SiteBrief

Every few months an agency client would message: "our traffic dropped, what happened?"

Then the investigation begins. GA4, Search Console, manual Google searches. Sometimes it's a Core Web Vitals regression. Sometimes a meta title got wiped during a theme update. Sometimes a competitor just outranked them on a key term.

The problem: by the time you find out, it's already been weeks.

I built SiteBrief (sitebrief.net) to monitor the technical side of client sites — uptime, security headers, Core Web Vitals. But agencies kept asking: "can you also track where we rank on Google for specific keywords?"

So we added keyword rank tracking this week.

Here's how it works:

• You add keywords per site (e.g. "web design London", "shopify agency NYC")

• Every day we check Google and record the position

• If you drop more than 5 spots, you get an alert

• You see a 90-day trend chart per keyword

It's not a replacement for a full SEO tool. But for agencies that just need to know "is my client still ranking for the terms we optimized for last quarter?" — it's enough.

What I found interesting building this: most rank drops we caught in testing weren't algorithm changes. They were caused by the site itself — a plugin update that broke page speed, a CMS migration that changed URL slugs, a noindex accidentally left on a page.

So the keyword tracking pairs with the technical monitoring. You see a drop → you check what changed on the site that week → you find the cause.

If you're managing SEO for multiple clients and have a system for catching rank drops early, I'd love to hear how you do it.

June 28, 2025 was the deadline for the European Accessibility Act. Websites serving EU customers must comply with WCAG 2.1 AA or face fines.

I run a tool that monitors 30+ client sites for a web agency. Out of curiosity, I ran an accessibility scan on all of them last month.

Results:

• 22 out of 30 had critical or high risk violations

• Most common: missing alt text on images, no lang attribute on <html>, form inputs with no labels

• Average risk score: 67/100

None of these clients knew. And honestly — neither did the agency.

The violations aren't hard to fix. Missing lang="en" on the HTML tag is one line. alt="" on decorative images takes 30 seconds. But finding them across 30 sites manually? That's a full day of auditing.

What surprised me most was the legal exposure breakdown. For EU-based clients, the EAA applies. For US clients with a physical location, ADA Title III case law has been expanding to cover websites since 2019. Several clients had both jurisdictions apply.

We added automated WCAG 2.1 AA scanning to SiteBrief (sitebrief.net). It runs axe-core on each site and gives you:

• A risk score (0–100)

• AI summary of what's actually broken and why it matters legally

• Priority fix list, not just a raw list of violations

And for DevLab users — it opens a GitHub PR with the fix for the most common ones automatically.

If you're running a web agency and haven't audited your clients' accessibility yet, now is the time. The fines are real and the fixes are mostly trivial.

Happy to share the scan results format if anyone's interested.

Running a web agency means playing the same whack-a-mole every few weeks — WP_DEBUG left on in production, missing security headers, broken robots.txt. Not hard fixes. Just tedious across 20+ client sites.

I've been building SiteBrief for the past few months — uptime + SEO + security monitoring for agencies. Last week I shipped DevLab: it detects those recurring issues and opens a GitHub PR (or GitLab MR) with the fix, ready for your review. Nothing merges automatically.

The part I'm most happy with: every fix has a confidence score. 95% for WP_DEBUG (one line swap, deterministic). 62% for a missing SEO title (it's a placeholder, you need to review). Color-coded throughout so you know exactly how much to trust the generated change.

Wrote up the full implementation on Dev.to if you want the technical details:
👉 https://dev.to/sitebrief/i-built-a-tool-that-detects-broken-security-headers-missing-robotstxt-and-wpdebugtrue-then-23jd

Would love to hear from anyone else running an agency — what recurring fixes do you deal with most?

Most agencies find out their client's site is down from the client.

Here's why that happens — and how to fix it:

sitebrief.net/blog/why-clients-find-out-about-downtime-first

The problem

I run a small web agency and was managing 30+ client sites. Checking uptime was a mess — multiple tabs, different tools, manual SSL checks, forgotten domain renewals. Clients would sometimes find out their site was down before I did.

What I built

SiteBrief monitors uptime, SSL, PageSpeed, and domain expiry for all your client sites in one dashboard. It sends automated white-label PDF reports to clients so they see the value you provide — without you lifting a finger.

What's included (free plan available)

Uptime monitoring with 2-min checks

SSL & domain expiry alerts

PageSpeed & Core Web Vitals tracking

Automated branded PDF reports

White-label client portal

WordPress plugin for easy integration

Where it stands

Launched today. Free plan, Pro at $29/mo, Agency at $79/mo. Would love feedback from other agency founders.

👉 https://sitebrief.net