What Is An SEO Score? Understanding Good SEO Score

By Sabahat Ali – Link building expert since 2009 – 668+ clients served

Understanding what an SEO score is, or, more precisely, a good SEO score, is not that difficult.

You need to know a few things, which I’ve covered in this guide, to help you get a better understanding.

The guide breaks down what an SEO score is, why it’s important for your SEO strategy, and how it impacts your search rankings.

Keep reading to learn more.

What is SEO score: A short introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) score

SEO is the process of improving your website to increase visibility in search engine result pages like Google.

Here’s how it works:

• More search engine visibility leads to more traffic from new and returning visitors.
• Then, search engine bots will crawl and index the websites.
• Algorithms then rank pages using various signals to decide their rank in search results.

Since you can’t pay for higher organic rankings, SEO requires consistent optimization. So, you must put in the necessary effort.

Now, an SEO score measures how well your website’s user interface and technical setup support SEO.

Scores range from 0 to 100 and are based on four factors. They include technical SEO, content, user experience, and mobile usability. These affect how easily your site is crawled and ranked.

A high score means your site follows SEO best practices. A low score signals technical or usability issues.

Also, a high SEO score now correlates with visibility in zero-click results (SEO.com). These include featured snippets, People Also Ask, and AI Overviews, especially when you optimize your content with schema markup and question-based headings.

While Google doesn’t use SEO scores directly, higher scores often align with better rankings.

Also, with AI trends, SEO score audits now consider how well your content is optimized for AI-generated answers and Google’s AI Overviews.

Some of the factors you can note to optimize for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) include:

• Structured data
• Concise answers, and
• E-E-A-T signals within the first 200 words.

But exactly how does SEO raise your score rating?

A key step in learning how to conduct an SEO analysis is to optimize your website for the four factors that make up SEO scoring: technical SEO, content, user experience, and mobile usability.

Doing so will frequently improve your rankings in search engine results pages (SERP).

Note:

Some SEO tools now use the XACT framework (eXperience, Authority, Content, Technical) when assigning SEO scores. This expands traditional scoring by emphasizing trust and authority metrics more directly.

What is a good SEO score?

First, I’ll share a secret that many people do not know:

Only Google has complete knowledge of your website’s SEO rankings.

PageRank was used to calculate each website’s SEO score, but that is no longer the case. Google no longer updates PageRank, so your rankings are no longer available.

However, some measurements show how well your website is performing, even though only Google has access to all of the data on your ratings. These metrics have a significant impact on your SEO rankings, as evidenced by research. Although I am unsure of the actual nature and scope of that influence, it is nonetheless real.

That said, what is a good SEO score?

80 to 100 is considered an excellent SEO score. If your website receives a score in this range, it means that it satisfies the highest standards for technical SEO, content, user experience, and mobile usability.

How do you check and improve your SEO score?

To optimize for search engines and enhance your online presence, you must evaluate your website’s SEO health.

Fortunately, there are several effective techniques to appraise your website’s SEO performance.

1. Leverage online SEO tools and websites

This is one of the most straightforward ways to check how well your website is doing. SEO tools and websites that offer SEO audits check your site to find problems and show you how to fix them. They check for technical issues, on-page SEO elements, and content quality. They also check for off-page ranking factors such as backlinks and social media presence. Some popular tools include Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs. They provide extensive SEO audits and simple tips to help your website show up better on Google.

2. Track your website’s search engine rankings

Your visibility and potential to boost organic search engine traffic increase when you have a higher ranking.
This is why you must monitor how your focus keyword ranks in search engines.
To do this, use tools such as Google Search Console or third-party rank tracking tools.

3. Keep an eye on your key metrics

Watch key metrics like organic search engine traffic, click-through rates (CTR), and conversion rates.
These indicators offer a holistic perspective of your website’s SEO status and overall online success.

Using these strategies will help you better understand your SEO score, spot important problems, and fix them. This will also help you take steps to improve your website’s visibility and attract more visitors from search engines.

Metrics underlying your SEO scores

Based on all I’ve discussed above, a culmination of the evaluation procedure for all facets of your website is the SEO score.

The factors that affect your company’s search engine ranking results are the ones that are being measured here.

We can divide this process into two fundamental categories: measuring user-facing and technical aspects.

We can, however, go one step further.

Four primary subcategories will influence the ultimate scores of your website’s rankings.

• Content
• Technical
• User Experience
• Mobile

The terms above are the names of these subcategories.

You must examine your website’s performance in each of these subcategories to determine the final SEO score. These checks are carried out by looking at different aspects of your website and providing you with the specific results for each check.

Some of these indicators will determine whether a component, such as sitemaps or robots.txt files, is present or absent on your website.

Other metrics will provide you with ratings and percentages of how well your website performs concerning a particular test. These tests include looking for 404 errors or missing alt attributes on your website’s images.

Let’s go into as much detail as we can regarding each of these subcategories.

SEO scoring factors

As previously indicated, the performance of your website in the following four categories will determine its ultimate SEO score.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO plays a pivotal role in determining how easily search engine web crawlers, such as Googlebot, can access, traverse, and index your website. It is an integral aspect of SEO scoring.

Regardless of how exceptional your quality content, user experience, or mobile usability may be, a website plagued by significant technical issues will not attain high rankings on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

One significant obstacle to enhancing organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing is the presence of technical SEO issues.

These technical SEO problems often remain hidden until you employ online tools like technical SEO audit tools or SEO score checkers to evaluate your website’s performance.

It is imperative to incorporate these types of examinations and analyses into your routine website maintenance protocol.

For SEO experts and webmasters, keeping a close eye on SEO metrics, including meta descriptions, is essential for optimizing search rankings.

By doing this, you’ll be able to raise your SEO ranking in the following categories:

• Indexability
• Page Speed
• Website Architecture
• Broken Links
• Server response

Content SEO

Another crucial element in your total SEO score is the caliber of the content on your website.

Some audit tools now flag content as likely AI-generated. While AI-assisted writing isn’t penalized, scores may drop if content lacks originality, depth, or human emotions.

Also, the website’s structure, how pages are connected, and how effectively your content meets the demands of your visitors, as measured by various on-site metrics, are all factors taken into account by search engine algorithms.

Google typically gives websites with strong SEO, pertinent content, and active visitors higher rankings. The components of the SEO score for website content are as follows:

• Every web page should have a description and a meta title.
• The quantity of broken and internal links.
• Duplicate content is present across the site.
• Factors for on-page SEO include enhanced heading tags, content keywords, and image optimization.
• Bounce rate, time on page, and average pages per session are examples of user metrics.

User experience

Despite being a low priority for SEO scoring, user experience is nevertheless taken into account when search engine crawlers crawl & rank websites.

Knowing your site’s user experience and looking for ways to enhance it are, therefore, both beneficial. The following elements combine to create the user experience SEO score:

• Images may be found and loaded swiftly.
• There are not too many links in the navigation.
• Accessing any page on the website requires no more than three clicks.

Mobile usability

Google and other search engines now index website content for mobile devices first. Therefore, for your website to score highly for its intended queries, it must offer content that is optimized for mobile devices.

The following elements affect your SEO score: Your website’s speed at rendering across a variety of devices is measured by this factor.

• The adaptability of the design.
• Compatibility with touchscreens for scrolling and tapping.
• For the user, pages load rapidly.

What Improving Your SEO Score Actually Looks Like

Visit Seattle — 850% Health Score Improvement in 8 Weeks: A technical SEO audit exposed 29 bloated sitemaps full of outdated and duplicate content that made crawling inefficient. After cleaning up the site structure over 8 weeks, SEO health score improved by 850% [Gravitate Design, 2025].

35% of Sites Fail Core Web Vitals: According to 2025 benchmark data, 35% of websites fail basic Core Web Vitals on mobile [SEOmator, 2025]. This is one of the most common reasons for low SEO scores — and one of the easiest to fix.

Lazy Loading Cut Bounce Rate by 25%: In one documented case, adding lazy loading to images — a common SEO score recommendation — reduced bounce rates by 25%. This shows that even single technical fixes can have measurable impact [Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025].

Bottom line: How to optimize your website using SEO score

An essential component of maintaining your website’s upkeep is checking your score. You can tell which elements of your website benefit you and which do not by frequently reviewing your score.

Your organization or corporation can thrive by knowing your SEO score.

In conclusion, keeping a close eye on your website’s SEO score and taking proactive steps to improve it can be a game-changer for you. It will help your website climb the search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic.

Recommended Website seo checker: Ahrefs free SEO checker

For more, see our SEO audit guide, page speed guide, and SEO best practices.