Managing your site

We want you to feel empowered to manage your site moving forward, while maintaining all of the best practices Orbit has poured into your site and your analytics.

To help you feel confident about your next steps now that your new site is live, we’ve outlined some best practices for maintaining and updating your site content, and what you need to know about 3rd party tools and reporting.

Maintaining and updating your site content

Your site is a living representation of your brand. Content updates are not only expected but essential as your customers learn more and your organization grows or shifts focus.

The best practices below help protect your page speed, accessibility, SEO, and AI discoverability. And remember: the details specific to your website live in your site’s how-to section.

Image and video best practices

Resize images to the dimensions in your style guide, save them as .webp files, and upload them to the Media Library.
Give every image in the Media Library descriptive alt text.
Include a transcript with every embedded video.
Avoid placing text inside images. If an image must contain text, make sure that same text also appears in the page copy.
Before uploading a PDF, check that any links inside the document work and point to secure (https) URLs.

General site management best practices

When you delete or move a page, create a 301 redirect to a page with relevant content. Then go one step further (most admins skip this!): find any links pointing to the old URL and update them to the new one. Direct links help visitors and search crawlers reach your content faster than redirects alone.
Give every page a unique, descriptive title tag and meta description, following character count best practices.
Use caution when embedding files or third-party code — they can add a lot of weight to a page. Weigh the value of the feature against its impact on page speed.
Give every embedded iframe a descriptive title, and make sure every form has a clear heading that tells visitors what submitting it will do.

On-page SEO best practices

Use only one Heading 1 per page.
Keep headings in hierarchical order (H2, then H3, and so on).
Write clear, specific copy — skip the jargon.
Keep copy short and scannable. Bulleted lists are your friend!
Add FAQ blocks to key pages to answer questions the page content hasn’t covered.
Describe the content of any on-page videos to improve accessibility and AI discoverability.
Link to other pages on your site when it’s relevant.

Keep improving your site over time

Together, we’ve put a lot of effort into your website — but it can’t (and shouldn’t) go untouched forever. Fresh content and steady improvements keep new and returning visitors engaged, signal relevance to search engines, and help you rank higher and show up in AI results. You should feel empowered to make these changes yourself.

Tips for making improvements

Try using AI to evaluate your copy against the page type, target persona, or key conversion goal. The Orbit blog has lots of free content and AI prompts to get you started.
Avoid major copy changes to pages that are already performing well. Use Search Console to see which pages rank, and Google Analytics to assess organic traffic and conversion value.
If you introduce or change a key part of your business or services, update your home, about, and service pages to match.
Create a content schedule for refreshing older blog articles.

Illustration of a silver wrench placed over five interlocking gears in blue, red, and yellow, symbolizing mechanical work or system optimization.

What to know about reports and monitoring from Google Tools

During the transition meeting, we may have given you a list of items that impact SEO, AI, Page Speed, or Accessibility due to the tools you use or specific project requirements.

Unless you address these items, they will likely continue to appear as issues in reporting from Search Console, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Keep this in mind when receiving notifications from those platforms.

Some reports matter, some don’t

Reports vary by tool. Some are genuinely helpful, some are purely informational, and some exist mainly to upsell you. The goal is knowing which is which. Here are the most common alerts you’ll see and how to handle them.

New reasons prevent pages from being indexed

This alert comes from Google Search Console and doesn’t necessarily mean something is “wrong.”

Pages can be excluded from indexing for many valid reasons. For example, they may be duplicate versions, thank-you pages, password-protected pages, or intentionally no-indexed for another internal or SEO reason.

What to check

Were the pages impacted ever meant to appear in Google search results? If not, ignore this alert.
If one or more of the pages was supposed to be indexed, check that it isn’t accidentally set to “noindex” on the backend of your CMS, and that it’s linked from your sitemap as well as another page on your site.

New reasons prevent pages in a sitemap from being indexed

This is similar to the previous report, but usually means Google found URLs in your XML sitemap that it chose not to include in results.

What to check

Review your sitemap through Search Console > Sitemaps.
See if the pages listed are live, public, and contain unique content.
If you’ve recently unpublished or deleted pages, this may resolve itself after your next sitemap update, and if you’ve recently launched with several new pages, they may still be waiting to be indexed by Google

In most cases, this is not a critical issue. It’s more of a status update from Google about how it’s understanding your site.

New structured data issues detected

This one sounds scarier than it is. Structured data (or “schema markup”) helps search engines better understand your content and display rich results (like event listings or product details).

What to check

Did you recently edit an event page or change its format or date?
Did a past event expire without being updated or removed?
Run the affected page through Google’s Rich Results Test to confirm what the issue is.

Often, these alerts pop up when small formatting details change. It doesn’t mean your site is broken, it just means Google is recalibrating.

Page speed is low or failed Core Web Vitals

Page speed scores can fluctuate daily depending on your hosting environment, plugins, and external scripts (like tracking pixels or chat tools).

What to check

Did you recently upload large, uncompressed images or videos?
Did you add new tracking tags or embed a third-party widget?
Run a quick test through PageSpeed Insights to see what’s slowing things down.

If nothing changed recently, it could simply be traffic spikes or test variance. If you consistently see poor results, we can audit performance and recommend optimizations.

Increase in 404s

A “404 error” means a page could not be found on the server. This might happen if you recently changed a page URL, deleted a page, or changed a parent page.

What to check

Have you recently deleted content or changed a page slug?
Did someone update navigation links or parent page paths?

If so, create a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one to preserve SEO value and user experience. We can assist you in troubleshooting this, just let us know what you changed and we can dig in.

Sudden traffic drop

Any of the above things can impact traffic getting to your website, but it could also be due to seasonal patterns, shifts in your marketing efforts, or changes to search algorithms.

What to check

Did you recently update, remove, or consolidate pages, or change your go-to-market approach for certain products or services?
Have there been changes in advertising, social media activity, or backlinks?
Compare traffic from the same period last year to spot seasonal trends.

Sometimes data just needs time to stabilize. If you are concerned about your performance, reach out to our team so we can take a look.

Container quality: Urgent

A message from GTM that suggests container issues are impacting your measurement.

What to check

Access GTM and click to view the issues
Some of your pages aren’t tagged: Click to view the untagged pages. Are they real URLs on the site? Are they different domains that you want to track in GA4? If yes, you should explore this further. Most likely however, they are just old pages or URLs without a trailing slash or a domain you do not want in the same GA4 data stream. Those can be ignored.
Additional domains detected for configuration: Click to view the domains within the Conversion Linker. Are they valid domains? If yes, add the tag. If not, you can ignore it.

Person wearing headphones, sitting at a desk with a computer, using a mouse, and looking towards the camera. Office setting with framed pictures and plants in the background.

When in doubt, don’t panic – reach out

If a report leaves you unsure, know that many alerts are informational, not emergencies. You can always:

Check your site directly – is it live and functioning?
Log into Search Console or Analytics for more context.
Review any recent site edits or content uploads and ensure you are following all of Orbit’s best practices outlined above.

If something still doesn’t feel right, contact the Orbit Support Team. We’ll take a look, explain what’s happening, and guide you on next steps.

Our team will continue to support you.

Of course, Orbit’s support team is always here to help as well. Reach out if you need help with something or are interested in further enhancement or optimization opportunities.

After your site launches, our client success team will check back to see how the site is performing and we’ll also explore any enhancements or optimization opportunities to generate even more value from your website.

Questions about your CMS

If you have questions about how your CMS works, refer to the “how-to”on your website and watch the recording of your personal CMS training. Here’s other support documentation

Need support?

For questions, troubleshooting, or small enhancements, our support team is here to help.

Book 30 minutes with Shahin

If you’re looking for a more dedicated and strategic engagement, reach out to our Client Success Director to explore a monthly service agreement tailored to your needs.

Interested in improving your conversions or search rankings?

Want to maximize the impact of your website launch? Our Website Optimization Services combine SEO, CRO, and data-driven insights to drive continuous improvements—helping you attract more visitors, increase conversions, and achieve long-term growth.

Resources for better reporting and site management

Google Analytics Reporting vs. Analysis: Insights From 4 Reports

Andy Crestodina