A website grade is a single number standing in for dozens of small facts about your site. A 62 on its own tells you very little. What matters is which facts pulled it down, and whether they are worth your afternoon.
This guide opens the number up. You will see the four areas a grade covers, how they combine into the overall score, what each check is really asking, and which things no grade can see.
The four areas behind one number
Our free website grader reports four scores and one overall score, each out of 100:
| Area | The question it answers | Weight in the overall score |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Does the page appear quickly and stay steady? | 30% |
| Search | Can search engines understand and list the page? | 30% |
| Mobile | Is it comfortable to use on a phone? | 20% |
| Security | Is the connection safe and the browser told how to behave? | 20% |
Speed and search carry the most weight because they decide whether people find the site and whether they stay once they arrive. Mobile and security carry less weight each, but a failure in either one can cost you a customer on the spot.
The mobile score also borrows from speed. Roughly 70% of it comes from phone-specific checks and 30% from the speed score, because a slow page hurts most on a phone connection.
Speed: how quickly the page gets going
Speed checks look at what the browser has to do before a visitor sees something useful.
- Server response time. How long your server takes to start answering. A slow start delays everything after it.
- Total load time. How long the whole page takes to arrive.
- Compression. Whether text files are shrunk before being sent. Uncompressed pages are several times larger than they need to be.
- Page weight. The combined size of the page and what it pulls in. Heavy pages are the usual cause of slow ones.
- Scripts and blocking styles. Files the browser must finish reading before it can draw the page.
- Caching. Whether repeat visitors reuse files they already have.
Where a standard mobile speed test can run, its result feeds the speed score as well, along with loading, stability and responsiveness measures. When it cannot, the grader falls back to the basic checks above and says so on the results.
Speed is the area where one change often moves the score a lot, usually by shrinking images. Our guide to website speed for small business goes deeper.
Search: can your page be understood and listed
Search checks are mostly about labels. Each one tells a search engine, or someone sharing your link, what the page is.
- A page title and description of a sensible length, written for people.
- One main heading that says what the page is about.
- A canonical address, so duplicates of the page do not compete with each other.
- Social sharing tags, so a shared link shows a proper title and picture.
- A language setting and text descriptions on images.
- Icons such as the small favicon in a browser tab.
- A sitemap and a robots file, which list your pages and say what may be visited.
- Structured data, a hidden summary that spells out who you are and what the page offers.
None of these needs design skill. They are a one-time tidy-up, which is why search scores are often the cheapest ones to lift. For the local side of this, see local SEO basics.
Mobile: is it comfortable on a phone
Mobile checks ask what a person holding a phone would feel.
- A viewport setting so the page fits the screen instead of shrinking a desktop layout.
- Zoom allowed, so people who need bigger text can have it.
- Tap targets large enough and spaced enough to hit with a thumb.
- Readable text size without pinching.
- Data used, because a page that is heavy on a desktop is heavier still on a mobile plan.
The follow-up guide, mobile-first: how your site looks on a phone in 2026, covers these in detail.
Security: safe connection, clear instructions
Security checks cover the connection and the instructions your server sends along with each page.
- HTTPS with a padlock, and an automatic redirect from the insecure address.
- Security headers that tell the browser how strict to be: forcing secure connections, blocking sniffing and framing, limiting what is shared when a link is clicked, and switching off unused device features.
Most of this is configuration rather than design, and it is free. Our guide to security headers walks through a safe starter set.
How the overall number is built
Each check is pass or fail, and each has a weight. An area score is the share of available weight your site earned. The overall score then blends the four areas using the weights in the table above.
Two things follow from that.
- Failures near the top of the weight list cost the most. A missing page title costs more than a missing icon.
- The score has a ceiling per area. Once an area is near 100, working on it again changes the overall number very little. Move to your weakest area instead.
What a grade can't see
A grade measures what a program can read from a page. It cannot judge whether your offer is clear, your photos are honest, your prices are visible, or your phone number is where a customer looks for it. It will not tell you whether your reviews are recent.
That is why a good grade is a floor, not a finish line. It tells you the foundations are sound so the human parts of the site can do their work. Our homepage mistakes guide covers that human layer.
Reading your own results
When you get a result, work in this order:
- Look at the weakest of the four areas, not the overall number.
- Open the failed checks in that area and read the plain-English fix.
- Pick the fixes you can finish today. Many take minutes.
- Run the grader again and compare. Share the result link with whoever manages your site.
A reasonable aim for a small business site is for every area to sit comfortably above 80. Getting there is usually a few afternoons of work, not a rebuild.
Frequently asked questions
Is a website grade the same as a ranking in search results?
No. A grade measures the technical and presentation basics of a page. Rankings depend on those basics plus the quality of your content, your reputation and how competitive your market is. A healthy grade removes obstacles; it does not promise a position.
Why did my score change when I ran it again?
Speed varies with server load and connection conditions, so small movements between runs are normal. Search, mobile and security results only change when something on the site changes, so those should stay steady.
What is a good overall score for a small business site?
Aim for 80 or more in every area. Scores in the 90s are common on well-set-up sites. If one area is far below the others, fix that one first, because it moves the overall number most.
Which area should I fix first?
Start with the lowest-scoring area, then choose the quickest failed checks inside it. Search and security items are usually small configuration jobs; speed improvements most often come from smaller images.
Does the grader change anything on my site?
No. It only reads the public page, the same way a visitor's browser would, and reports what it finds.
Next step
See your four scores and a numbered list of fixes: grade my website free. If you would rather hand the work over, Belmo Studio builds websites for local businesses that bring calls, with a free preview first and payment only if you like it.