Glossary · 5-min read
What is a Visibility Score?
A single number from 0 to 100 that tells you how findable your website is to people searching for what you do, in your area. Calculated from seven weighted categories, refreshed on every audit.
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Max score
Perfect grade
75+
Competitive
Top ~20% of UK sites
41-70
Mixed
Quick fixes available
<40
Critical
Big foundational gaps
The formula
100 points, transparent weights, no black-box scoring.
25 points come from mobile performance. 25 from technical SEO. 20 from meta tags (4pts each: title, description, H1, schema, viewport). 10 from HTTPS. 10 from a mobile-friendly check. 10 from a load-time bucket (under 2s = full marks, under 4s = half). Total: 100. We never round up — your score is your score. Re-audits happen against the live site, so the number moves the moment you fix or break something.
What each band means in practice
Bands aren't arbitrary — they correspond to how your site performs vs the median UK local-business site we audit.
71-100 — Strong
Your foundations are solid. Search engines can read your site cleanly, your speed is competitive, social shares look professional. Focus next on content depth, internal linking, and backlink building.
41-70 — Mixed
Some fundamentals are in place, others are missing. The audit's Critical and Warning findings, in order, are usually the path back to a 70+. Most fixes are an hour or less of work each.
0-40 — Needs work
Serious gaps. Often this is one or two big issues — no HTTPS, mobile broken, robots.txt blocking — doing most of the damage. Score climbs fast once those are fixed.
Why a single number?
Memorable
You can quote one number in a meeting. You can text it to a colleague. 'We're at 67' — done. A wall of metrics doesn't fit in your head.
Trackable
One axis to plot over time. Did the score go up after you launched the new homepage? Down after the CMS update? You'll know.
Comparable
You can audit your competitors' sites the same way. Compare three local rivals' scores side-by-side. Now you know who's actually winning the SEO race in your patch.
Common questions
How does the score change between audits?+
Every audit runs fresh against your live site. Things that move the score: shipped a fix (climbs), shipped a regression (drops), hosting got slower, you added structured data. Re-audit weekly to catch silent drops.
Why is my score lower than I expected?+
Most surprises come from mobile performance — desktop scores can be great while phone scores are dragging things down. Or a recent CMS update silently stripped your meta tags. The audit findings will pinpoint exactly why.
Can I get to 100?+
Technically yes, in practice it's rare. 100 means perfect performance, perfect on-page, perfect security headers, perfect everything. 90+ is realistic with focus. 75+ is enough to outperform almost every competitor.
Does my score affect my Google ranking?+
Many of the things we measure ARE ranking factors. Page speed, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, structured data — all confirmed signals. Improving the score generally improves rankings, but it's not a 1:1 mapping. Content and backlinks matter too.
Is the score the same as my Google PageSpeed score?+
No. PageSpeed is one input among seven. Visibility Score is the bigger picture: speed, on-page, security, social, crawlability, schema all weighted together.
Get your Visibility Score
Free, no account, takes 15 seconds. We'll show you the number and the work behind it.