TECHNICAL SEO · SEO GLOSSARY
Site Health Score
A composite metric generated by SEO tools to summarise the proportion of crawled pages that are free of detected technical SEO issues — commonly used in client reporting but not a direct Google ranking signal.
Definition
A site health score is a summary metric produced by technical SEO tools (Semrush Site Audit, Ahrefs Site Audit, SE Ranking, Sitebulb) that represents what percentage of crawled pages passed the tool\'s configured checks for technical SEO issues. Typically expressed as a percentage (0–100) or a letter grade, with a breakdown of issues by severity (errors, warnings, notices). What site health scores measure and don\'t measure: (1) **They measure tool-specific checks** — each tool has its own check definitions and issue weights. A 90% health score in Semrush and a 90% health score in Ahrefs reflect different underlying audits. (2) **They are not Google ranking signals** — Google does not use any third-party site health score in its ranking algorithms. A site with a low health score can rank highly if its content and authority signals are strong; a site with a high health score can rank poorly. (3) **They are useful for tracking improvement** — the same tool\'s health score tracked over time shows whether technical issues are being resolved or multiplying. (4) **Denominator effects** — a site with 100 pages and 5 errors has a different health score denominator than a site with 10,000 pages and 500 errors. Absolute issue counts often matter more than the percentage score. Common site health score limitations: they may flag low-priority issues at high severity, miss high-priority issues not in their check library, and don\'t weight findings by the traffic impact of affected pages.
Why it matters for SEO
Site health scores are widely used in client reporting and agency dashboards. Understanding their limitations prevents over-indexing on the number (a high score doesn\'t mean the site is technically healthy for ranking) while still using them as directional indicators for improvement tracking.
How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this
DeepSEOAnalysis produces per-URL audit findings with severity levels (critical, warning, info) for the audited page, reflecting the specific technical checks that matter for that URL\'s ranking potential — structured data, performance, canonicalisation, and AI visibility — rather than a composite score that averages across issue types.
GLOSSARY
Related terms
technical
Crawl Budget
The number of pages Googlebot will crawl on a site within a given timeframe — determined by crawl rate limit and crawl demand.
Read definition →technical seo
SEO Hygiene
Routine technical SEO maintenance tasks that prevent the accumulation of compounding issues — broken links, stale canonical tags, orphaned pages, sitemap drift, and schema errors — that individually seem minor but collectively degrade a site\'s crawl quality and ranking stability.
Read definition →analytics
SEO KPI
SEO KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the specific metrics used to measure whether SEO efforts are achieving business objectives. Common SEO KPIs include organic traffic, keyword rankings, organic conversion rate, and search visibility percentage. Choosing the right KPIs depends on the site type and business goal — traffic volume alone is not a KPI if it doesn\'t connect to revenue or leads.
Read definition →technical
Index Bloat
Having too many low-quality, thin, or duplicate pages indexed by Google — wasting crawl budget, diluting site authority, and potentially triggering Helpful Content penalties.
Read definition →See how your site scores on Site Health Score.
The free DeepSEOAnalysis audit checks site health score and 100+ other signals. Full report, no signup.
Run a free audit →