SEO Score: How To Evaluate Your Website (In 5 Minutes)
If you are wondering how good your website's SEO is, you are in the right place.
This article is a beginner's guide to SEO scoring. Learn what SEO scoring is, what specific areas you can evaluate, and how to do it.
Describes several different approaches, metrics, and tools that can be used to evaluate different aspects of the SEO and see where it can be improved.
What we are looking at: What is the
SEO score? What is the difference between SEO score and domain authority?
5 Easy Ways to Evaluate Your Website's SEO
Ready? let's start!
What is an SEO score?
An SEO score is a third-party metric (provided as a final result or "score") that measures how well your website is suitable for SEO.
You can use the tool to evaluate different aspects of your SEO effort and show that:
How optimized is the content you create?
Health of your technical SEO website
Whether the content is fresh and up-to-date
Mobile friendly for your website
Website loading speed and user experience
Number of backlinks on your website or page
Most of these scores are not calculated directly by Google. These are created by third parties to help SEO practitioners (especially beginners) measure and analyze specific areas of their work.
It's important to remember the limitations of these tools (discussed on a case-by-case basis below), but they can be a very useful starting point when you start your SEO journey.
Difference between SEO score and domain authority score
Some SEO platforms such as Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush use metrics such as "domain authority" and "domain rating" to reflect the overall strength of the domain.
This is a general indicator of how well a website is ranked on search engine results pages, calculated based on the backlinks that point to this website.
The image above is from a small business with healthy 34 domain privileges. The following is from a large company with an impressive 89 domain ratings.
Although they are not used directly by Google, these third-party indicators are widely accepted by the SEO community as useful indicators of domain strength.
The domain authority can be thought of as a type of SEO score, but it's not the only one. This metric is limited to the evaluation of the domain's backlink profile. H. Links to your content like many other websites & # 41 ;. Other ranking factors such as technical SEO, content optimization (and relevance), and user experience are not taken into account.
How to Evaluate Your Website SEO: 5 Easy Ways
Now that you know what your SEO score is and what it's used for, you need to find a good SEO score checker. As mentioned earlier, there is no single tool for this purpose. Instead, it presents a list of five best tools and methods for quickly assessing your website's SEO at different capacities.
Method 1: Evaluate content writes using ClickFlow's content editor tools
The first area where you can evaluate the SEO of your website is in your written content by using content optimization.
Content optimization refers to the process of verifying the correct hits:
Primary and secondary keywords
Approximate number of words
Important subtopics
question
Readability level
Search intent
If you make a mistake in some of these factors, your content will not be ranked. Also, not all resources migrated to production will result in ROI.
For example, a search term requires a 4,000 word long answer, all current ranking pages are very detailed, and if you try to rank with a 500 word summary, it won't work. This is described by Matt Diggity as the "black sheep effect".
And vice versa. In a nutshell, I don't want to stand out because it's the only website trying to get a 10,000-word essay for a search term that should satisfy a 1,000-word landing page.
The easiest way to make sure you (and your writing team) list all of these in the bullet points above is to use content optimization software like ClickFlow's content editor.
You can follow to rate your content.
Start the ClickFlow trial and create a new article in the content editor
The first important thing. To try this tool, you need to start a trial version of ClickFlow. It's available for $ 1.
As soon as you get there, go to the content editor feature and click + New Articles.
Enter the main keyword
The procedure is the same whether you are evaluating existing content or creating new content.
Enter the main keyword to rank. ClickFlow uses this to analyze the pages currently ranked by that keyword, see what's working, and generate recommendations.
It usually takes a few minutes to process.
Import content (or start burning!)
Next, you will see a screen similar to the following.
You will immediately see some of the elements that the Content Editor can use to evaluate your content.
Overall rating (A + is best)
Readability recommendations (importance of using a simple or technical language)
Recommended (and current) number of words
Primary and secondary keywords (and their recommended densities)
If you want to get a rating for content that has already been published, you can enter the URL and press the import button to insert the text.
You now have a clear recommendation on how to rate your content and how to improve it. That. Add and remove content, paying attention to the related keyword terms listed on the right, and see the content score increase.
Advanced Tip: Click the Survey tab to find the List of Askers Asked Directly from Google for inclusion as a FAQ or subtopic. Answering these FAQs will enrich your content with better search intent.
Content Optimization Score Limits
The only limitation of this content rating method is that it requires some competition. If you find a truly unique opportunity that doesn't currently have great content, the recommendations generated by the Content Optimizer won't help. You have to be innovative!
However, for most of the search terms, that's fine. There's a lot of content out there (and more than 4.4 million added per day!).
Last but not least, even a complete content optimization score does not guarantee the number one placement in SERP. Other factors, such as internal and external backlinks and current permissions, also play a role.
Method 2: Assess the technical health of SEO using Ahrefs site audit tools
Technical SEO is another area of evaluation of your website. Technical SEO can see aspects such as:
Make sure the web page is crawlable and indexable
Manage duplicate content with canonical tags
Read speed and security factors (eg via https)
Response code (301 redirect, 404 error, etc.)
Other elements such as hreflang, javascript, url structure
If you are not familiar with them, some of these issues can be difficult to address. Fortunately for us, there are many tools to help you navigate your technical SEO. They can give your website a general site health score, report SEO bugs that are blocking your website, and explain how they can be improved.
Ahrefs Site Audit is one such tool (although there are several other ways). This is a guide on how to use Ahrefs to assess the technical SEO status of your website.
Go to Site Audit Tool and create a new project
If you don't already have an Ahrefs account, you'll need to create one first. They have a $ 7 7-day trial that you can use for this purpose.
When you enter the dashboard, you'll see site audit options in the top navigation bar.
Go there and click "+ New Project".
You have two options: Import the Google Search Console or add it manually.
If possible, we recommend the import option in the search console. It speeds up the setup process (especially if you want to add multiple websites) and has the additional benefit of verifying the ownership of your website that you can read here. One advantage is that site audits increase the crawl limit on the number of pages you can crawl in a month.
Connect your search console account and add your website as a project.
Wait for Ahrefs to crawl your website
After adding the project, refresh the site audit page and you should see something like this:
Ahrefs will automatically start crawling your site. This can take some time (the larger the site, the longer it will take). Even for small websites, it will take at least 1530 minutes.
When the crawl is complete, you'll see an overview of your site's technical SEO, including your overall health score.
Examine all issues to see what is blocking the site.
Find all issues in the left sidebar menu.
This page is a list of all the different elements that your site may improve. They are divided into groups. The problem may be related to:
internal page
Indexability
left
redirect
Contents
Issues are also assigned importance (errors, warnings, and notes) to help you prioritize them.
Details of a specific issue
You can now see each highlighted issue. Clicking on one will open a helpful description tab with more information, how to fix the problem, and a link to find the affected URL
Site Audit Evaluation Tool Limitations
Site audit tools, including Ahrefs site audits, always flag things that don't need to be fixed.
For example, you may find hints such as "The page has an outgoing nofollow link" or "The page has a small number of words". These are intentional, do not require modification, and have no benefit from modification. Once you are familiar with the
tools and technical SEO in general, you can safely ignore the problem (and prevent it from harming your health score).
Method 3: Evaluate Page Performance Using Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a relatively new ranking element (since 2020). CWV collectively references a number of page experience metrics, including:
Largest Content Full Paint (LCP). It measures how long it takes a real user to load and interact with your website.
Cumulative layout shift (CLS). CLS measures how stable the page is on load.
First Input Delay (FID). It measures the speed at which a user can start interacting with a page.
Google has guidelines that are considered "good," "need to improve," and "Poor."
The CWV can be said to be part of the technical SEO mentioned above. That said, it's a very hot topic right now and it's worth the special attention. There are several free tools you can use to get CWV results for your website.
Check your CWV score in Google Search Console
The first thing you can do is check your CWV score in the Google Search Console. To do this, look under the "Experience" heading in the left sidebar and click "Core Web Vitals".
The breakdown of URL is displayed, and each is classified as "bad" or "needs improvement". Or "good". If there's room for improvement, Google will let you know which of the three CWV metrics you're referring to:
Dig Deeper in the PageSpeed Insights report
You can go one step further and dig deeper with Google's PageSpeed Insights report. It uses the same dataset as the search console report, but provides more helpful suggestions on how to actually improve performance.
Enter the URL and wait a few seconds for the tool to analyze your website.
A summary of the scores for each area that correlates with the search console results is displayed, but more accurately:
Scroll down further to use filters to view only issues related to specific metrics that significantly affect CWV results.
Limitations when using core web vital scores
According to a Sistrix study, the visibility of websites with high CWV scores is slightly improved, but the visibility of websites with low scores is particularly low.
In many cases, working with CWV does not immediately increase the search traffic significantly, and even if it does, it is difficult to measure (especially due to that work). However, on the contrary, if you are not working, it is likely to impact performance.
Last but not least, don't get hooked on getting the perfect result. There are points where it becomes impossible, unrealistic, or impacting other areas to further improve the site experience. For example, you always need a cookie consent form. This can cause (minor) CLS issues, but it is still mandatory. Please do not sweat.
Method 4: Measure content attenuation to see where traffic is declining
The unfortunate fact for SEOs and content marketers is that even if you achieve that illustrious number one position, it may not stay there forever.
Search intents have evolved, SERPs are getting new features, content is out of date, competitors are creating better content, and more. There are many options for where to slide. This is known as content attenuation and becomes a necessary part of the strategy as a website grows older and larger.
There is no single metric or "score" that can be given to the entire site about content decline, but you can search page by page to see how submerged it is.
It's possible to manually analyze data from Google Analytics or the search console, but it's a fairly time-consuming spreadsheet and a tedious process. You can use the
software to speed up the process. This is another feature that ClickFlow can help with just a few clicks.
Use the ClickFlow Content Decay feature to find and measure dips
From the ClickFlow dashboard (if you don't have an account, you can request a $ 1 trial to try this), go to the Content Decay Tool increase. Left sidebar:
Displays pages for sites with reduced traffic. By default, it is ranked by the page that lost the most traffic, with the largest drop at the top
. At a glance, you can see performance over time, the amount of traffic that has peaked, and the amount of traffic that is declining. You can use this information to prioritize your content resources and efforts.
Remember that Google prioritizes the latest, relevant and fresh content with the latest information. An easy way to get lost traffic back from corrupt pages is simply to update them. To do this, do the following:
Add new sections to old blog posts to make them more comprehensive
Update old posts with new information and make them relevant again
Change the keyword, especially if you have optimized the posting of trend keywords
Increase links (external and internal) to top content
Watch this 2-minute overview video to see how the Content Decay Tool works.
Restrictions on the use of content decay
Opportunity cost is the only potential drawback of using such tools to monitor and address content expiration. It takes time to update the content. If you have limited capacity, there are other things you can do.
Just because a post loses traffic doesn't mean it needs to be updated. Take a moment to ask the right questions:
Does this post generate traffic related to my current goal?
Does this contribution generate income?
If not, at least push the user into the goal-achieving process?
Does this post generate brand awareness and backlinks? Updating content may be the best way to deploy resources, or it may be better to create new content. Analyze potential growth on a case-by-case basis and use tools such as ClickFlow to speed up the process.
Method # 5: Measure backlink profiles using Ahrefs SiteExplorer
It's no secret that backlinks are still one of the biggest ranking factors. That's why SEO professionals use metrics to measure backlink strength.
Different tools have different names for backlink metrics, but they basically work the same way. Use Ahrefs again to see the SiteExplorer tools. The Ahrefs SiteExplorer has two main indicators for assessing the strength of backlinks.
Domain rating. As mentioned earlier, measure the overall strength of your domain's backlink profile, taking into account both the quality and quantity of the backlinks.
A URL rating that measures the strength of backlinks on a particular single page. Internal backlinks are counted here just like external backlinks. Both metrics work on a scale from 0 to 100, the higher the better.
Here you don't have to do much step by step to get the score for your backlink profile. Simply sign up for an Ahrefs trial (or free account) and enter the URL in Site Explorer.
The overview dashboard will immediately display:
Number of backlinks referencing the site
Number of unique reference domains
Domain evaluation
URL rating (URL entered, probably homepage)
To jump to a specific page, go to the Best by Link report in the left sidebar. There is a list of top URLs based on URL ratings (the number of backlinks pointing to those particular pages):
That's it!
You can then use Site Explorer to monitor your DR score over time as you create the backlink.
Both the DR and UR work on a logarithmic scale, so creating a high quality backlink will result in a rapid increase in your score early on. For example, changing from 0 to 10 is much easier than changing from 70 to 80.
Restrictions on the use of backlink scoring tools
It's important to remember that just because a domain has a good reputation doesn't necessarily mean it will increase traffic and revenue. In fact, domain ratings are entirely backlink-based, so your website may have a high DR (for example, 80 or higher) and very little traffic, if any.
I don't know about you, but I want a backlink from a DR20 site with monthly traffic of 10,000 or more, not from a DR80 site with no traffic.
Use this metric to monitor the effort and effectiveness of link building activities, but also with common sense. Good backlinks from related pages can help you rank without moving the needle (if the "needle" is a DR score).
Conclusion
The SEO score is not a single number that can be applied to the entire website. Rather, it should be subdivided to evaluate SEO performance.
Content creation, technical SEO, page experience, content decay, and backlink profiles can all be evaluated using tools such as ClickFlow, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console.
Finding SEO results for your website can be fast and easy and you don't have to break the bank. However, taking the time to do this will help you understand what to focus on next in your SEO efforts.
Good luck!
Frequently Asked Questions about SEO Score
How can I check my SEO score? To evaluate your website's SEO performance, you need to categorize your website into different categories. For example, if you want to know how good your content is for SEO, you can use tools such as ClickFlow's Content Editor. It gives you grades and recommended areas for improvement.
How high should my SEO score be? There is no easy answer to this question. It depends on the type of score we are talking about, and still it depends on your particular situation. Higher scores are always better, especially when it comes to content optimization and domain / URL ratings. That said, there are scenarios where the benefits of forcing the last few points negatively impact other areas. This may be confirmed by your site's technical health score or load speed.