear every time a page gets moved, renamed or removed. Once identified, the remedial work is usually quick, a redirect, a rewritten link or a page removed.
What's Included in a Website Health Check
Page Speed Audit
A page speed audit tests how your site actually performs, on mobile and desktop, on a decent connection and a patchy one, rather than relying on a single lab score that doesn't reflect what your visitors experience. We check load times, render-blocking scripts, oversized images and server response times, then rank every fix by how much it'll actually move your numbers, not by how technical it sounds. Some fixes take five minutes; others need a proper look at your hosting or your CMS setup.
We tell you which is which. The goal isn't a perfect score for its own sake, it's fewer visitors giving up and leaving before your site's even finished loading. Slow load times don't just frustrate visitors, they measurably affect conversion rates, so we treat performance issues as a revenue problem, not just a technical one. We also check your current content delivery setup, since caching and delivery are often the hidden reason a site feels sluggish even after the obvious fixes are done.
Website Security Audit
A website security audit checks for the things that quietly put your site, and your reputation, at risk: outdated plugins and dependencies, weak or exposed admin access, missing SSL configuration, and any code that shouldn't be there. If we find signs of existing malware or a previous compromise, we tell you straight away rather than waiting for the full report, because that's not something worth sitting on.
You'll get a clear list of what's vulnerable, what's actively been exploited if anything has, and what needs fixing first. This isn't a scan you run once and forget; we'll also flag what should be monitored ongoing, so the same gap doesn't reopen six months later. This includes a manual code review alongside the automated scan, since the most damaging vulnerabilities often hide in custom code no scanner will flag.
We also check your SSL certificate is valid and correctly configured, along with security headers and login protection, the kind of security requirements most sites overlook until something goes wrong.
Backlink Audit
A backlink audit service maps every link currently pointing at your site, the good ones building genuine authority and the toxic ones actively dragging your rankings down. Spammy directories, expired domains repurposed for link farms, and negative SEO attempts all hide in a backlink profile most sites have never actually looked at.
We flag which links to disavow, which relationships are worth nurturing, and where there's a genuine gap you could be filling with outreach. You'll come away knowing exactly where your current authority is coming from, rather than just a vague sense that "backlinks matter," and a specific plan for strengthening the profile. A stronger, cleaner backlink profile feeds directly into SEO performance, keyword visibility and, over time, your SERP rankings.
Internal Link Audit
An internal link audit looks at how pages on your own site connect to each other, not just how the outside world links in. Orphaned pages nobody can reach without knowing the exact URL, dead-end pages with no next step, and important pages buried four clicks deep all quietly waste the authority you've already built.
We map your current structure, flag where it's leaking value or confusing visitors, and recommend a specific set of changes: which pages to link more, which to prune, which need a clearer path from your homepage. Done properly, this is one of the fastest wins available, because you're not creating new content, just making better use of what's already there.
Poor internal linking is also a common cause of indexing issues, since search engines struggle to find and prioritise pages that aren't well linked to from elsewhere on the site.
Usability & UX Review
A website usability check follows the actual paths your visitors take, not the paths you assume they take. We look at how easy it is to find key information, whether forms and calls to action are genuinely clear, and where people seem to hesitate or bail out entirely. This isn't a subjective opinion on whether your site "looks nice", it's a specific list of friction points backed by how real behaviour compares to what you'd expect, alongside practical fixes for each one.
Sometimes it's a button that's easy to miss. Sometimes it's a form asking for more than it needs. Either way, you get a plain answer to why visitors are landing and leaving. As part of this, we also look at navigation flow and real behavioural data from your site visitors, alongside a check against web accessibility standards, since accessibility barriers often overlap with the same friction points that push people away.
We test across genuinely different browsers and devices rather than just the one most of the team happens to use, because a smooth user experience on one setup can be a broken one on another.
Broken Link & Redirect Check
A broken link and redirect check crawls your entire site to find 404s, redirect chains and loops, and links pointing at pages that no longer exist, all of which quietly damage both user experience and search performance. We've seen sites carrying redirect chains four or five hops long, left over from redesigns years ago, silently slowing every page they touch.
You'll get a full list of what's broken, where it's linked from, and the specific fix for each one, whether that's a straightforward redirect, an update to the link itself, or removing a dead page altogether. It's unglamorous work, but it's often responsible for more lost traffic than anything more dramatic further up this list. Regular broken link checks are worth repeating periodically, not just once, since new dead links appear every time a page gets moved, renamed or removed. Once identified, the remedial work is usually quick, a redirect, a rewritten link or a page removed.
"The health checks that make the biggest difference are the ones where we catch a redirect loop or an unindexed page before it costs the client three months of rankings, not after."
Marlon Dedakis, Lead Developer at Gecko
Redesign Case Study
A national charity came to us convinced their traffic drop was down to content, when the real issue was a security vulnerability quietly affecting their rankings and a redirect chain slowing every page on the site. Fixing both, alongside a prioritised backlink clean-up, took the site from flagged-and-falling to fully recovered within 3 weeks, with organic traffic climbing back past its previous high.
A Gecko website health check covers five areas in one pass: page speed, security, backlinks, internal linking and usability. Rather than running one tool and calling it done, we combine automated checks with a manual review, because tools flag issues but don't always explain what they actually mean for your business. You'll get a single report, not five separate exports, with every issue ranked by impact so you know what to fix first and what can genuinely wait. We also talk you through the findings on a call, so you're not left interpreting a technical document on your own. It's built to answer one plain question: what's actually wrong with your website, and what should you do about it first? Think of it as a technical website audit crossed with a website performance and usability review, condensed into one report you can actually act on. We'll also flag obvious on-page issues along the way, thin meta tags, missing structured data, or content freshness problems where pages haven't been touched in years, even though a full SEO content audit isn't the core of what a health check covers.
Broken links usually come from pages that have been deleted, moved or renamed without a redirect put in place, and they quietly hurt both visitor trust and your search rankings. The fix starts with finding every one, not just the obvious ones on your homepage, since broken links often hide several pages deep or point at old campaign pages nobody remembers building. Once we've got the full list, most get fixed with a proper 301 redirect to the right destination, though a handful might just need removing if the page genuinely doesn't have a modern equivalent. As part of a website health check, we run this as a full site crawl rather than spot-checking a handful of pages, so nothing gets missed.
Bounce rate usually comes down to a mismatch between what people expected when they clicked through and what they actually found, or a page that's slow, confusing, or doesn't make the next step obvious. There's rarely one fix. It's often a combination of page speed, whether your key information is easy to find, and whether your calls to action are genuinely clear rather than buried below the fold. A usability check identifies exactly where people are dropping off and why, rather than leaving you to guess from an analytics dashboard alone. Once you know the actual friction points, the fixes tend to be specific and manageable, not a full redesign.
Yes. If a security audit turns up active malware, we don't just flag it and move on, we clean it up and confirm your site's genuinely clear before handing anything back. That includes removing the malicious code itself, closing whatever let it in in the first place (an outdated plugin, a weak password, an exposed file), and checking nearby pages and files for anything else that might have been affected. We'll also tell you plainly if your hosting setup contributed to the problem, because removing the malware without fixing the gap just means it comes back. Once it's clean, we can set up ongoing monitoring so a repeat infection gets caught fast rather than sitting there for months.
First, don't panic and don't take the site fully offline unless there's an immediate reason to, that can sometimes make diagnosis harder, not easier. Get in touch and we'll run a security audit to establish what's actually happened: what was accessed, how they got in, and whether it's ongoing or a one-off. From there we close the entry point, remove anything malicious, and check whether search engines have flagged your site, since a hack that goes unnoticed for a few days can sometimes trigger a browser warning or a ranking drop that needs separately resolving. We'll talk you through exactly what happened in plain English, not just confirm it's fixed, so you understand what changed and why.
It depends what's actually causing the slowdown, which is exactly what a page speed audit is for. Common culprits include oversized images that were never compressed, too many render-blocking scripts loading before anything visible appears, a server that's underpowered for your traffic, or a CMS that's collected years of unused code and plugins. We test your site properly, on real devices and connections, rather than relying on a single automated score, then rank every fix by how much it'll actually improve load time versus how much work it takes. Some of it's quick. Some needs a proper look at your hosting. Either way, you get a specific plan rather than a vague instruction to "optimise images." Sometimes it's one obvious loading times issue, other times it's a combination of several smaller ones adding up.
Fixing what's currently slow is the first step; keeping it fast is a separate habit. That usually means setting a few clear standards: image sizes and formats before anything gets uploaded, a process for reviewing new plugins or scripts before they're added, and periodically checking your site hasn't quietly crept back up in load time as content's been added over months or years. We can set benchmarks during your health check and re-test a few months later, so you know if things are holding or slipping. Long-term speed is less about one big fix and more about not letting the small things pile back up unnoticed.
Both, depending on what works for you. Some clients want the full report and their own developer or team takes it from there, in which case we make sure the instructions are specific enough to action without needing us in the room. Others want us to handle the fixes directly, in which case we prioritise by impact and keep you updated as each one's resolved, rather than disappearing until it's all done. Either way, the health check itself always ends with a clear, ranked report, because the value's in knowing exactly what's wrong and why, whether we're the ones fixing it or not.
It depends on the size of your site and how many areas you want covered, a five-page brochure site and a two-hundred-page platform need a genuinely different amount of time. Rather than quote a number that doesn't reflect your actual site, we'd rather have a quick conversation first about what you're seeing and what's worrying you, then give you a clear, fixed cost before any work starts, not an estimate that creeps upward once we're in. If you'd like a straight answer on price for your specific site, get in touch and we'll talk it through, no obligation.
