What Is an SEO Score?

Website SEO scores are metrics created by third-party tools, like SEO checkers or domain authorities (DA), that represent your site’s technical and user-facing elements in relation to search engine optimization. While they don’t directly impact Google rankings, these scores provide guidance toward best practices as well as identify areas requiring improvement.

SEO scores provide a convenient shortcut to conducting an in-depth website audit, saving site owners hours of manual research time while freeing them up to focus on producing quality content and improving their site to give their users the best user experience.

As such, an ideal SEO score would include adhering to industry standards in terms of backlink profile quality, site speed, mobile compatibility and content relevancy and value creation for user intent.

What Is the Difference Between an SEO Score and Domain Authority? Many people mistake SEO scores with domain authority (DA), a Moz-developed ranking factor which predicts how well a website will rank in search engines based on factors like link profile, root domains, social signals and more. Domain authority may often appear alongside SEO scores on an audit report for an audit, making their definition unclear to those new to SEO. While both metrics measure different things; SEO scores take into account a variety of elements while DA looks solely at backlink quality from within your website’s backlinks.

An SEO score provides an easily understandable metric that you can use to track your progress over time and share with team or management in meetings – especially helpful when explaining SEO in-depth. Your ultimate goal should be working toward increasing this score so your website has greater search visibility, leading to increased visits and interactions between people visiting it and you or your brand or products.

SEO is an ongoing process. There are always new trends and algorithm changes, requiring you to stay abreast of these updates in order to remain competitive and visible online. By keeping abreast of them and using tools like SEO scores as guides for your approach, you can ensure your business stays ahead of its competition while continuing its expansion.